I had the privilege of watching a lecture by the late Chinese-American physicist Shoucheng Zhang – Seeing the World in a Grain of Sand. At 45:11, he used his own son as an example to illustrate how to find key information amid a tangle of complexity. Combined with some recent events, this led me to a question worth reflecting on.

Modern Chinese Luminaries Were Mostly from the Humanities

Looking back at the various movements in modern Chinese history, it suddenly struck me that most of the widely recognized names came from humanities backgrounds. Why? It wasn’t until I read Einstein’s “Education for Independent Thought” that I found an answer. Below is the full text of the Chinese translation, followed by the English original:

The many deficiencies of professional education lie in turning a person into a mechanical tool rather than developing the whole person in mind and spirit. The most fundamental thing is to help students develop their own understanding and feeling for values, and to cultivate a sense of emotional engagement. At a minimum, students must be able to distinguish right from wrong and discern moral standards. Otherwise, they are no different from trained animals in a zoo – mechanical rather than truly human. Beyond learning knowledge, students should enter society, experience life, learn to get along with others, and observe the full spectrum of human existence. Only then can they become people of feeling, rather than emotionless machines.

These things are mostly gained through the educator’s own social experience – not all, but a significant portion cannot be provided by professional education or textbooks alone. This is also an important source and means of preserving culture. What I mean by “humanities” is exactly this, not the dry, jargon-laden knowledge of history and philosophy. That is why I earnestly recommend the humanities.

Premature specialization of knowledge or an overemphasis on competition can severely damage – even destroy – the spirit that sustains cultural life, and it can also make specialized knowledge itself rigid and stagnant. Critical thinking and the capacity for independent thought are undeniably important in education. Yet today’s students, especially young people, bear heavy burdens from systems like the credit system, which significantly hinder the development of their ability to think independently. As a result, education remains superficial and cannot go deep. A successful model of education should not make students feel that learning is a burden they must endure, but rather that receiving an education is as joyful as receiving a gift.

Education for Independent Thought

by Albert Einstein – New York Times, October 5, 1952

It is not enough to teach a man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he – with his specialized knowledge – more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions and their sufferings, in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow men and to the community.

These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not – or at least not in the main – through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the ‘humanities’ as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.

Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included.

It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects (point system). Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality. Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.