A Study On Sheng Xuanhuai's Education Thoughts

The Chinese nation was forced to take part in the world order of capitalist system and the Chinese traditional culture was challenged uriprecedentedly because of the failure in the Opium Wars, which accelerated the gradual change of Confucian culture that lasted more than one thousand years. In order to conform to the change of social politics and economy at that time, a great change in the field of Chinese education thoughtss came to the fore, that some persons with breadth of vision in the ruling class began to change the attitude of ludicrous conceit of the King of Yelang—parochial arrogance and tried to learn the science and technology from capitalist countries so as to uphold feudalism, since 1860s, the Foreign Affair Sect set off an upsurge of saving the Chinese nation. Sheng Xuanhuai was born in a family of government official in Qing dynasty, who actively threw himself into industry and commerce after he failed in imperial examination, and a great deal of thoughts on industry and commerce was formed in his mind with summing up the success and failure in practice, which conversely guided his education practice as his political and economic status were heightened. Sheng Xuanhuai's unique life story made his education thoughts with unique specific character and abundant connotation, which gave great play in Chinese modern education history and there is still much we can make use of in contemporary vocation education.With the method of literature analysis, the research summarizes Sheng xuanhuai's education thoughts systematically, through analyzing the background of Sheng xuanhuai's thoughts, the author intends to understand the actual basis it came into being. The research elaborates the abundant connotation of Sheng Xuanhuai's education thoughts, points out that it was the realistic need of carrying out the foreign affairs that made Sheng Xuanhuai think over the talents problem and form his unique idea on fostering and using talents, inquires into the development of his education thoughts which goes along with the increasing of his power and improving of his financial condition, points out his thoughts' valuable practicality and respectively elaborates it from the aspects of saving the nation through education, setting school by grading, elementary school and teacher-training as "the most important ones of the all" and "exhibiting the collection of books publicly rather than handing down to offspring".Based on aforementioned analysis, the research compares Sheng Xuanhuai's education thoughts with Zhang Zhidong's, another famous educationist at the same time, considers that Sheng Xuanhuai's education thoughts has the characters of dualism in content and form and anti-tradition and emphasizing industry and commerce.Considering the situation then, the author objectively remarks on the function of Sheng Xuanhuai's education thoughts, points out that it promotes the value tendency of education to social-economic life, advances the education from specification to general education, and Sheng Xuanhuai himself is regarded as a model of anti-traditional spreading culture in modern times. The research aiming the problem of education nowadays, especially the vocational education, summarizes briefly the realistic hint of Sheng Xuanhuai's education thoughts.