Chapter 494： IFMA's response

Chapter 495 Response of the International Material Federation

(don't look at it, wait until 2 o'clock)

(Don’t look at it yet, let’s look after 2 o’clock)

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Peking University Yuanpei General Education Curriculum System

1. It has not been established since its establishment. This is also an important reason why it was not envisaged at the beginning of its establishment and has not been realized so far, thus affecting the effect of this experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to establish a general education system similar to that of the top liberal arts colleges in the United States, but after more than ten years of operation, this purpose has not been achieved. You can find many commentary articles on the general education of Yuanpei at Peking University on the Internet, with mixed reviews. But in a word, this experiment was not successful.

2. The Yuanpei College of Peking University focuses on general education, but its current training model is not to set up general education courses by itself, but to adopt a platter-type general education method. Whether this method is good remains to be discussed. It is difficult to set up independent general education courses in the educational environment in which the above mentioned "experimental failure".

The so-called platter-type general education means that students of Yuanpei College can elect all professional courses in Peking University. Therefore, Yuanpei does not offer general education courses, but students can freely combine professional courses from different departments to achieve general education. the result of education. Students will be divided into majors in their sophomore year. Students can freely choose any major in Peking University as their major direction (of course, they reserve the right to change their direction and study other professional courses), or they can choose Yuanpei’s characteristic majors: such as PPE (politics). , Economics and Philosophy), foreign languages ​​and foreign history, paleontology, integrated science, etc., as the name suggests, these majors are a combination of related courses from various departments as your required courses.

A banner that started the reform of undergraduate education and teaching in this century, Yuanpei College has been exploring a broad-based and broad-caliber talent training model for 13 years. It is one of the earliest institutions in China to test the waters of general education. The accident, setback, embarrassment and even controversy that "Yuanpei" encountered in this talent experiment fully reflected the difficulty and pain of general knowledge.

Peking University Yuanpei is the earliest and relatively mature model in the reform of general education in China. Now general education is rolled out in various colleges and universities, but the current results are not particularly good - but at least a step has been taken.

3. According to the talent training plan of Yuanpei College, after admission, freshmen can theoretically choose any course offered by the whole school, and listen to whatever they want. The course study plan is all made by themselves; You can freely choose the direction of study according to your own interests, and there is no limit in theory.

"Spiritual freedom, academic freedom, and study freedom." After entering Yuanpei, almost all students feel "freedom" at first, but then most of them start to be "confused".

A student who entered the school in 2004 once published an article online complaining about Yuanpei's "free system". For example, the "tutor system" that should be responsible for guiding students to choose courses and majors has a limited effect. In fact, the freshmen of Yuanpei 04 can't even get a course plan of a department, and they have to go to the academic affairs department of each department. "Look at it".

Compared with these trivial matters, the freedom of course selection has become a bigger obstacle - you can listen to the whole school's classes, but what are you listening to?

At Peking University, the undergraduate course plan is mainly divided into two parts: specialized courses and general elective courses. Generally speaking, professional courses are more difficult than general elective courses. It is envisaged that after any Yuanpei student is in the sophomore year and chooses his/her major, the courses taken by other colleges and departments before can replace the general elective courses, and they can graduate after completing the credits.

For students, such regulations are tantamount to the shackles of "free treatment": choosing courses according to interests, once the test scores are not satisfactory, you will lose a certain degree of freedom when choosing a major.

Many Yuanpei "come here" experienced the process of compromising with "not freedom". Zhang Wanting, a 03-level Yuanpei law student at Peking University, told reporters that in the first few years of Yuanpei's implementation, GPA was not a matter of importance, "Most of the 02 and 03 students choose courses according to their own interests, Difficult classes were a trend at the time." But since then, the grade point orientation has become more and more important.

The existence of the "Grade Point" standard still makes it difficult for students to choose courses.

Zhou Wenjie, was admitted to Yuanpei College in 2008, and is currently the head teacher of Yuanpei College of Peking University’s 13th grade. What he observes is that fewer and fewer students are taking a wide range of courses based on interest in the college, and many new students are very planned as soon as they enter the school. For example, in the first semester of freshman year, freshmen of grade 13 choose courses in economics, management, mathematics, politics, economics, philosophy and other fields, and there is no course selection with a particularly wide range of disciplines.

Xu Chongren explained that the biggest difference between Yuanpei and various colleges and departments is that traditional professional colleges and departments can develop themselves without external force, while Yuanpei often needs the school to push behind and constantly formulate various special programs applicable to Yuanpei. policy. "Professors need to do research and need their own graduate students, so they must rely on professional departments. Yuanpei alone cannot do it alone."

Zhou Wenjie admitted that the "freedom" provided by Yuanpei College for students is still a "negative freedom" in a sense. "Students have to take risks to choose courses without understanding what is going on in this major, and they have to judge whether these courses can touch the core issues of the major." Especially for freshmen, the psychological pressure suddenly It came up Not long ago, a post on the BBS of Peking University went viral. The poster said that he applied for an extension of the school system, but was rejected by the school's academic affairs office, delaying his postgraduate study plan.

Not long ago, a post on BBS of Peking University went viral. The poster said that he applied for an extension of the school system, but was rejected by the school's academic affairs office, delaying his postgraduate study plan.

This student is Lu Weicong from Yuanpei’s 10th grade. After completing the mathematics major, he hopes to carry out interdisciplinary study of mathematics and computer science, so he applied for an extension. According to Yuanpei's teaching plan, students enjoy a flexible academic system and can complete their undergraduate education in 3 to 6 years. The reason why the school's academic affairs will not be extended is that the student's graduation credits have been completed.

After coordination, Lu Weicong's application was finally approved. However, this matter still caused follow-up discussions within Yuanpei: Yuanpei has not gotten rid of the trouble of the "dual-track system", and some teaching systems of the college cannot be effectively administratively guaranteed at the school level.

Although the "dual-track system" has not completely disappeared over time, Xu Chongren said that Yuanpei College is a model that is beneficial to the improvement of undergraduate education based on the diversification of student sources. Yuanpei's reforms are aimed at two prominent problems in higher education: students enter majors too early, resulting in narrow knowledge; most students blindly choose majors, and there is a gap after study.