On Cai Yuanpei's Ethical Thinking About Education

This essay tends to probe and analyze Cai Yuanpei's educational thinkingthrough the perspective of educational ethics, generalize the contents of other ethicalthinking of education, and extend and enrich the research on Cai Yuanpei's thoughtsas much as possible.Mr. Cai Yuanpei was a famous capitalist educator in the modern-times history ofChina. The contents of his educational thinking were ample and complicated,influencing the education style for one epoch. Based on the analysis on the socialorigin of Cai's ethical thinking of education, this essay has made the systematiccombing and generalizations about the contents of ethical thinking of education: CaiYuanpei came up with the ethical viewpoint of value of education saving the nation,namely, on the one hand, education bears the social value, that is to say, educationbears the significant task of surviving the crises and developing the Chinese nation.This value outstandingly reflects the educational concern of social value. On the otherhand, the more important value of education is the pursuit of individual values,namely, through educational activities, the comprehensive human developments andthe ideal personalities are pursued. This value fully embodies the free wills of humanbeings and the inner values are excavated through education. Based on this, thethinking system of Cai Yuanpei's educational ethics has been formed, namely, theeducation of perfecting human characters has been suggested, whose main contentsare the harmonious developments of morality, wisdom, body and aesthetic, advocating"upholding the nature and displaying personalities", requiring teachers to be rolemodels, having not only the broadest knowledge but also the noble moral sentiments.Thirdly, Cai Yuanpei also put his thinking into educational practices, advocating theeducational route of"freedom of thinking, all-including and compatibility",maintaining fair education in order to realize the practice of all citizens being educatedand establishing a free environment for education, namely, the independence ofeducation. Cai's educational thinking flashes the light of humanity everywhere, and itbears crucial ethical value and it functions as the important enlightenment to therealization of fair education, the establishment of educational system of universities,the quality education of priority of moral education and the construction of teachers'morality.