Introduction: Kindness Is a Choice
I. A Book, a Story, and a Theory
Harvard University, now nearing the 400th anniversary of her founding, is a place to which people all over the world aspire. Perhaps it was precisely due to her prestige—with so many extraordinary persons, outstanding achievements, and legendary stories—that Harvard felt vague, abstract, and remote to me. But three things occurred which thoroughly changed my feeling toward Harvard as desirable yet unreachable.
First, I read a book. Entitled Excellence without a Soul(1), it pointed out that universities have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of undergraduate education is to turn young people into adults who will take responsibility for society. Professor Howard Gardner wrote in his review for this book, Harry Lewis “is a courageous man who has written a courageous book”. After reading this book, I have a deeper understanding of Gardner’s comment. The author, Professor Lewis, is indeed courageous—courageous enough to speak the truth. In this regard, he fully embodies Harvard’s motto: Veritas.
Second, I came upon a story. In his story entitled Distant Applause, Chinese overseas Harvard student Yonghui Wu wrote a scene about Professor John Rawls. When this preeminent professor of philosophy finished the last lecture at the end of the semester, he humbly acknowledged that what he had talked about in class was all about personal biases, and asked students to think for themselves and make their own judgments. As he stepped down from the platform, all the students immediately applauded to thank him. Rawls, a bit shy to begin with, waved and walked quickly out of the lecture hall. But the applause continued long after he had walked out. Wu asked the American student next to him how long it would take to clap. The student replied: “Let Professor Rawls hear it from a distant place.”(2)
Third, I encountered a theory: the parking space theory of career choice. In her baccalaureate address to the Class of 2008, then-President of Harvard Drew Gilpin Faust advised the students: “I have heard you articulate your worries about the relationship of success and happiness—perhaps, more accurately, how to define success so that it yields and encompasses real happiness, not just money and prestige…Don’t park twenty blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never find a space. Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be…Find work you love. It is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you don’t.” This led me to decide that I too would become a courageous person. With Professor Lewis’ encouragement, and with my research proposal Approaches and Strategies of Cultivating and Promoting Undergraduates’Social Responsibility, HGSE agreed to host me as a visiting scholar under the guidance of Professor Helen Haste.
Professor Haste was a great advisor who guided me in accordance with my aptitude. She led me throughout the process of carrying out the series of interviews. Her first step was to cultivate me by giving me experience in coding data in the China Lab. Upon learning that there was no space for me to audit HGSE’s course in interviewing skills, her second step was to give me a “brief interview training program” herself. Her third step was to guide our Fulcrum Team in the design and implementation of the interviews.
II. The Marathon of Learning
Great minds think alike. When former Harvard President Faust was invited to celebrate Beijing (Peking) University’s 110th anniversary on March 26, 2008, she remarked: “I have learned that one of the basic texts of Chinese civilization describes education this way: ‘The way of Great Learning(3) lies in illuminating one’s bright virtue.’ This is at the heart of a great university.” Yiqi Mei, praised as the “Eternal President” of Tsinghua University ever since his time in charge of Tsinghua from 1931 to 1948, had two famous opinions. One is the “theory of the masters”, referring to masterful educators. In his inaugural speech as President of Tsinghua University in 1931, he succinctly expressed this thesis: “A university does not depend on having buildings, but on having masters.”(4) The other is the theory of “the swimming metaphor” or “the little fish follow the big fish”, which emphasizes the special role of teachers in relation to students. President Mei likened the school environment to water, teachers to big fish, and students to little fish. The teacher-student relationship is a relationship of guiding and following(5). Teachers must temper their will and emotions. Students will learn not only from their teachers’ explicit instruction, but also from their very way of being as by osmosis.
The beginning of my visit to HGSE coincided with what the school termed “Education’s Moment”. On September 19th, canceling classes and closing off Appian Way(6), HGSE launched a $250-million campaign, part of the university’s $6.5-billion fundraising drive. The opening ceremony attracted 1300 attendees, and included speeches, musical performances, a series of talks and panels, and a block party, all of which really opened doors for me. First, Marcos Suares, member of the Network D Young Men’s Leadership Program and one of the students featured in the “Through Education” video, introduced U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Then a student musician from Conservatory Lab Charter School welcomed President Faust to the podium. These two segments showed examples of how adults can continually inspire children, create opportunities for them, and shape them through their high expectations.
Following that, talks and panels themed around “critical conversations and bold ideas”presented topics across the entire educational spectrum, ranging from global education and the role of superintendents to technology in higher education and early learning and the brain. I was given a brisk showcase of faculty research by eight professors giving eight-minute talks about their recent work. It was here that I noticed Professor Thomas Hehir and Professor Joseph Blatt, and where I listened to Professor Howard Gardner’s talk “Beyond Wit and Grit”.
That day, I deeply realized that I was in “the right place, at the right time” to make a significant contribution to education. Dean Ryan told those in attendance that education was “the only sure path” to world change, and that anybody could learn to make a difference through education. The whole event reminded me that I should focus not just on moral education, but on a broad range of topics, such as general education, charter schools, special education, and digital technology. Recognizing that since its founding in 1920 HGSE has produced thinkers and practitioners who have revolutionized the field of education, I understood that I had an opportunity to take a snapshot of some of the current great educational minds in the form of interview recordings. Just as HGSE alumnus and Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada said, the only chance we have to make a good life is to get an education, and HGSE taught him to “go out and really do it”. Though aware of my limitations, I knew that interviewing the great minds was something I could go out and really do.
President Faust called HGSE “the grittiest place at Harvard”, which made me think that I should aspire to be the grittiest learner at HGSE. As a member of the Harvard community, I was granted the chance of auditing many courses, and was notified by email of all the news at HGSE and elsewhere, such as at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, and Harvard College. All of this information inspired my thinking and created opportunities. In the process, I made more friends, some of whom became members of the Fulcrum Team. I also learned from more professors, some of whom became interviewees. Professor Haste’s interview training lasted for weeks, so we could only begin the actual interviewing at this relatively late date. Needless to say, the following three months were quite busy! Our first interviewee was Professor Harry R. Lewis, whom we interviewed on April 9th. The last interview was with Nancy Sommers, which we conducted from 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm on July 6th, mere hours before I headed back to China at 7:00 am the following morning.
As an amateur long-distance runner, I often take inspiration from John Stephen Akhwari, who represented Tanzania in the marathon in the 1968 Olympics. Suffering an injury in the middle of the race, he nevertheless finished it, though it took quite a long time. He did not win a medal, but he became well-known for his explanation of why he finished: “My country did not send me 5000 miles to start the race. They sent me 5000 miles to finish the race.”Though eight years have passed since I left Harvard, I am determined to finish my own sort of race. With gratitude for all the help I have received along the way, today I present the“medal”—this book—to those who have helped me and to all interested readers.
III. Better Serve thy Country and thy Kind with Kindness
Kindness is a choice. While working on this book, there were three surprises for me. One, despite their busy schedules, each and every interviewee and interviewer chose to help the rural children in Guizhou Province, China. Two, everyone chose to encourage my positive attitude and dedication to education, and to understand and forgive my limited ability in designing interviews. Three, everyone chose to continue to support us by returning their transcripts with careful modifications and detailed comments, even though we were in the midst of a pandemic, and eight years had passed from the time of the interviews to the time of publishing. When Professor Lewis was appointed Interim Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), he said: “I hope to follow the model set by the SEAS faculty and staff from whose brilliance, wisdom, and kindness I have received such benefit over the decades.” Professor Richard Miller, the Founding President of Olin College, also shared with us that the secret behind Olin’s successful culture of experimentation is kindness.(7) Beyond all doubt, kindness is the first essential ingredient to building a peaceful and beautiful society, country, and world.
Throughout this project, I have had to remind myself to stick to my original aspiration, which can be summed up in the phrase found on one of Harvard’s gates: “better serve thy country and thy kind”. I came across this quote from then-President Miller: “Professor Howard Gardner’s work was also highly influential to us in establishing Olin College of Engineering, particularly in the development of our admission program.” Just three months before I learned this, in February of 2017, China launched its New Emerging Engineering Education Program. In light of this, we shifted the Fulcrum Team’s main focus from compiling the Harvard interviews to conducting a new series of interviews to learn more from Olin. Since fall of 2020, when Justin (Zheng Tao) again had the time to focus on proofreading the English version of each interview, we returned our main focus to the Harvard interviews. Only in February 2021 did I decide to publish the upcoming book first in the English edition, and only later in the Chinese edition. My colleague Lianjiang Wang is translating the interviews free of charge for our Chinese version. My former teacher Guanghong Li was so moved by everyone’s generosity, kindness, and dedication that she decided to fund the publication of the upcoming book.
As we find ourselves at what current Dean of HGSE Bridget Long has called an “inflection point” in our history with such extraordinary potential for change, it is even more important that we learn from each other. Harvard Professor William C. Kirby recently observed,“The Chinese universities are the fastest-growing in quality as well as quantity anywhere in the world. And this is why the world is coming to China.”(8) If the world is coming to our country to learn, then so must we learn from other countries. I carry the wisdom of Harvard and Olin back to my homeland not just for my own nation, but also for the people of all nations who come to learn at our universities. Professor Kirby explains that when Beijing University scholar Shi Hu came to Harvard in 1936 to receive an honorary degree, he presented as a gift the stele which stands outside of Widener Library. Hu’s calligraphy is inscribed on the stele, and begins with this assertion: “Culture is the lifeblood of a nation. It is by virtue of its culture that a nation arises, but truly it is due to learning that a culture flourishes.” Near the end of the text, he expresses his hope for “the further enlargement and expansion of an ever-increasing cultural interchange between our two countries”. Despite the challenges of the moment, it is my fervent hope that the U.S. and China can continue to strive towards Hu’s ideal.
IV. Adding Sports, Reading, Writing, and Relevance to STEAM to Create STREAM Education
In two of his books, Our Underachieving Colleges(9) and Higher Education in America(10),former Harvard President Derek Bok stresses the importance of teaching college students two competencies in particular. One is critical thinking. The other is the ability to communicate, which encompasses “the ability to write with precision and grace” and “an ability to speak clearly and persuasively”.(11) In recent years, the lack of writing ability of college students has aroused widespread concern and criticism, including in China. From 2020 onward, every undergraduate of Tsinghua University is now required to take the “Communicating and Writing” course. And on November 3rd, 2020, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China launched the New Liberal Arts project, which counts among its aims the substantial improvement of students’ writing skills. In an online lecture about the Renaissance, Harvard Professor of History James Hankins answered my question on writing in this way: “Writing was one of the great arts of the Renaissance…But I think writing skills have declined rather dramatically in the last twenty years. I think the 1990s is the last time I saw really excellent writing from undergraduates.”(12) The good news is that Kenyon College is now integrating writing into science and mathematics classes, which is described in detail in Professor Howard Gardner’s latest book, The Real World of College.(13)
Learning to how to write is the “right” way of changing oneself and changing the world. Only when we add the “R” (representing “reading, writing, and relevance”) to “STEAM”(science, technology, engineering, arts, and math), and add a further meaning to “S” (sports),giving us “STREAM”, can the whole person be cultivated, and then the whole world be made better. During the editing process I realized what social and literacy skills really mean for children (Tracy Elizabeth, Robert Selman, Richard Weissbourd, and Hunter Gehlbach in particular made this more clear), and that for adults being able to write clear sentences can actually change the world (as I learned from Nancy Sommers). I was born in the early 1970s in a rural village in eastern China, where girls usually just finished primary school, and only a few went to secondary school. Although I started primary school with great curiosity and excitement, around third and fourth grade I once had two serious dropout requests. The first time, I told my mother that I wanted to drop out of school and raise rabbits at home, so that I could help my family earn money. My mother decisively refused this request. The second time, I decided to act first and report to my mother later: At school I informed my teacher that I had decided to quit school that day and wanted to learn how to make clothes. When I got home, my mother firmly told me: “OK, you can. I will go to town and work as a nanny. And since you won’t be going to school anymore, you will do farm work and cook for your two older brothers and your father at home.”
Born in the mid-1940s, my mother was fortunate enough to graduate from middle school in an era when literacy was not universal, especially among women. She always tried to do whatever she could to help others and encouraged the local school-age children to go to school. Naturally, my mother was the most qualified person to carry on literacy education among women in my village when the need for such a person arose. So my initial literacy education started before I was old enough to go to primary school (there was no kindergarten in the village at that time), in my yard with women in my village. Once in primary school, my writing education was often guided by my mother as she was cooking in the kitchen. It has always been my dream to be a good teacher and a good writer, and I think this is where it started. To this day, I can still clearly remember my mother’s tears of joy when I became the first female undergraduate in my village. Even until now, I am still exploring how to write, and dreaming of how to build a bridge between learners of writing and excellent writers. I hope that these interviews can serve as a collection of beautiful and powerful writing for education researchers, students applying to Harvard and Olin, these students’ parents, English language learners, and all those who want to improve their writing ability.
V. The Meaning of Greatness
In China, there is a saying that there are three lucky things in life: to be born with good parents, to go to school with good teachers, and to work with good mentors. This is very similar to a key idea in the book Creating Innovators recommended to me by Professor Miller, which suggests that “there are three interrelated elements to intrinsic motivation: play, passion, and purpose. Whether—and to what extent—parents, teachers, mentors, and employers encourage these qualities makes an enormous difference in the lives of young innovators…Opportunities for students to pursue their own interests and to discover their passions and so move toward a deeper sense of purpose were the driving forces for learning in most Olin classes.”(14) I am one of the most fortunate people. My mother, a deeply kind-hearted woman, always taught me to take delight in helping others and to be considerate of other people. Her optimism and open-mindedness taught me to pursue my dreams and to explore the outside world; her eloquence and quick wit showed me how to communicate effectively. These lessons have led me onto a path where I have encountered—and continue to encounter—many great teachers and mentors. I believe that this book will likewise introduce you to many great minds and souls.
On World Book Day of 2014, I successfully passed the American visa application process, confirming my opportunity to work on this book at Harvard University. Today, I sincerely hope this book will be looked upon as a bridge to understanding Harvard and help readers to find the “right” way to learn and to live. STREAM education will be my next research focus, with an emphasis on forming a synergistic relationship between informational input and transformational output, which can lay a foundation “for good work and for an informed civic life”.
As Professor Miller said: “A good education changes what you know, while a great education changes who you are.” Changing the world begins with changing ourselves. Many readers may feel that only great people—such as those interviewed for this book—could make any significant change in the world. I would like to point all such readers to these words from Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Not everybody could be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service.” If you are willing to serve, then you will be great. All the great people who have dedicated themselves to service for a better world are deserving of an applause that can be heard in a distant place, an applause transcending time and space.
VI. Cultivating Benevolence through Friends
There is a Chinese idiom, yin shui si yuan（饮水思源）, which literally means “when you drink water, you should think of the source.” It derives from a complete sentence, of which the first half is “When eating fruits, you should think of the trees”.(15) The extended meaning is that, when enjoying happiness, you should not forget the source of that happiness, and always have a heart full of gratitude.
In the course of my education, I have been taught and mentored by more than 100 teachers, all of whom have shaped me into the person I am today through their relentless pursuit of truth, kindness, and beauty. The students with whom I have had the privilege to interact as a student affairs staff member, teacher, and editor have amounted to more than 1000. They have accompanied and even guided me to explore my own identity, agency, and purpose. My former student Zhongping Yang funded the HGSE China Lab project. Therefore, the original intention of publishing this book is to forward this great love: he funded research on education with a grateful heart, and our Fulcrum Team contributes to the happy growth of children in his hometown.
“The gentleman uses the arts in acquiring friends and uses friends in helping him to become humane.”(16) Burton Dewitt Watson annotated the translation of “the arts” from Confucius as “literature, rites, music, and so on”.(17) I would like to share with you another translation of this sentence from a referrer of our book, Professor Xianjin Cai: “A gentleman makes friends through his learning and cultivates benevolence through those friends.”
Nowadays, learning can happen at any time, any place, and in any way. At the same time, more than ever, we need to attach importance to these words: “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”(18) Professor Yongxin Zhu, recipient of the 2022 Yidan Prize for Education Development and Founder of the New Education Initiative, also advocated: “Only by pouring the good wishes for the future into our present life and putting them into our words and deeds, can we create an infinitely better today.”(19) Let us go ahead bravely in increasing awe and wonder.
Haiqin Yu
University of Jinan, Jinan, Shandong Province, China
January 22nd (Lunar New Year), 2023
(1) LEWIS H R. Excellence without a soul: How a great university forgot education. New York: Public Affairs Press, 2006.
(2) WU Y H. Distant applause[M] // WU Y H. Harvard memories. Xi’an: Shaanxi Normal University Press, 1998: 17. (In Chinese)
(3) Faust is quoting a classic Confucian text which is entitled Great Learning. Interestingly, the Chinese title of the text, Daxue 大学, is also the modern Chinese word for “university”.
(4) MEI Y Q. One interpretation of the university[M] // LIU S L, HUANG Y F. A selection of Yiqi Mei’s writings on education theory. Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1993: 102. (In Chinese)
(5) MEI Y Q. Inaugural address[M] // LIU S L, HUANG Y F. A selection of Yiqi Mei’s writings on education theory. Beijing: People’s Education Press, 1993: 10. (In Chinese)
(6) HGSE is located on Appian Way. Gutman Library, Longfellow Hall, classroom buildings, and Radcliffe are all situated here.
(7) MILLER R K, WANG L J, YU H Q. The Olin effect in school management on emerging engineering education: Small in size but large in impact: A conversation between President Richard K. Miller, Wang Lianjiang and Yu Haiqin [J]. Journal of East China Normal University, 2021, 39(3):111-126.
(8) Harvard Professor William C. Kirby delivered the keynote speech “The rise and challenges of Chinese universities” at the 2021 China Education Symposium (“Embrace uncertainty and refine the future: Empowering education in China”) at HGSE on April 9, 2021.
(9) BOK D. Our underachieving colleges: A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more[M]. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
(10) BOK D. Higher education in America: Rev. ed.[M]. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
(11) BOK D. Our underachieving colleges: A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more[M]. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006: 67.
(12) HANKINS J. Harvard University: Renaissance thought (Zoom lecture). (2021-03-07). Question and answer session.
(13) FISCHMAN W, GARDNER H. The real world of college: What higher education is and what it can be[M]. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2022.
(14) WAGNER T. Creating innovators: The making of young people who will change the world[M]. New York: Scribner, 2012: 45, 189.
(15) WANG T, et al. Chinese Idiom Dictionary[M]. 2nd ed. Cihai Edition. Shanghai: Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House, 2007: 1364.
(16) Burton Watson. The Analects of Confucius[M]. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007: 80.
(17) Burton Watson. The Analects of Confucius[M]. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007: 24.
(18) WELLS H G. The Outline of History[M]. The Project Gutenberg eBook, 1921, Vol. 2, ch. 41, sec. 4.
(19) ZHU Y X. Schools of the Future: Redefining Education[M]. Beijing: Citic Publishing Group, 2019:224. (In Chinese)