The Moral Education Research Of Yuelu Academy

The Yuelu Academy was established in the Northern Song Dynasty, and made progress in the Southern Song Dynasty. It was rebuilt in the Yuan Dynasty and had another glorious time in the Ming Dynasty. Made further development with the support of the feudal official of the Qing Dynasty, the Yuelu Academy was changed into school in modern times and finally became the Yuelu Academy nowadays. The Yuelu Academy always adhered to the humanistic spirit of "pursuing morality and spreading morality" and the academic spirit of "independence and creativity", using moral education as their core and primacy throughout. These spirit leaded their way and made a strong basis for their development in thousand years. A good spirit must have substantial contents to embody itself. So the Yuelu Academy founded an intact moral education curriculum system, which used "understanding the human relations" as the basic requirement of curriculum provision, Confusion classics as the teaching material, the Neo-Confusion as important textbooks, history as assistant.On the basis of Confucianism, the Yuelu Academy established an integrated moral education system and formulated a complete set of moral education means, which included Huijiang and Jianghui, fete, and "annual education". Jianghui is a kind of lecture held at regular intervals, while Huijiang is held temporarily. The "Zhu-Zhang Huijiang" is one of the most famous Huijiang in the history. The ceremony of fete was an important way to teach Confucian political ethics to students and cultivate their morality. The "annual education" was the Yuelu Academy, to achieve the final goal of "being sages and men of virtue", separated the moral education into two stages on the base of students’ physical and mental development law, which included the junior stage learning etiquette and the senior stage learning truth.The moral education system in the Yuelu Academy included school regulations and examinations. Although the school regulations of Yuelu Academy have been changed for several times, it were always featured by "pleasured by reason and justice". In detail, it used "reason and justice" for core, which means using seeking Tao, selecting good companion, practicing sincerely for core to stimulate students’ nature of goodness. It used "tactful expressions" for carrier, which means using mild and advising words to express the esteem and sincerity of students. It used "pleasing students" for purpose, cultivating a lot of patriotic thinkers. The Yuelu Academy used examinations to check students’ morality and learning, particularly the morality. The morality examination checked wether students’ behavior conforms to the moral rule in the society to prompt students’ good will.The architecture of Yuelu Academy has the function of hidden moral education, for example, the site selection embodies compatibility of class and harmony; couplet and stele has the function of thought provoking; garden and carving take the usage of "Bi de" to achieve the state of free imagination. In the humanistic environment, headmasters and teachers of the Yuelu Academy taught students by personal example as well as verbal to set good example, and respected and cared students to build democratic and equal atmosphere, and according the debate between teachers and students to make both progress.Although the Yuelu Academy was the product of feudal society, imprinted by that age, the moral education of it can enlighten the education nowadays, such as the humanistic spirit of "pursuing morality and spreading morality" and the academic spirit of "independence and creativity", "annual education", school regulations’ feature of "pleasured by reason and justice", the architecture’s function of hidden moral education, etc.