The development of "new engineering" education is necessary for improving the quality of talent training. In the future, engineering science and technology talents who deserve the reputation for being "craftsmen of the great country" should be able to calmly respond to challenges of new business modes brought by the new industrial revolution, correctly deal with the relationship between science & technology and human beings, and have mellow humanistic feelings and right value orientation, particularly they should not be separated from legal education. The limited legal knowledge taught in ideological and political courses and the general legal knowledge courses offered by some schools can only guarantee the minimum level of letting people "know about the law". The fact is that they don’t understand the law though they know about it, they don’t abide by the law though they understand it, or they don’t use the law though they abide by it. So it is difficult to meet the high standard and new requirements of "new engineering" talents. Legal literacy should be the goal of "new engineering" talent training, and legal education is duty-bound to fulfill such a goal.
We shall change our philosophy of education. It is a new subject to integrate law education into "new engineering" talent training, yet it is ultimately nothing more than the cross-field education vision and all-round talent development. To fulfill the goal of training "new engineering" talents, we need to shift the focus from "one-sided" professional skills to "all-around" comprehensive quality, be conscious of the importance and necessity of legal literacy and proactively urge engineering education to draw on legal education to present the new feature of engineering talent training. Under the context of the trend of integrated development of disciplines, we should be aware that legal talents can also come from non-legal majors, and consciously extend the education from law students to engineering students and those of other majors.
We shall have explicit thinking of integration. It is a systematic project to integrate legal education into the cultivation of "new engineering" talents. And its focus is on the legal literacy. First, we need to help students establish a socialist view of human rights with Chinese characteristics and correctly understand the "people-oriented" philosophy, a long-history cultural tradition of China. Second, we need to help students to construct the thinking of rule of law, mainly involving the consciousness of legal authority to help resist the doctrine of privilege brought by leading technology; help them to have the consciousness of legal norms so that they are aware that scientific and technological innovation is not exempt from the law; help them to have the consciousness of legal liability so that the development, utilization and management of science and technology can be well regulated. Third, we need to have students master legal knowledge appropriate for the engineering major. Therefore, it is necessary to bring forth new teaching styles, such as setting up the major of "engineering laws" and compiling textbooks of "data laws", so as to accomplish the professional adaptability of knowledge.
We shall offer scientific curricula. All training objectives and teaching content will be ultimately fulfilled through curricula. The courses of law, integrated into the training of "new engineering" talents, will involve theory courses and practice courses, general courses and specialized courses, compulsory courses and optional courses. These courses will be arranged matching with the engineering major. To draw up the curriculum, we should, in light of actual conditions of schools, base upon the national and social conditions, be aligned with the benchmark of the international advanced level, develop the characteristics of the discipline and establish a high-quality integrated education pattern suitable for high-end interdisciplinary talents.
Published on May 28, 2022