Han Meiqun: the Ideological and Political Course should Apply the Method of “from the Students, to the Students”

Professor Han Meiqun of School of Marxism took the ideological and political course for the students of ZUEL out of the campus by turning the communities, the factories, the welfare houses, the museums and the memorial halls into the classrooms. On June,2017, Han Meiqun was awarded as one of the national “Influential Teachers of the Course of Ideological and Political Theory in Colleges of 2016”. Her on-site and interactive teaching methods enlivened the class of the traditional ideological and political course.

The Students Brought New Inspiration to Ideological and Political Education

    Several years ago, in the end of one class, Han Meiqun, as usual, asked the students if there were any question about the contents of the course and got a silence from the class. Then she gave the students a topic of “Mao Zedong in your mind”, which broke the ice and the students began to express their opinions. “This showed me that the students actually liked the interactions in class and were willing to display themselves with the right stimulation and guidance,” said Han Meiqun. After that time, the students were given more time to raise questions from their own perspectives and solve the problems together with the teacher to promote the progress of the class with interactions.

“It’s also a process of learning and improvement for the students when they introduce and express the controversial ideas related to the knowledge in books which they have seen and learned in life. Helping the students to solve these puzzles can also teach the students how to tell right from wrong,” said Han Meiqun. There was one time when there were several students from Taiwan came to the class and they were very interested in Mao Zedong. But, due to limited information, their knowledge of Mao Zedong was one-sided. With her experience of exchange with Taiwan academic societies, Miss Han understood the cause of their opinions. She, from the perspectives of the Taiwan students, told the true life stories of Mao Zedong with objective character sketches to let them really get to know Mao Zedong.

From the perspective of Miss Han, though the students may encounter a lot from the dark side of the society, they still have “red hearts”. As a teacher, she keeps inspiring herself that the most important task of the ideological and political educators is to guide the innocent students to keep optimistic, positive and independent mentality and personality and show the positive side and energy to the students.

The New Teaching Method Allows the Students to “Unify Knowledge and Action”

Han Meiqun thinks that, only by unifying knowledge and action can a teacher truly pass the knowledge to the students and let them like the ideological and political course. “I don’t like just repeating what the book says because the book is just a ‘outline’. The teacher should extend the contents of the course from the ‘outline’ through the channels of theories, history and domestic and overseas vision. Only this kind of teacher and course can make the students study with respect and passions.”

In this way, the students of Miss Han learned how to “unify knowledge and action” gradually. Not satisfied with the contents in the class, the students came up with the idea of research and Han Meiqun would also provide guidance for their social researches in class. In the plan of each semester, she would use the first three weeks for the introduction of social research. She had detailed preparation from how to select the topics and how to make the plan to how to divide the students and the work and how to arrange the meetings. She encouraged the students to pay attention to agriculture and rural areas and, in the process of research, she emphasized the improvement of the research skills and cultural literacy of the students, which complied with the development tendency of higher education in the nation. The students gained fruitful achievements by applying for the research projects of college students with their researches.

Not only in research, the practice of ideological and political course also sparkled when encountering other majors. Students from Sino-Korea School of New Media, applying the knowledge they had learned, created a playlet with audio post production and subtitles, which really impressed Miss Han. “What the teachers want the most in the class is for the students to participate in the class with the knowledge of their own majors and show their own understanding of essence of ideological and political course. The teachers can learn the hot issues the students concerned and perfect their own contents of the class.” “Every achievement made by the students are preserved carefully to guide and inspire the curious and passionate students of the next class,” said Miss Han with a smile.

Miss Han, who answered the questions of the students seriously in class and in text messages, seems to have a kind of magic that makes the boring class of Summary of Mao Zedong’s Theories interesting with cultural depth. According to Liu majored in journalism, “Miss Han is kind and sincere with the students. She cares about the students and can really fit in with us.” Taking the students’ perspectives into consideration and coming back to the students is her own understanding of education of ideological and political in colleges, which also is a reflection of her moral characters as a teacher. She told the students that “Marxist Theory is a comprehensive subject which can not be looked down upon. You can only benefit from it when treating it as a kind of science and integrating it with your own majors. Ideological and political education is not just a course of ideological theory and morality. As a guidance course, it corresponds with your majors and you can come and find ‘Marx’ when encountering any problem in study.”