Study On Cai Yuanpei And The Experiment Of French Education System In China

From June 1927 to October 1929 when the Nanjing Nationalist Government was initially established, it was proposed by Cai Yuanpei that China practise University Council and Academy system on the French educationally administrative model, hence a reform in the school system, of which its cause, its development and its failure are elaborated in this thesis under the guidance of dialectic materialism and historical materialism, from the angle of the relationship between Cai and the history of Sino-French education exchange.It was proved that Cai tended to transplant the French education system to China, by which to establish a modern education mechanism which could promote the development of education and scientific study so as to realize his ideal of making out country powerful by studying his education independence viewpoint, his experience in France and his investigation into the education system in Europe and America in particular. Cai did hold a post in Nanjing Nationalist Government to serve Jiang jieshi, by which, however, he wanted to establish an education system on French model. An experiment in University Council and Academy system ended in failure after two years, due to funds shortage, and to the opposition from inside the education circle, from local governments and from the students as well, though it was proved by the experiment that University Council and Academy system did play a promoting role for the development of modern education in China.It was unrealistically optimistic of Cai to put into practice the relatively independent education system in the political system in China, though he realized that to carry out in backward China a new education system from a developed country meant a hard and long way, because he failed to have taken full account of the difference between the two national conditions, underestimated the affect upon education of the tendency to the centralization of the state power from thedecentralization, and further, because he failed to have understood that education could not transcend politics in reality at one hand, though it should in reason at the other, for which the quality of education and reality accounted. So education independence was and could only be relative independent, and therefore it was impossible to realize the ideal of separating education from politics absolutely.