First Millennial Education
Centuries of Development
At the foot of Mt. Yuelu in Changsha, Hunan Province, is the site of the ancient Yuelu Academy. The educational institution, a gathering place for renowned Confucian figures and educators including Zhu Xi (1130-1200) and Zhang Shi (1133-1180), has fostered influential Chinese thinkers and statesmen such as Huang Zongxi (1610-1695) and Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692) of the late Ming (1368-1644) and early Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, Zeng Guofan (1811-1872) of the late Qing Dynasty, Yang Changji (1871-1920) from the Republic of China era (1912-1949), and most notably, Mao Zedong, a Marxist and one of the founders of New China, who studied under Yang Changji while there.
The ancient academy, founded in 976 during the Northern Song Dynasty (9601127), is considered one of the most prestigious institutions of learning in Chinese history. In 1167, Zhu Xi and Zhang Shi launched a two-month academic exchange that drew a huge turnout. Their teaching gradually transformed into Huxiang School, a well-known branch of China’s Confucian philosophy. The academy reached its zenith during the Qing Dynasty when Confucians advocated the idea of “placing wisdom in state governance,” attaching greater importance to practical knowledge and skills in the sectors of politics, economics, science and technology, and military affairs.
What is an “academy” in the traditional Chinese sense? As defined in the History of Chinese Academies compiled by modern Chinese scholar Li Guojun, “An ‘academy’ refers to a special educational organization, mostly privately run or hosted, usually featuring a collection of books and a gathering place for lectures and discussions. They are considered loftier than traditional youth educational institutions.”
“As an independent organization for education not run by the state, an academy had to host services such as academic research, lectures, book collecting and publication, and sacrificial ceremonies to fund the operation of its school,” illustrates Professor Zhu Hanmin, former president of Yuelu Academy. “Many scholars mention them in the same breath as colleges and universities in Western countries. If they are considered comparable, Yuelu is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning on the planet. Of continuously operating colleges and universities in the world, only Morocco’s University of Al Qarawiyyin, founded in 859, is older.”
The first academy of classical learning was established during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Such academies reached their heyday during the Ming and Qing dynasties, when more than 2,000 could be found across the country. “Established by men of letters, Chinese academies inherited the educational and academic traditions of pre- Qin Confucianism while Western institutions of higher learning adopted traditions of the ancient Greeks, both ancient societies which contributed greatly to the development of the modern world,” remarks Zhu Hanmin. “In contrast with Western institutions’ sense of a ‘right’ to autonomy, traditional Chinese academies remained under the administrative power of the imperial authority. Consequently, most academies only trained students for imperial examinations, instead of academic research, during the Qing Dynasty, and almost all of them changed their institution status or shut down in the modern era.”
Early in the 20th Century, with the implementation of the “reform” policy in the late Qing Dynasty, China demolished its 1,000-year-old academy system and introduced Western-style institutes of higher learning. In 1903, Yuelu Academy was reshaped into Hunan Higher School under the educational system modeled after the West. It was formally named Hunan University in 1926, marking a transition from a private institution of classical learning to a state-run university.
Since then, as a school attached to Hunan University, Yuelu Academy has regained its former name and preserved its commitment to personnel training and academic research with fully accredited departments of Chinese history and philosophy, officially sanctioned by the modern higher education system to award bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees.
Transformation Dilemma
The academy experienced a downturn after its change in institutional status. “When the Qing court ordered it to retreat from classical learning, the academy was forced to bear the historic mission of preserving a lifeline to connect ancient and modern education,” comments Professor Deng Hongbo of Yuelu Academy.
“It was easy to inherit the physical academy—the buildings, the inscribed horizontal boards, and stele inscriptions,” admits Zhu Hanmin, “but it was a monumental task to fuse that cultural tradition into the modern educational system.”
“We are preserving the tradition of the ancient academy by combining it with modern education, making it a part of a modern institution of higher learning equipped to cater to the most elite students of today’s world,” argues Zhu. Like other schools under Hunan University, postgraduate students here must complete compulsory classes as well as electives. The only difference is the key focus, which is the study of ancient Chinese civilization and culture.
It’s rare for such a transformation to succeed in a modern educational setting. Today, Yuelu Academy has upgraded its classical Chinese educational resources and is again considered the “Fort Knox” of traditional Chinese culture. During his visit in 2007, Shan Jixiang, then director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, dubbed that type of integration the “Yuelu Academy model.”
Yuelu Academy first became famous nationwide thanks to the lectures of Zhu Xi, a Song-dynasty Confucian scholar and the leading figure of the School of Principle—the most influential rationalist genre of Neo- Confucianism in China—and Zhang Shi, a scholar and educator of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), who oversaw education at Yuelu. In ancient China, standout academies were so because of their representative figures. “Therefore ancient Chinese academies hit roadblocks during social progress,” opines Zhu. “To- day, neither the West nor China has the kind of celebrated academic masters that could enable such institutions to stay afloat. Not even in the early period of the Republic of China could someone like Zhu Xi, who founded his own school of thought, maintain an academy. Nevertheless, lectures are continuing without great masters, and only by lecturing can we produce more great masters.”
Modern media has been used to disseminate outstanding traditional Chinese culture during its modern transformation. In the late 1990s, Yuelu Academy invited
famous scholars such as Li Zehou, a wellknown Chinese philosopher, to give lectures on TV. In 2013, it established a center for research and dissemination of classical Chinese learning and launched regular lectures. By 2014, it had spearheaded a new model for spreading traditional Chinese culture with aid of the “internet+” concept.
In the early 21st Century, academies of classical learning saw rapid progress thanks to the renaissance of traditional Chinese culture throughout the country. Scores of new-type academies of various forms emerged, while some 100 traditional ones regained life. However, problems, such as a fragmented curriculum system, persist.
In general, modern Chinese colleges and universities have not inherited many traditions from ancient Chinese academies due to the specific course of history and certain social conditions during the country’s modernization. “Education in traditional academies can provide three new perspectives that will be valuable in modern institutions of higher learning,” declared Chen Pingyuan, a distinguished scholar in modern China. “Traditional academies inspire greater contributions to the diversification of academic thinking in terms of education systems; they provide more personalized education and more liberal education and break the utilitarianism of education; and they focus on independent thinking, self-learning and communication between teachers and students in terms of teaching methods. Considering such factors, optimal methods of adapting traditional Chinese academies to the modern setting are something every academic and researcher committed to revitalizing traditional cultural heritage should be pondering.