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THE MOST common classical Chinese word for “teacher” is shi . It appears, for example, in Confucius's famous description of the qualities necessary to be a teacher: “If through reviewing the old one understands the new, one can be a teacher” ( wen gu er zhi xin keyi wei shi yi [Analects 2.11]). 1 By the second century BC the word shi was occasionally modified by the adjective lao , “old” or “venerable,” obviously added to reflect the traditional Chinese reverence for the teacher. Thus was born the modern word laoshi , understood simply as “teacher” but meaning literally “venerable teacher.” If we turn to a dictionary of modern Chinese, we discover that shi , the ancient term for teacher, is the root in a large family of interesting words, including taishi (sometimes appearing in the more colloquial tailaoshi ), which means one's teacher's teacher; shimu , the wife of one's teacher; shidi , a younger male fellow student of the same teacher; shixiong , an elder male fellow student of the teacher; and shijie , an elder female fellow student of the teacher.
These words are not mere dictionary remnants of some bygone era; they are very much a part of the living language. Indeed, the network established by academic genealogy in China reaches well beyond the world of fellow students, permitting us to trace one's scholarly lineage. Clearly the Chinese inhabit an academic world quite different from that of modern-day America. Only rarely in my twelve years of teaching has an American student asked me the names of my teachers. Chinese students, by contrast, frequently ask this question, and they persist in tracing academic genealogy until a familiar name appears. Histories of scholarship, such as appear in the chapter on the Confucians in Sima Qian's (145–90? BC) Historical Records ( Shiji ), emphasize lines of academic descent, for legitimacy is determined largely by one's position within a genealogy of established scholars.
The relation between teacher and student in China can impose responsibilities that continue for a lifetime. It would not be at all unusual for the wife of a teacher, perhaps a woman of seventy years or so, to summon a former student, who may now be a distinguished scholar, to her home to receive a scolding for poor behavior on some social occasion. As the scholar's shihmu ‘teacher-mother,’ she has every right to concern herself with both the scholarly and personal demeanor of her husband's pupils. Such a pattern extends beyond the realm of formal study. Nearly everyone hired into a department as a young scholar finds a mentor, an older faculty member who guides, nurtures, and sometimes scolds. It is common to see distinguished senior scholars still showing the greatest respect and deference for older colleagues who once welcomed them into the academic world and helped them along the professional path.
All this is, of course, a secular version of the intense guru-disciple relation that exists in most Asian religions. Na-mo gu-ru ‘praise to the teacher’ has been chanted continually through the ages by countless Indian and Tibetan religious acolytes. A story told of the famous Tibetan saint Milarepa (AD 1040–1123) illustrates how extremely devoted a disciple was supposed to be. Milarepa went to seek enlightenment from the great lama Marpa. Before Marpa would teach the eager youth, he required Milarepa to build him a stone house on a mountain ridge. When the house was almost completed, Milarepa was told that the house was in the wrong place and that it should be torn down and rebuilt on another ridge. This process of building and tearing down stone houses went on for several years until finally Milarepa's strong young body broke down: “I not only have a sore back,” he said to Marpa, “but my whole back is nothing else than one big sore” (Evans-Wentz 105).
Although there are surely many of us who feel deep devotion to former teachers and mentors, as well as a profound sense of responsibility to younger students and junior colleagues, those relations are far less important in our culture than in the cultures of the East. In China mentoring is the very fabric of educational life, but at many American universities it is hardly more than an occasional diversion carried out by a few nice senior colleagues, sometimes resented by the very juniors they would help.
Two recent developments have exacerbated the tension between teachers and students, senior and junior colleagues in our field: first, the change at many universities in what is expected of faculty and, second, the rapid and sometimes highly polemical transformations in literary theory. The change in expectations is perhaps best illustrated in my own department by contrasting the faculty implied by our current tenure and promotion guidelines with the actual faculty. That ideal “faculty of the guidelines” could be described as follows: Sixteen full professors, each with several books and “a considerable number of significant articles,” are all internationally known or “world-class scholars.” They have shown “sustained quality as teachers” and have performed “a variety of services in several areas of departmental and university administration.” These faculty members are powerful examples for younger colleagues in all areas of professional life. Twelve associate professors have published extensively and are well on their way to the international reputation achieved by their full-professor colleagues. They are catching on to the art of teaching, and their service contribution is having more and more impact on the university. Eight assistant professors are desperately trying to find their way in the profession. They are struggling to publish, prepare new courses, and show some level of administrative competence. They have learned that completion of their PhD is the beginning of their academic trials, for the department only certifies competence seven years after completion of the doctorate. Many of these junior colleagues, despite our consistent help and kind encouragement, will not survive. For alas, our standards are high. The guidelines say nothing on the subject, but the chairperson of this department would assuredly be the best of the best—a senior colleague, certainly a full professor, someone whose scholarly stature would win the respect of all. The chairperson would have demonstrated administrative skill by serving previously in a wide variety of departmental and university positions and would speak at national conferences to a silent group of admiring colleagues.
Let us turn now to the reality of my department. Many of the sixteen full professors began their service to the institution when teaching loads were twice what they are now and when publication was not emphasized. Tenure and promotion came largely because of good university citizenship, which meant teaching heavy course loads, recruiting students into struggling programs, and serving energetically whenever asked. Because of their few publications, the university now rarely turns to them for major service—they do not exemplify current standards. Most of the twelve associate professors have been tenured after publication expectations were increased. Most have a number of articles or a book. They teach much lighter loads than their senior colleagues did in years past, but they complain more of excessive teaching assignments. Because they have the security of tenure and a modest publication record, departmental service falls largely on their shoulders. In fact, my college is run mostly by associate professors, and some are concerned that the heavy burden of service, along with the higher standards for promotion to professor, will combine to keep them trapped forever in the associate ranks. Most of the eight assistant professors joined the faculty after increased emphasis on publication. They know the new rules, and several have already published more than some of our full professors, the very professors who will eventually vote on their tenure and promotion. Finally, the chairperson is an associate professor with little previous administrative experience. The faculty listens to him, on occasion, not because of his academic prestige and greater experience, but because he controls their salaries.
If by mentoring we mean specific guidance in the activities most conducive to the academic success of younger faculty members, then many of my department's older faculty members cannot provide the help that is most needed. They can stress the necessity of publication, but they are rarely in a position to read critically the kinds of manuscripts likely to be produced, to suggest potential publishers, or to use their professional connections to assist the careers of junior colleagues. In fact, senior professors are often embittered by the way they have been pushed aside, and that bitterness easily spills over into resentment, especially when the regular publications of new faculty members put their own contributions in the shade.
The recent, rapid transformations in literary theory have also complicated mentoring. I remember once being told by my father always to hire old lawyers and young doctors. The idea behind this folk wisdom, I suppose, is that law is a profession in which long years of experience count more than the most recent training, while medicine is a profession in which change occurs so rapidly that only young practitioners could be expected to know the up-to-date technologies. The study of literature, traditionally understood as the process of reading and mastering a huge body of texts, once placed a premium on long years of experience. Most of us were told at some point in our scholarly youth that in our field, in contrast to the sciences, the most important contributions would come only with age—it takes a long time to read and master all the important texts. In China this view has not changed—the most respected scholars are almost always the oldest. With the development of literary theory in the West and the rapid proliferation of theoretical perspectives, our discipline now seeks out younger scholars, fresh from major graduate schools, who can teach the latest textual technologies. In many departments this circumstance has increased the normal American tendency toward intergenerational conflict.
In his presidential address at the last MLA annual convention, J. Hillis Miller spoke excitedly of the “triumph of theory” and the lively intellectual debate that triumph has spawned, but one also senses in his message a certain anxiety about a growing generation gap. He says,
Our students are hungry for what the humanities can give them, but they will not be fooled by promises of amnesty and citizenship in the republic of letters if they just adopt traditional values and study the traditional canon, any mote than men are going to talk or coerce women into coming back into the fold of the male-dominated canon and ways of literary study.
Miller then issues a sort of plea: “If you are among the conservative members of our profession, I can say that you have everything to gain by being open to literary theory. Theory is essential to going forward in humanistic study today” (290). Perhaps Miller is right—perhaps today theory cannot be ignored, and many of us must therefore do some retooling, must strive to master the difficult, sometimes tangled, arguments of literary theory. If so, the old model of mentoring is not entirely appropriate, for in many of our departments it is the young rather than the old who must guide our retooling.
The only advice I can offer is simple and absolutely utopian. More than ever before, both young and old need humility—that least postmodern, least Nietzschean of all virtues. While I have been sufficiently enamored with the Asian system to wish we had more genuine, concerned mentoring, it is indeed time to encourage and promote intellectual exchange among members of our departments. Older colleagues should be humble enough to sit in classes taught by younger colleagues, not because they want to check on them, but because they want to learn new perspectives. Younger colleagues, despite newer, sexier approaches to texts, should take advantage of the tremendous mastery of bibliography possessed by some of their seniors — to say nothing of genuine literary insights, gleaned from years of reading and explaining literature to students. Younger teachers should consider that there may be something to the notion that literary understanding is cumulative. In my department there are hopeful signs: senior faculty members are attending classes taught by their juniors; faculty study groups are beginning to form; the dean has led an effort to found a college-based humanities institute in which such exchange can transcend older and now out-of-date disciplinary boundaries. Our job as department leaders, it seems to me, is to encourage and facilitate the type of scholarly community that is so often talked about and so rarely seen in the modern university.
In conclusion, and in support of my advocacy of humility, I return to China and the words of Confucius, the most honored of all teachers. Time and again his teachings exemplify the spirit I believe we need so desperately in academia today:
The Master said, “As to being a sage or even a humane man, would I dare make such a claim? As for teaching without growing weary and learning without tiring, these alone I can indeed claim.”
The Master said, “When three people travel together, there must be my teacher among them.”
( Analects 7.34, 22)
And finally, a statement Confucius makes on two occasions in the Analects : “I do not worry that others do not recognize and appreciate me, I worry that I do not recognize and appreciate others” (1.16 and, partially, 4.14).
The author is Associate Professor of Chinese and Chair of the Department of Languages at the University of Utah. This article is based on a paper presented at the ADFL Seminar West, 18–20 June 1987, in Park City, Utah.
1 Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this essay are my own.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., trans. Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa . London: Oxford UP, 1969.
Miller, J. Hillis. “Presidential Address 1986. The Triumph of Theory, the Resistance to Reading, and the Question of the Material Base.” PMLA 102 (1987): 281–91.
© 1988 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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