Between The Academic And The Political: The History Of The Social Role Of University Teachers

The society and the country not only provide a stage for schools, but also try to control their performances. The characteristics of the structure of a society and a country have direct influences on universities, and thereby define three types of field in university —bureaucratic, treatrical and unit. In accordance with these three types of teachers' identities—school officers, scholars and carders —are developed. Universities came into being because of the need of knowledge transmission, but the needs of politics are more responsible for universities' survival and development. Since the ancient time, universities always have double functions. As a result, the Chinese university teachers consciously take political persons and men of knowledge as their main social roles.Transmitting knowledge and doing academic research are the basic jobs of teachers. Therefore, a man of knowledge is the most fundamental role of a teacher. China is a "knowledge society" since the ancient time. Knowledge not only has helped Chinese teachers in realizing their upward social mobility and obtaining cultural capital and economic capital, but also has offered them rather high social status and elite identities. Moreover, it gives them a "superior" power in making discourse in social life.In ancient China, because of the ethical and political nature of knowledge, university teachers regarded transmitting knowledge and doing academic research as the tools to realize their own political ideals. On the other hand, because university teachers were usually between the ruling classes and the subordinate classes in terms of social status, they always identified themselves as the social elite and consciously regarded themselves as the representatives of the "social conscience". Thus political person also became the main role of university teachers.After the mid-19^th century, particularly after the imperial examination system was abolished in 1905, the relations between teachers and politics were cut off at the level of system, and thus transmitting knowledge and doing academic research became the professions of "new" university teachers. Facing the turmoil of political situation and the perish of the country, however, university teachers could not give up the complex of political persons. Since there were role conflicts between the political persons and the men of knowledge, some of the university teachers became the go-betweens between the two groups, some took politics as their priority and pursued their political ideas in academic work, some chose to play the role of pure knowledge person and thereby to realize his/her personal and social worth, and some endeavored to dispel their elite spirit and joined the society of ordinary people.In Chinese society, it was very difficult to play the two roles freely. On the one hand, it was unrealistic for a university teacher to become a pure man of knowledge without any relations to politics, and on the other hand, it was impossible for him/her to be an independent and free political person. According to the distances between the teachers and the power, the roles of political person played by university teachers could be divided into legislators, interpreters, critics, rebels, and so on. However, whether teachers attached themselves to the ruling class through marriage to the power or had some independence with no connection to the power, teachers' over involvement in politics not only affected their playing the role of an man of knowledge , but also ended up with tragedies in most cases.