Liberal Arts Education (Liberal Arts Education is a term referred to subjects of study that develop students’ general knowledge and ability to think, rather than their technical skills according to the Oxford English Dictionary) is not an unfamiliar word to Chinese people (lived in Mainland China) with the great progress in Chinese education now. The exploration of the development of Liberal Arts Education in a China (China here politically refers to Mainland China) context will be the theme of this essay. It is an important issue because more and more Chinese Students tend to go abroad or go to Hong Kong to receive Liberal Arts Education (There are 51.6% people who tend to study abroad showing their interest to Liberal Arts Education according …show more content…
Liberal Arts Education provides students with literature, languages, art history, music history, philosophy, history, mathematics, psychology, and science. All of them “broaden students’ horizons and improve their critical thinking which is essential to a global citizen (Yu, the chief admission officer of Peking University, 2)”.
Clearly, Chinese colleges and universities are not satisfied with the current situation of higher education and seeking a breakthrough. There have already been some very successful cases in China like Boya (Liberal Arts) of Sun Yat-sen University, Yuanpei of Beijing University, Xinya of Tsinghua University and so on. Students of Boya (Liberal Arts) College will be trained extensively during the four years of undergraduate. They are required to read more, think more, carry greater responsibility. The truth is that they have made a big success.
The current viewpoints of Chinese scholars and higher education leaders in those top universities have reached an agreement that China must implement Liberal Arts Education to drive the development of Chinese higher education and they want to make explores in depth in NPC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) this year. Those universities with vision are making great effort to let their students experience good Liberal Arts