Humankind’s experience with fire has been one of both fear and appreciation, based on ancient knowledge of its destructive power with its accompanying ability to keep us warm, ward off predators, cook our food and give us light. In the Post-Industrial Age, an open flame has largely been reduced to a symbolic role, such as runners heralding the Olympics, initiation rites and religious ceremonies, pleasurable re-enactment of older forms of living such as campfires and summer barbeques, or romantic interludes with candle-lit dinners. Over time, we have experienced through fire stability and change, growth and diversity.

While ’passing the torch’ is now mainly emblematic, it has a real function in university life: the orderly transmission of knowledge from one class of students to another, from generation to generation, limited at first to oral history and speaking, then through the printed and recorded word and, increasingly, by electronic means such as the Internet.  Despite these significant shifts, the one constant has been the role of professors as repositories of acquired knowledge, as mentors and friends, and as role models who inspire and give both meaning and direction to students’ future roles as citizens, parents and workers.  It is they who help build the foundation for their adult lives and provide continuity during rapid and often uncomfortable transitions.

A related aspect is that for this to occur, we professors must also know when to leave our posts, put down our pens, say ‘goodbye’ to our students, and prepare to hand over responsibilities to qualified replacements.  While our often-controversial views and theories are frequently protected by institutionalized procedures such as multi-year contracts and tenure, these systems also ensure students are continually exposed to new ideas via retirement, turnover of departmental and administrative duties, upgrading of libraries and purchase of new technologies.  The result, then, must strike a careful balance between maximization of an individual’s acquired knowledge, and avoidance of resistance to change.  When done in an orderly fashion, professors may leave knowing they have made an important contribution, while students, current and replacement staff benefit by exposure to new challenges, ideas and personalities.

My personal experience with this process at Chung Ang University has been in my own department--English Education--although others no doubt will recognize similar transitions in their own.  The recent retirement of two professors--Dr. Kim Hyae-Ryon and Dr. Lee Chang-Kook-- exemplify through their long service both the benefits of continuity and those from the new.  Dr. Kim was an international expert on John Milton and wrote her doctoral thesis on his contribution to English poetry and philosophy during the 17th Century in England.  Dr. Lee also had a literary background, specializing in the English essay and perhaps best known in Korea for his observant, witty columns in the Korea Times.  Their replacements-- Dr. Kim Heyoung and Dr. Lee Ho-- while understandably acquainted with English Literature, are trained primarily in computer-related skills as they impact the teaching of English, ensuring that our department retains its standing with regard to the ever-growing demand for Koreans who communicate well in English.

For the former, the benefit to their students in general--and to this writer in particular--lay in their ability to illustrate how knowledge from a different era still influences our thinking today.  Dr. Kim once mentioned how many phrases from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible have transcended from the religious to the secular, and in so doing have enriched both the language and cadence of English as well as the philosophy and continuation of Western culture.  She also noted how Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained influenced not only later generations of writers but also address age-old questions of existence and metaphysics, and identify guideposts for a fruitful and ultimately meaningful life.  Koreans of course have their own thinkers and philosophers, but to be told in personable yet informative language how a literary giant from 400 years ago influences us today was impressive.  One can only imagine the looks on her students’ faces when learning of these connections as well, and then experiencing firsthand how the past and present are tightly interwoven.

Similarly, Dr. Lee once mentioned to this writer how free verse and poetry preceded prose in Western literature, an observation both astute and ultimately logical, but most likely never questioned or even thought about by the contemporary reader.  Yet the connection between Old English through Middle English to Modern English was clearly and firmly made.  In a dramatic update on this theme, before a large CAU audience and guests gathered to honor his forthcoming retirement, he recited from memory his rendition of “Now is the winter of our discontent,” in which Shakespeare’s Richard III cites in this famous soliloquy both the prince’s tortured past and planned torments to others. The passage as delivered reduced complex language forms barely understood by modern readers to a powerful, unique emotional experience, showing not only the genius of Shakespeare but also how literary passages dramatized by trained interpreters speak to all peoples at all times.

In retrospect, these two retired professors could at first glance appear ‘out of place’ in a department that emphasizes teacher training.  Yet their collective strength in part lay in their integrative ability, their productive joining of literature and technology, reflecting education at its finest.  In our specialized 21st Century, with the growing compartmentalization of knowledge, the ability to communicate across professions and to integrate styles and results of learning is a waning skill, but the irony is that we need more than ever to build highways among disciplines.

We cannot, however, ignore the benefits from the new.  Our century will increasingly rely on computers, and we can expect future students to use them in ways now unimagined.  Computer usage has influenced the humanities and arts in ways as important as those in the natural and social sciences--from testing to research to exposing students in new and exciting ways to spoken and written languages worldwide.  Given Korea’s influence in the world economy--now the eleventh largest--and its steady development in the arts, sciences and diplomacy, our universities must perform ever better just to keep up.  While our department may now rely less on its traditional background of combined education methodology and literature, the newer combination of high technology and pedagogy must also be acknowledged.  To this end we therefore welcome our new professors and their skills while fondly remembering the personalities and specialized abilities of their predecessors.

On reflection, ‘passing the torch’ in academe symbolically reverts to the positive components of fire: warmth and light.  Students and current staff bask in the acquisition and application of knowledge and their own contributions, and develop strong bonds with their mentors and friends. Yet we also know that the visions, ideas and ideals of those teachers before us--and those to come--will help guide the way.

   

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