A Study Of The Experience Of The West Point Military Academy In Cultivating Core Values

The West Point Military Academy, or the US Army Officer Academy, locates on the West Point Highland of the Hudson River bank, and thus obtains its name. It attaches great importance to cultivating cadet's values with West Point spirit as its core and has gained rich experience:The value training should be made clear and emphasized, so should the purpose of value training; Effective means and measures should be adopted in order to improve the training efficiency. The experience is beneficial to the value cultivation of our forces.In the new era, President Hu Jintao, by applying the standpoint, view and method of Marxism and placing the function and tasks of military forces under the international strategic background, concluded the historical mission of the forces as "three providings and one bringing-into-play", and made an important direction that the core values of contemporary servicemen should be cultivated. Now, military academies have been carrying out the cultivating process gradually and met some difficulties. Moreover, there are some misunderstandings. The successful experience of the West Point Military Academy is worth learning. So it's of great significance to explore the connotation of the West Point spirit and study the academy's experience of cultivating the core values.Part one is the introduction, which is the logic starting point and theoretical base of the whole study. Based on the field research and literature review, the author puts forward the definitions of some conceptions, and mainly focuses on the purpose and significance of the present study, i.e. the study of core values cultivation in the West Point Academy. Besides, the present state of relevant studies, basic content and the research methodology of the thesis are made clear in this part.Part two discusses the purpose and main contents of core values cultivation in the West Point Military Academy. The purpose is stated through the following two aspects:The basic feature of core values training is the paramountcy of national interests; The fundamental object of core values training is to train a versatile person with morality, talent, military quality, fitness and leadership. For the main contents of the values cultivation, the author states how the core values-obligation, honor, country- are taught in the West Point Military Academy.Part three analyzes the principles and methods of core values cultivation in the West Point Academy whose success is mainly manifested through the combination of discipline and training, the mechanism of whole-process optimization and elimination, campus cultural activity and environment construction.In Part four, based on the core values training in the West Point Military Academy and the current situation faced by Chinese military universities, the author studies its enlightenment on the development of Chinese military universities. The author not only emphasizes the importance of core values training in the university development and its significance for cadets to fulfill missions, but also points out important roles that campus cultural activities and environment construction play in the training.