Culture Explanation And Optimization Study Of Mottos Of Chinese Universities

Mottos of universities are condensed words or famous sayings that universities settles for guiding or encouraging the staff and it reflects the ideas for running the universities. Motto of university is the concentrated expression of its independent thought, traditional spirit and distinguishing features, the guiding and encouraging admonation and requriment. It is the campus culture that entrusts life,character and model to the university and it reflects the aim of education, tradition of research, cultural deposits, spirit of community, social responsibility and character of the university. We can know the core spirit and distinguishing factors through the motto of university. To study motto of university is a key to study the campus culture and character of running universities in our country. It is an essential part in university research and it is important to integrate education theories.. So paying attention to the construction of motto of university is important for condenseding and highlighting university spirit and founding universities of first-class in the world.The author has collected 600 mottos of universities and relevant materials by all means and has penetrated to the culture background. First, the author looked back to the developing history of mottos of universities and found that the motto of ancient academy of classical learning is an embryonic form of mottos of universities. The mottos of universitis before liberation can be classified into 4 classes, which are mottos of missionary universities, of public universities, of private universities and of universities in liberated areas. Mottos of universities have gone through 3 periods after liberation, which are criticizing, turbulence and perplexing period, self-consciousness revival period and culture conscious period. Since entering 21st century, great attention has been paid to the cultivation of motto of university culture. As a result, the culture becomes more and more profound. The second, the author analized the ways by which mottos of universities is brought about. The ways can be classified into the following 4 kinds: famous sayings, inscriptions by state leaders, words brought about by chancellors, founders or proposed by democratic centralism. The third, the author elaborates the cognition ideas, political ideas and moral ideas embodied in mottos of universities from the aspects of philosophy. The fourth, the author studies the functions of mottos of universities in aspects of education, propagation, guide, cohesion in itself, influnencing and leading the trend of society.Based on the above, the author studies the problems and their reasons of the mottos of universities at present. The author thinks the two main problems are of forms and contents. In form, they are identical, extensive and unfounded. In contents, the consciousness of pursuing truth and serving the society is not strong enough and they are lack of the solicitude for individual and the call for freedom in academy. The main reasons for the problems above include the influence by the background of the whole society, culture tradition of our country, not enough attention from the leaders of universities, inproper evaluation of their own and so on. The author gives several suggestions in optimizing mottos of universities according to the problems and their reasons. First, the function of present motto of university should be brought in to play. The leaders should be the initiator and promoter of the spirit, and the staff should propagate and carry it out. And various ways of motto education should be opened up. The next, construction of mottos of universities should deal with the relations between conciseness and diversity, commonness and uniqness. It should be stable as well as keep up with the times; and it should inherit from the past and draw from others. The last, it is necessary to go futher into the study and cultivation of motto of university.