Cai Yuanpei's academic theory

His educational model is novel and eclectic, and he thinks that education is the foundation of national prosperity and prosperity. Educational ideas are flexible, inclusive, not excluded by academic disputes, and widely absorb the strengths of various schools. "Educators, the cause of developing personality is also." He advocates that education should pay attention to students and oppose rigidity. He also advocated new educational concepts such as aesthetic education, health education and personality education. Cai Yuanpei is generous and compassionate, and has a thorough observation of China society and bad customs; I visited Europe twice and personally studied the scientific spirit after the Renaissance and the ideological trend after the French Revolution. He advocated civil rights and women's rights, advocated free thought, devoted himself to getting rid of the old custom of "reading as an official", initiated the atmosphere of scientific research, and attached importance to civic moral education and attached world outlook, outlook on life and aesthetic education.

Liang Shuming once said that Cai Yuanpei initiated a new trend for Chinese people ideologically and academically, broke through old customs and promoted overall politics, which was quite correct. It is precisely because of Mr. Cai's inclusiveness and freedom of thought that the new culture has a foothold, and Peking University has become a fortress of the new culture movement, and scientific and democratic ideas have been spread. Therefore, in this sense, Cai Yuanpei is not only the founder of modern Peking University, but also the founder of the concept and spirit of modern universities in China.

Cai Yuanpei, as an outstanding pioneer in China's cultural circles in modern times, his famous cultural thoughts and academic views had an important influence on the historical process of China. Cai Yuanpei's academic thought of "all-embracing" put forward when he was the president of Peking University has not only become an important guiding ideology for him to preside over the education work of Peking University, but also the principle he adhered to in running a school. After this idea was put forward, a group of representatives with new culture and new ideas entered Peking University, and Peking University became the highest institution with active thoughts and academic prosperity in China. Therefore, the idea of "all-inclusive" has played a positive role in accepting new culture and opposing feudal culture. Cai Yuanpei's contribution to education and aesthetics is obvious to all, but his contribution to ethnology is little known. Cai Yuanpei said in his self-written chronicle that one of his dreams is to write a book "Comparative Ethnology" to "study ethnology to die".

when Cai Yuanpei went to Beijing and palace examination, he elaborated on Tibet's "vast territory with mountains and rivers" in his strategic topic about Tibet.

in p>191, Cai Yuanpei said in "On School Teaching": "In the past, history only remembered the things of emperors, but not the customs of people's livelihood, so that the number of strong and weak people's ups and downs could not be recorded. "

From p>198 to 1911, he studied philosophy, literature, history of civilization and ethnology at the University of Leipzig, Germany.

In August p>1924, he attended the 21st Congress of the International Society for Nationalities. From November 1924 to February 1926, I majored in ethnology at the University of Hamburg, Germany.

from p>1926 to 1934, Cai Yuanpei published articles such as On Ethnology, Ethnology and Sociology, and Evolution View in Ethnology.

When the Academia Sinica was founded in p>1927, Cai Yuanpei hoped to set up an ethnology research institute, but this hope was not realized due to limited human and material resources.

In p>1928, the Institute of Social Sciences was established, and Cai Yuanpei set up an ethnology group in the Institute, and personally served as the team leader and researcher. The following research was carried out in the ethnology group. Investigation and research on Yao nationality in Lingyun, Guangxi; Investigation and research on Gaoshan nationality in Taiwan Province; Investigation and research on Hezhe nationality in the lower reaches of Songhua River; Study on knotting notes and original scripts of all nationalities in the world; Collection of research materials on ethnic minorities in Southwest China, as a trend of thought, germinated before the May 4th Movement and flourished in the 192s. Due to the infighting among warlords, the economy was depressed, and the Beiyang government did not attach importance to education, the proportion of education funds in the national budget was extremely low, for example, the education funds in the national budget only accounted for about 1.2% around 192. The limited budgetary funds are often embezzled and misappropriated, and they can't be put in place in full, which leads to the shortage of educational funds and the unsustainable education cause.

Cai Yuanpei has always regarded education as the basic way to save the country, and respected the freedom of thought and scholarship. In addition, as the president of Peking University, he has a deep feeling that government bureaucrats are constraining and destroying education. Therefore, he is an active advocate and supporter of educational independence and guides it theoretically. In March, 1922, he published "Discussion on Educational Independence" in New Education, expounding the basic viewpoints and methods of educational independence, which became an important chapter in the ideological trend of educational independence.

He thinks that the opposition between political parties and education is as follows:

① Education should develop people's personality and group in a balanced way, while political parties are not. It should create a special group, serve the party and obliterate the personality of the educated.

② Education is far-reaching, focusing on the future, and its effect can't be shown in a short period of time, so it is said that "a hundred years to cultivate people". Political parties, on the other hand, strive for immediate success and often only consider immediate interests.

③ Under the background of party politics, the change of political power among different parties and the party in charge of education will inevitably affect the stability of educational policies and the effectiveness of education. Therefore, he believes that education should be detached from all political parties.

in order to realize the real independence of education, Cai Yuanpei designed specific measures for the independence of education funds, education administration and education from religion. Among them, the plan for the independence of education administration is to divide the whole country into several university districts, with one university in each district, and the higher specialized education, primary and secondary education, social education and cultural and academic affairs in each district are organized and handled by this university. University affairs are presided over by the Education Committee composed of university professors, and the president is elected by the Education Committee. The presidents of universities in each university area form a higher education conference to handle the affairs of each university area. The Ministry of Education is only responsible for dealing with matters related to the central government and educational statistical reports decided by the higher education conference, and does not interfere with the affairs of university districts. The chief education officer must be approved by the higher education conference. This idea became the framework basis for the Nanjing National Government to implement the "university district system" in the early days. Cai Yuanpei believes that universities should become institutions for studying advanced knowledge, which is the guiding ideology of Cai Yuanpei's running a school and the starting point of his thoughts on university education. As early as May 16, 1912, he attended the opening ceremony of Peking University as the director of education. In his speech, he proposed that "universities are places to study noble knowledge." After being the president of Peking University. He repeatedly stated this idea. On January 9, 1917, in his speech as president, he clearly explained to the students: "When you come here to study, you must have a purpose. If you want to be fair or not, you must predict the nature of the university. Nowadays, it is inevitable for people to run specialized schools and succeed in their studies. However, it is not the case in universities, and those who study advanced knowledge are also great scholars. "

He also suggested that universities should not only engage in teaching, but also carry out scientific research. He asked university teachers not to instill fixed knowledge, but to have a strong research interest in learning and arouse students' research interest; College students don't memorize the teacher's handouts, but study their knowledge automatically under the guidance of the teacher. In order to enable universities to undertake the dual tasks of teaching and scientific research, he strongly advocated that "every university must have research institutes of various sciences". In his article "On the reasons why universities should set up research institutes for various subjects", he listed three reasons in detail:

First, "if universities don't have research institutes, teachers will easily fall into the bad habit of copying handouts and not seeking progress."

the second is to set up research institutes to create conditions for college graduates to pursue further studies.

the third is to enable senior college students to have the opportunity to engage in scientific research under the guidance of their tutors. Cai Yuanpei is the first educational thinker who put forward that "military education, materialism education, civic moral education, world outlook education and aesthetic education can not be neglected in recent education", and advocated the simultaneous development of five educations, which is a remarkable feature of Cai Yuanpei's educational thought.

background

It was put forward shortly after the victory of the Revolution of 1911, when the Nanjing Provisional Government was just established. In order for the bourgeois to carry out the reform of feudal education in depth and healthily, it is urgent to determine an educational purpose that reflects the bourgeois requirements as soon as possible under the guidance of a unified educational thought, so as to stipulate the bourgeois goals and requirements for talent training. Only in this situation, in February 1912, Cai Yuanpei published a famous educational paper, Opinions on New Education, which systematically put forward the idea of simultaneous development of five educations.

military and national education

(1) From the perspective of foreign environment, China is in a state of "neighbors are forced to defend themselves, but the state power lost over the years is difficult to recover unless it is by force."

(2) as far as the domestic situation is concerned, in order to break the situation that soldiers become "a special class in the whole country", it is necessary to "make the whole country a soldier, otherwise it will be impossible to average their power".

materialism education

materialism education is regarded by Cai Yuanpei as a means of enriching the country. He believes that the competition in the world is not only in force, but especially in financial resources. Therefore, only by strengthening science and technology education, improving productivity and developing the national economy can the country survive in the world competition.

Civic Moral Education

He compared the moral concepts of "freedom, equality and fraternity" of the modern bourgeoisie in the west to "righteousness, forgiveness and benevolence" advocated by the ancient Confucianism in China. He advocated absorbing foreign culture extensively, and at the same time "we must choose those who can digest it", and "we must assimilate it with" me "instead of assimilating it with each other". He criticized some people with weak aspirations who "abandon donating their" me "and assimilate it with outsiders" when they study abroad.

education of world outlook

world outlook education is based on the idealistic world outlook that divides the world into the phenomenal world and the substantive world, which requires people to follow the principles of freedom of thought and speech, and not to be bound by the thoughts of a certain theory. At that time, it had the liberation function of breaking the autocratic rule of thought for thousands of years.

aesthetic education

aesthetic education is the most important way to carry out world outlook education, and it is the only bridge that people must pass from the phenomenal world to the physical world. The importance of aesthetic education stems from its characteristics. There are only two obstacles for people to move from the phenomenon world to the real world, one is the difference between people and me, and the other is the pursuit of happiness.