“In my first academic year, 1961-62, at New Asia as a Yale Fellow (or Yali Bachelor being from another century), Professor Theodore Greene, from Yale’s Department of Philosophy and a visiting professor at New Asia College gave an outdoor address to the entire New Asia community stressing both the value and the universality of liberal arts education. He defined liberal arts education succinctly as an education dedicated to developing our capacity to think clearly, judge wisely and communicate effectively. Sitting in the courtyard of a newly founded refugee college that was in the process of becoming one of the three founding colleges of a new Chinese University for Hong Kong, his presentation seemed both profound and obvious.
For the next six decades plus, his message, and the context in which it came to me that morning, have remained central to my life’s work. It remains for me a profound idea; but I have learned over time, and with much pain, that it is a far from an obvious concept for far too many people. Because I have never been as succinct as someone like Professor Greene and because too much of what I have experienced in the ensuing decades compels me to be more explicit, I have added words to his definition. Clear thinking, by definition, must be critical, ethical and creative. Wise judgment involves action and consequence, or it is simply observation. What often is called liberal arts education is the core purpose of all education. Education is about developing habits of mind, not just about conveying bodies knowledge. Those habits of mind can grow, develop and be developed in any individual at any age in any context.
Experiencing education and teaching in a refugee college focused primarily on Chinese students in a British colonial outpost determined both that my future career would be in education and the basic principles that would guide my approach to that career. The purpose of education is universal: to develop the individual’s capacity to think clearly, critically, and creatively; to judge wisely and act humanely and ethically, and to communicate effectively. Recognize and utilize the incredible resilience and capacity of young people- a lesson that imprinted itself in my mind the first time I visited a New Asia science class and watched students sitting at their lab desks listening to the professor lecture to them in Mandarin Chinese, while they talked with their lab partners in Cantonese Chinese, and while both professor and students were referencing an English language text book. In many, many different ways, those students taught me that education at all levels is most effective when students are partners in, not just the object of the process and that their capacities should not be underestimated.
The absurdity and, unfortunately, the universality of the bigotry of race and class - Teaching in Hong Kong, a colonial, multi-nationality community, taught me the absurdity of the bigotry generated by class and race but also its power, capacity to do harm and universality. No culture had a monopoly on bigotry. No culture was immune. That such bigotry could and would appear anywhere shaped a lot of the responses I had to develop in dealing with it when it did appear. The importance of institutions in building healthy societies. Yale China taught me that if you really want to make a positive difference in the world, work to build institutions that reflect and carry forward your dreams and values. They can last. You cannot. ”
— Gregory Prince, Yale-China Fellow (CUHK 1961-'63), Former Trustee
