标签：education

On Civil Servants

Culture & Public Commentary2014.11.30
On Civil Servants
I’d promised two current-affairs commentaries plus two book reviews every week, but my habitual procrastination put me off for a whole week. Starting today, I’m officially kicking into gear. The commentaries and reviews may be very short in length; their main purpose is to keep me in writing shape. The long-parked conference travelogue will also be produced sometime in the next few days. Today is the day of the national civil service exam. I hear that this year’s number of applicants has fallen to the lowest level in five years. Perhaps that is because civil service pay has declined; perhaps it is because young people nowadays are increasingly opinionated; or…
China culture freedom education
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2014年11月30日
Some Thoughts on Teaching Assistants for Small-Group Discussion Sessions in General Education Elective Courses

Teaching & Courses2013.09.23
Some Thoughts on Teaching Assistants for Small-Group Discussion Sessions in General Education Elective Courses
I was very honored to be invited to participate in the training and exchange activities for small-class discussion-course TAs, and to talk about my experiences and views. I once served as the discussion-section TA for the course “What Is Science.” This course was jointly offered by many distinguished professors from the science and engineering departments, and the lecture + discussion-section format ran for only one round. At the time, the course consisted of 2 class-hours per week of lectures by teachers from various departments, plus 1 class-hour of small-group discussion; it carried 3 credits, and the grade was based on a final paper worth 40 points plus discussion-section performance worth…
scholarship course education discussion
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2013年9月23日
On Delayed Graduation and Looking for a Job

Life & Notes2013.03.21
On Delayed Graduation and Looking for a Job
Last time I was writing my Mumford paper, I posted a writing plan. Going by a pace of one chapter a month, it was obvious that I would only be able to finish the paper roughly after the summer vacation, and at the very least I wouldn’t be graduating until spring 2014. In other words, I have already decided to delay graduation by half a year. Although I also wanted to strive to finish my PhD in three years, I ultimately chose to postpone. This was something I had long anticipated, of course, but it is still worth explaining on the blog~ The reason for postponing is, first and foremost,…
everyday life scholarship education pursuit
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2013年3月21日
Equality or Freedom: On the Question of Attending School Outside One’s Hometown

Culture & Public Commentary2012.12.17
Equality or Freedom: On the Question of Attending School Outside One’s Hometown
Recently, the case of the non-Shanghai girl Zhan Haiter has drawn a lot of attention, especially because it happened in Shanghai, so I can’t help but offer a few comments as well. Of course, I support Zhan Haiter’s struggle, and I support every citizen’s open expression of his or her demands; but as for the content of those demands, I do not support it. This matter involves too many questions, all tangled together, making an already complicated issue even more complicated. So first we need to break down the questions involved. There are two big issues: one is education, the other is regionality. It should be noted that the problem…
China culture freedom commentary
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2012年12月17日
Olympiad Math: The Side Road to the Gaokao

Culture & Public Commentary2012.08.23
Olympiad Math: The Side Road to the Gaokao
After talking about the Olympics, I wanted to talk about Olympiad mathematics. Today I happened to see a report again, so I might as well write down a few thoughts. When I was talking about the Olympics, I was also reflecting on myself: is my enthusiastic support for the Olympics related to my own Olympiad-math experience? The answer is yes. When I have recalled my growing-up years, I have also mentioned many times how important Olympiad mathematics was to me. My experience with Olympiad math not only helped me get into school on recommendation all the way, but, more importantly, gave me the exhilaration of peering into truth and the…
China culture commentary education
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2012年8月23日
The Whole-Nation System and the Pursuit of Excellence

Culture & Public Commentary2012.08.03
The Whole-Nation System and the Pursuit of Excellence
At Olympic season, it feels awkward not to talk about the Olympics; but four years ago, in “Four Takes on the Olympics”, I already said more than enough, and for the moment I don’t particularly feel like rewriting anything. As for the recent badminton match-fixing-through-passivity incident, I’ve said quite a lot about it on Weibo. First of all, this match was of course disgraceful; the question is whose disgrace it was. Obviously not the athletes’—the athletes were simply trying to adopt the best possible strategy for eventual victory, which is perfectly understandable. The first to be embarrassed is the International Badminton Federation’s bullshit rule: setting up such a weird rule…
culture commentary education pursuit
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2012年8月3日
Youth and Politics

Culture & Public Commentary2012.07.06
Youth and Politics
Today Huanqiu Times published a good commentary, “Young Students Should Not Be Encouraged to Rush to the Front Line of Conflict,” which says: Middle school students are minors. Their minds are not yet mature enough, but they are full of enthusiasm and highly sensitive. They have few worries and little social pressure, so they fear nothing and have strong explosive force and impact. They have no clear political interests to demand, nor any stable beliefs, so they are easily pushed along by adults, either becoming an expression of the correct social psychology or being led in the wrong direction. Since the founding of New China, the most striking eruption of…
China culture commentary education
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2012年7月6日
Knowledge Is Connection

AI & the Future of Technology2012.05.28
Knowledge Is Connection
Earlier I spoke of “phenomenological education,” which also made me recall the as-yet-unwritten essay I mentioned last year, “Knowledge Is Linkage.” Why is it that I, someone just about to begin a PhD dissertation on “media ontology,” “ have suddenly, and quite off the beaten track, decided to take up “education”? Have I changed direction? Of course not. My turn toward educational questions is on the one hand driven by my interest in Neil Postman (who is in essence an educational theorist), and on the other hand it is also a question I have long cared about. In fact, the question of education involves the whole range of philosophy, from…
technology media education internet
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2012年5月28日
Recommended Introductory Reading on Phenomenology: “Studies in Lived Experience”

Philosophy & Thought2012.05.27
Recommended Introductory Reading on Phenomenology: “Studies in Lived Experience”
[+] Max van Manen: “Lived Experience Research: Pedagogy in the Perspective of the Human Sciences,” trans. Song Guangwen et al., ed. Li Shuying, Educational Science Press, 2003 Lately I have been paying attention to the phenomenology of education, and I came across this book. But rather than a work on pedagogy, this book is really more like an introduction to (applied) phenomenology; the whole book is trying to describe a human-scientific mode of inquiry—phenomenology. The author, Van Manen, is a Canadian scholar and one of the founders of “phenomenological pedagogy.” He edits the journal *Phenomenology + Pedagogy*. But he is originally from the Netherlands, and his native language is Dutch;…
book reading notes education phenomenology
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2012年5月27日
Do the People Have the Right to Be Ignorant? — With a Discussion of Enlightenment and Unconcealment

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2012.05.14
Do the People Have the Right to Be Ignorant? — With a Discussion of Enlightenment and Unconcealment
People have the right to stupidity—this is Tian Song’s claim: “The people have the right to stupidity; if they are deprived of the right to stupidity, they will only have the right to be made stupid. The key question is: who has the authority to draw the line between civilization and stupidity?” Back then (almost six years ago now—terrifying), I already had reservations about this, though I did not discuss it in detail. Yesterday Jing Qi raised this claim again, and recently I have also been paying attention to pedagogical questions, so this is a good moment to talk through my thoughts. First of all, Teacher Tian, including Teacher Liu,…
China science freedom education
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2012年5月14日