Chapter 5 teaching

Li Ji recalled that before Cai Yuanpei took over Peking University at the end of 1916, Mr. C, the teacher who taught them English, often used a brothel as his home. Attend class.To achieve this goal, they went on strike for several weeks, finally forcing the old principal to nod.Li Ji said: "Since C left and Mr. Braid (referring to Gu Hongming) came, we are like 'seeing the blue sky through the clouds and mist'." Zhenying recalled that Gu Hongming often taught them to read the English version of "Thousand Characters": "Dark Skies above The Yellow Earth (天地玄黄)..." The whole class sang in chorus with their voices in tune.The students looked at Gu Hongming's appearance and felt that it was getting more and more humorous, so they were happy and forgetful.Gu Huan often told them that there are many sciences in the book, and it is said that "nature is inherently good". This is a question about the philosophy of life, which is the same as Rousseau's argument; "is mathematics; "white water and fire, wood, metal and earth" is physical chemistry; "three cardinal guides and five constant principles" are ethics;

When Gu Hongming lectures, he always talks about the "monarch-teacher doctrine" every time.He said: "There are lawyers and policemen in the West, so the poor are dissatisfied and want Bolshevism (Bolshevism); China has always had a monarch to control everyone's outward conduct, and a teacher to control the inner motives, so it is safe. If you want China to be safe, you must implement it. 'Monarchism' is not acceptable." Gu Hongming defended oriental culture and once said to the students: "Why do we learn English poetry? That is because after you learn English well, you should teach us Chinese people's principles of life, gentle and honest poetry, and go to those barbarians. .”

Gu Hongming taught. In the first class, he asked the students to turn the handouts to page one (the first page). After the last class, he still asked the students to turn the handouts to page one. The class time passed in laughter and curses. Gu Hongming once set three rules for the students: "First, when I come in, you have to stand up, I go out first after class, and you can go out. Second, if I ask you questions or you ask me questions, you must Stand up. Third, you must memorize the books I have ordered you to memorize, and you cannot sit down if you cannot memorize them.” In Gu Hongming's class, what students are most afraid of is not reciting, but translation.Gu once asked the students to translate "Heaven and earth are mysterious and yellow, the universe is prehistoric" into English. After listening to it, the students scratched their heads and ears.He also asked his students to translate "Thousand Characters" in English, and the students were even more miserable.

Gu Hongming's lectures were witty and humorous. When he was proud of the lecture, he would suddenly sing a ditty, or take out a few peanut candies from his robe and chew on it, which made people laugh. Every time he went to class, Gu Hongming always brought a boy servant to pack cigarettes and pour tea for him.He sat on the armchair with his braids dragging, smoking and drinking tea for a while.The students waited anxiously for him to give a lecture, but he didn't care at all, and took his time. When Gu Hongming talked about British poetry, he quoted extensively from many sources, broadened the world, and sprang out strange theories one after another.He divided English poetry into three categories: national style, Xiaoya and Daya, and the national style is divided into seven national styles, including Scottish style and Welsh style.He teaches "Da Ya" today, "Xiao Ya" tomorrow, and "Li Sao" the day after tomorrow (Milton's "Mourning a Dead Friend").When listing the works of poets, he often blurted out without thinking, compared with the original text, and he was actually word for word. His amazing memory made all the students have to admire it.

Gu Hongming often digresses in class, believes in horses, criticizes current problems, and criticizes people.Zhou Zuoren recalled: "He taught Latin and other homework at Peking University, and he couldn't use his orthodox ideas, so he wanted to find opportunities to vent anytime and anywhere." Once, Gu Hongming scolded Yuan Shikai from the beginning of the class bell to the end of the get out of class bell.Peking University students summed up a rule, never mention "Yuan Shikai" to Mr. Gu, otherwise a class will be scrapped. The class monitor of a certain graduating class at Peking University asked Gu Hongming to provide a photo and paste it in the classmate list of the graduation book as a souvenir.As a result, Gu furiously said, "I'm not a prostitute, why use photos? If you don't spare the money, why don't you cast a bronze statue as a souvenir?"

When Li Ji and other Peking University students graduated, they put on graduation clothes one after another.After seeing it, Gu Hongming said: "Prostitutes like to show off and show off their beauty. No matter what is enough to show off, they always show it to others, so they are called bitches. You are wearing such clothes now, not only you are dignified. Zhang Ye, and he is full of foreign style, really amazing!" Gu Hongming did not start to study Chinese culture until he was 25 years old, so it often happened that he wrote wrong characters or lacked strokes or strokes when teaching.Once, when he talked about "Yanzi Chunqiu", he wrote "Yan" as "yan".After the student pointed out the mistake, he was very embarrassed. He corrected it and said to himself: "Chinese characters are really annoying. 'Yan' and 'Yan' are just changing the part of the word '日', and the meaning of the word is different. This is not the case in English. Mischievous." The student who had something good to say immediately said: "It is also in English. For example, 'god (God)' becomes 'dog (dog)' in reverse." After listening to Gu Hongming, he laughed.

Famous journalist Zhang Youluan recorded that Luo Jialun was a "famous student" at Peking University, but Gu Hongming disliked him for being too showy and not good at learning English, so Luo Jialun was asked to answer questions eight times out of ten in class.Luo's English is very poor, sometimes he would answer indiscriminately, and sometimes he simply said "I don't know".Once, Gu was very dissatisfied with Luo's answer, and reprimanded him in class, speaking very harshly.Luo was quite embarrassed and stood up to defend himself.Gu was furious, patted the table and said, "Luo Jialun! You are not allowed to speak anymore! If you say it again, you are WPT!" Luo Jialun was frightened and stopped talking, but he didn't know what "WPT" meant .One day, when Gu Zheng was speaking happily, Luo approached him and asked, "Last time the teacher forbade me to speak and called me WPT. I still don't understand what WPT means. Please tell me: Which abbreviation is this? Which book is it from?" Gu Yi rolled his eyes and said, "Don't you even know this? WPT means Wang, Ba, Dan!" As soon as the words came out, the whole class roared laughing out loud.Luo Jialun's teeth itch with hatred, but there is nothing he can do.Since then, "None of Peking University students do not know that Luo Jialun is 'WPT'".

On May 3, 1919, Luo Jialun wrote to Ma Yinchu, the dean at the time, and Hu Shi, the director of English, enumerating all kinds of evil deeds that Gu had done in class, such as "every time I always advocate the 'monarchism'", "One year in class, the teaching There are only six poems and more than a dozen lines", scolding new poems, unable to tell the spirit of English poems, etc. Once, Gu Hongming asked a student a question and asked the student to stand up to answer, but the student refused to stand up, and Gu was so angry that he was expelled from the classroom.After a certain student left, the rest of the students followed suit.Gu said angrily: "The fruit of ethics and education has fallen to the ground!" Then he resigned from the teaching post of Peking University.