现代教育阅读材料:第二篇Passage 2

第二篇Passage 2

Beijing University

The first university run by the Central Government of China was founded in 1898, named originally Imperial University. It was a product of the Reform Movement of 1898, which ushered in China's modern higher education. Since then it has been closely tied to the fate of the country.

In February 1898, under the vigorous impetus of such noble-minded patriots of the Reform Movement as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Emperor Guang Xu ordered the preparations to found a university. After its founding, the Imperial University inherited some of the duties of the Imperial College, the highest educational institution in feudal China, and it exercised control over the universities of the various provinces of the country. It therefore was not only the highest seat of learning, but the highest executive organ of education in the whole country as well. In 1912, the second year after the 1911 Revolution, the Imperial University changed its name to Beijing University, and the then well-known bourgeois reformist, enlightenment thinker and translator Yan Fu was appointed as the first president of Beijing University.

Over the past hundred years, the group of China's contemporary universities, with Beijing University as its stellar representative, has played a pioneering role in China's historical course towards modernization, forming a glorious revolutionary as well as an exemplary academic tradition.

In 1916, Cai Yuanpei, our country's well known democratic revolutionary, educator and thinker, was appointed president of Beijing University. He advanced this guiding principle for running a school:" to abide by the principle of freedom of thought and to adopt an all-embracing doctrine." He carried out an effective reform in Beijing University which promoted ideological liberation and academic prosperity. In 1917, Chen Duxiu, the initiator of a new cultural movement, was appointed head of Beijing liberal arts section. He moved New Youth magazine from Shanghai to Beijing, carrying out a vigorous attack on feudal thoughts. As a result, Beijing University became China's center of the new cultural movement in opposing old thinking and old culture of feudalism and advocating new thinking and a new culture.

In the great May fourth Patriotic Movement, it was Beijing University which first lighted the revolutionary torch of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism. As a new ideology and culture, Marxism was the first to achieve in Beijing University its primary stage of propagation in China. Professor Li Dazhao of Beida was the first Chinese who embraced and propagated Marxism. In the course of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the first members of Peking’s Party group consisted entirely of Beida people. Mao Zedong also received his enlightenment through Marxist education in Peking University.

As China's first earliest center of education and scientific research, Beijing University has gathered China's most brilliant specialists and scholars, continuously opened up, blazed new trails, engaged itself in reform and development for training high-quality talent and achieving high-level scientific fruits that deeply influenced and advanced the range of China's higher education. In 1903, the Imperial University sent its first group of 46 students to study abroad, an act which marked the beginning of China's higher institutions sending students to study abroad. In 1920, a contingent of three young women students were enrolled in Beijing University, an act which ushered in coeducation in China's institutions of higher learning. In addition, it was Beijing University which first taught Marxist theory, started aesthetic education and introduced Einstein's theory of relativity, which produced far-reaching influence in China's institutions of higher learning.

After the founding of New China, Beijing University became a university able to boast of its rich resources of the teaching staff and a most complete faculty of liberal arts, sciences and foreign languages. The teachers and students of the university have continued to bring creative initiative into full play and founded China's first atomic energy department. In the 60's, the university joined hands with other fraternal units and successfully developed artificially synthesized bovine insulin, which was the first instance in the world of using artificial means in the synthesis of a protein with biological energy. It produced profound theoretic and academic significance in the study of life sciences. In the eighties, Beijing University developed a computer-laser Chinese character editing and typesetting system, which enabled China's printing industry to end its history of lead and fire and step into a period of light and electricity. In the nineties, Beida Fangzheng has become an enterprise group, one producing the highest benefits among all China's institutions of higher learning.

For a hundred years, Beijing University and China's many other universities together have trained and raised generation after generation of high-quality talent. This university is closely linked with the fate of our country. Its centenary history serves almost as a history of rejuvenation that concentrated the ideology, culture, science and education of the nation. It is the glory of Beijing University as well as the pride of the Chinese nation.

课文词语 Words and Expressions from the Text

usher in… 以……为开端

Imperial University 京师大学堂

Imperial College 国子监（封建社会中国的最高学府）

The highest executive organ of education 最高教育行政管理机构

stellar representative 杰出代表

exemplary academic tradition 优良的学术传统

“to abide by the principle of freedom of thought “循思想自由原则、取兼容并包主义”

and to adopt an all-embracing doctrine.”

The initiator of a new cultural movement 新文化运动的倡导者

blaze new trails 开拓精神

artificially synthesized bovine insulin 人工合成牛胰岛素

Chinese character editing and typesetting system 汉字编辑排版系统

a history of rejuvenation 一部振兴历史