“Have Great Ambition, Enter the Mainstream, Get On Big Stage, Achieve Great Accomplishments. ”
Blogger Duan Haixin is teaching and researching computer security in one of China’s best universities: Tsinghua University. The following post is from his blog: The Internet Virus Which Is Spreading the Spirit of Science, translated by CDT:
Above is a propaganda banner hanging across the main avenue on Tsinghua campus. What doe this “Enter the mainstream” mean? If most people around me all have the flu, do I have to get the flu in order to be in the “mainstream?” Does “enter the mainstream” mean to follow what others are doing? I really cannot understand the propaganda officials of Tsinghua, did the flu virus get into their head?
This reminds me of last year when they were encouraging graduates to select the “major battlefields” of national economic construction. I asked a department dean, what does “major battlefields” mean? He answered: go to government agencies, go to those agencies which are in charge of research programs, so they can help us to get large research grants, those are the “major battlefields” we encourage our graduates to choose.
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” When will we educate our students as independent human beings, not as a screw, a brick, a “talent” for the needs of the nation? [Chinese text]
