“Science What Is” is a general elective offered this semester; you can find the course description on the Keke forum. In brief, this course is jointly chaired by Rao Yi from the School of Life Sciences and Teacher Wu, with a dozen eminent professors from various disciplines invited to give lectures, and then several teaching assistants organizing discussion sections.
The lecture lineup for this course is formidable. Headlining the roster are Yang Zhenning and Yao Qizhi, the latter being a winner of the Turing Award (the Nobel Prize of information science), followed by a whole host of well-known professors from Peking University’s various departments. The pull of celebrity is indeed powerful: although Yang Zhenning’s lecture fell on the morning of the very first day of classes, it still drew no shortage of listeners; even after being moved to a large classroom holding around four hundred people, there were still many standing to hear the talk. Yao Qizhi’s draw was a bit weaker, but in a classroom of more than two hundred seats, there was at least not an empty seat in the house.
In stark contrast to the popularity of the lecture sessions was the chilliness of the discussion sections. The course cap was 200 students, and the original plan was to have five teaching assistants run ten discussion sections, with about 20 students per section. Yet from the start, the enrollment never filled up; at its peak it reached only about 150 to 160 students. Then, after the first lecture laid out the course requirements, enrollment dropped precipitously. By the time of the first discussion section, the number enrolled was around 110-plus, while the total number who actually came to discuss was 49. After taking students’ feedback into account, we adjusted the discussion section times to greatly reduce scheduling conflicts, but the enrollment still slid downward at a rapid clip. By the second week, it was said that only a little over sixty people remained. Although there were some new faces at the second discussion section, the total number present was only 46. The withdrawal deadline should already have passed by now, and I don’t know what the final situation was, but it looks like there were at most just a little over fifty people.
Honestly, I still find it rather baffling why so many people would keep such a wide berth from this course. Some may have been frightened off by the lecture sessions, especially Yao Qizhi’s English lecture in the second week. But more of my classmates probably still had expectations for those lectures; many even continued to sit in on them, yet simply did not want to attend the discussion sections.
Indeed, for many excellent courses, whether one enrolls officially or not is hardly important; sitting in can yield the same harvest. But this course is different. The dazzling list of speakers may have led many students to misunderstand what the course is really about. In fact, the true groundbreaking significance of this course does not lie in assembling that dozen professors, but in being the first attempt at the lecture-plus-discussion-section format. It is said that this format—large lectures delivered by professors plus small discussion sections organized by teaching assistants—is very common in the West, but in China, and even at Peking University, it has still been unheard of. Of course, many science courses do have small-section recitations led by teaching assistants, but those are basically centered on explaining fixed assignments; there is no such free discussion format in which everyone must participate.
Looked at from another angle, the general panic among students over the discussion format, as reflected in enrollment numbers, precisely confirms the significance of offering discussion sections. If everyone were already familiar with discussion sections and used to participatory courses, they certainly would not be scared off by something like this. On the contrary, they would regard this sort of discussion section as a very pleasant and interesting opportunity. Though discussion sections do indeed require active participation and investment, that participation is by no means any onerous burden. Through this opportunity, we can express our own feelings, state our own views, get to know classmates with different intellectual backgrounds and different personalities, and exchange ideas with one another. Such an experience is rare.
If one merely sits through lectures, one may feel at the time that they are great and excellent, but without a channel to share and exchange one’s impressions, what can really remain after some time has passed? In the end, it is nothing more than having listened to a storytelling performance. But if there is a setting that gives you the chance to speak out your own experiences and pour out your own excitement or displeasure, isn’t that in itself a liberating thing?
This is indeed a difference between Chinese students and Western students in the tradition. Chinese students are accustomed to cramming-style teaching: from childhood to adulthood, they simply open their mouths and sit there waiting for the teacher to pour knowledge in. Westerners, by contrast, have a stronger self-centered desire for expression. Of course, the Chinese tradition is not necessarily a flaw; as children, it is a good thing to accept our elders’ discipline quietly and obediently. But this advantage applies only in the context of early education. As a university student—especially as a university student researching the most cutting-edge knowledge at one of the top schools—does it still make sense to remain accustomed to this kind of crammed-in learning?
Westerners who like to express themselves are not necessarily arrogant; on the contrary, the stuffed ducks often turn out to be quite self-righteous. For example, when some students saw Yang Zhenning come to give a lecture, they dismissed him with contempt: he can’t even teach a complete physics course—what could he possibly say? It is true that many Chinese professors’ physics courses are very “complete,” and Yang Zhenning himself also noted that the students China has trained have very solid foundations; by the time they have gone through the entire system of the Four Great Classical Theories in China, they have already learned it thoroughly and comprehensively, whole and intact. Chinese students’ basic knowledge is such that even at the very top universities in the West it is enough to outshine most graduate students. But apart from mastering more of the knowledge handed down by predecessors, how many Chinese students have created new knowledge that can outshine the West? As Yang Zhenning implicitly suggested, those scientists who made creative breakthroughs may not need to learn the entire foundation in a perfectly packed and complete way. The key lies in the insight that rewrites the textbook, not in whether one can recount the textbook in its entirety.
On the one hand, one must be brave enough to break with dogma, but one also cannot drift too far from the academic foundation and start indulging in fanciful ideas. Going one’s own way like folk scientists and “fighting alone” is of course an even worse thing. The doctrinaire crammer and the folk scientist who talks only to himself have one thing in common: neither can adapt to a discussion section in which people interact seriously and on an equal footing. Dogmatists know only how to lecture and how to listen to lectures; at most, “discussion” among them means checking answers after finishing exercises, and they would not like discussion activities that require one to display one’s individuality and take part in them. As for the self-important amateur scientist, he cannot find common ground with others at all. The atmosphere created by a discussion section should enable participants to avoid both parroting what others say and talking only to themselves, thereby creating the most appropriate academic climate—even if the discussion process itself produces no direct scholarly results, the “air” that the discussion section sets in motion will have a far more far-reaching significance. Across times and places, the most vibrant academic sites are often also the places where the atmosphere of discussion is most widespread.
If offering courses like this can enable students to move from fearing and rejecting discussion to gradually becoming accustomed to and accepting it, that would be the greatest success, wouldn’t it? The medium is the message: before the concrete topic this course carries, the form of the course itself bears even greater significance. What one gains from discussion may not necessarily be the information obtained in the course of discussion, but rather the confidence and humility gained through the very activity of discussion, the self-centered desire for expression that is cultivated, as well as respect for others and the ability to understand them.
September 20, 2010
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply