Wei xue pian (為學篇)

This book, published in 1958, is part of the Ziyou qingnian xiuyang (自由青年修養) series published by the Ziyou Qingnian Magazine Press. (Ziyou qingnian, or Free Youth, was a magazine founded in Taiwan in 1950.) The 26 essays in this book, which seem intended for college-age readers, were taken from the "Qingnian Xiuyang" columns in the magazine. They include essays by Tseng Yueh-nung, Liang Shiqiu, Mou Zhongsan, Gao Ming, among others. A couple of interesting essays that I need to look at:

"Guowen diyi" (國文第一 ) by Gao Ming (高明), pages 39-42

Briefly, this article takes as its title Chiang Kai-shek's exhortation to the people of Taiwan to improve their Mandarin. Gao divides the concepts of Guowen into 3 parts: Chinese writing, Chinese discourse (中國文章), and the Chinese culture that is expressed through Chinese discourse. It contains some of the usual denunciations of what the Communists were doing to the Chinese language, and also comments on the continuing threat of the Japanese language to the complete Sinification of Taiwan. Seems to have been written in 1955.

"Zenyang tigao ziji de Guowen chengdu (怎樣提高自己的國文程度) by Zheng Mingdong (鄭明東), pages 43-48

This article reasserts the need to view Chinese as "the mother of all studies" (國文為各學科之母). Zheng covers intensive reading (精讀), extensive reading (略讀), writing, and calligraphy.

"Lun Guowen chengdu de diluo yu tigao" (論國文程度的低落與提高) by Du Chengxiang (杜呈祥), pages 49-54

This article begins with the much-bewailed "literacy crisis" that scholars claimed was facing Free China in the 1950s.

"Bianlun yu minzhu" (辯論與民主) by Wang Shoukang (王壽康), pages 76-77

The author begins by asserting an intimate connection between debate and democracy. He argues that promoting debate is the most fundamental task for promoting democracy and ridding people of pre-democratic, autocratic ways of thinking because debate can help people develop their own opinions and accomodate others' opinions.

More later...

[updated 12/10/04, 3:45 p.m.; 12/11/04, 9:37 a.m.]