农学留学生与近代中国高等农学学科的发展

在近代中国高等教育发展史上活跃着一个由归国农学留学生构成的农学教师群体.20世纪初,苏、浙、粤等东南沿海地区的许多青年胸怀"教育救国"、"农业救国"志向,负笈越洋来到日本及法国的高等农业院校学习蚕桑、农艺、园艺等农学课程.自1909年起,留学潮逐渐转向美国,更多的青年学生奔赴康奈尔大学等高等院校攻读农学相关学科,并获取了各种学位.从20世纪10年代中后期起,他们陆续归国,加人到围内高等农业院校的教学、科研队伍行列.他们把西方现代大学理念和高等农学学科体系导人中国,并根据中国国情进行了改造,通过建立"教学、研究、推广"三合一模式,探讨教学理论、编写新教材,加强教师队伍建设、开展科学研究,组织学术团体、创设学术期刊等,为我国近代高等农学学科的形成和发展作出了重大贡献.

Overseas Students in Agriculture and the Development of Higher Agricultural Disciplines in Modern China

In the development of higher education in modern China,a group of agricultural teachers composed of overseas returnees in agriculture were active . At the beginning of 20th century,many young people from the coastal Jiangsu,Zhejiang and Guangdong,cherishing the ideals of″saving China through education″,″saving China through agriculture″,went to the institutes of higher agricultural learning in Japan and France to study sericulture,agronomy and horticulture .Since 1909,with the tide shifting to America,more young people went to the institutes of higher learning,e .g . Cornell University to study the disciplines relevant to agriculture and many got degrees . Since the mid and later 1910s,they returned to China successively and joined the teaching and research in institutes of higher agricultural learning . They introduced the modern collegeconcepts and disciplines of higher agriculturein the West and reformed them according to the actual Chinese conditions .In a sense,they made contributions to the formation anddevelopment of higher agricultural disciplinesin modernChina byestablishinga triple mode of″teaching,research and promotion″,exploring teaching theories,compiling new textbooks,cultivating better teachingfaculty,conducting scientific research,organizing academic groups and initiating academic journals.