A Comparative Research Into The General Education Courses In The Universities Of The United States And China And Its Enlightenment

General education refers to the type of education which focuses on the forming of "whole beings" and aims to accomplish self-liberty and to build an interactive relationship between the "whole Beings" and the natural environment as well as the human society we live in. It integrates educational ideals with curriculum practice. In such an era of knowledge explosion and discipline separation, general education has been the key to ameliorate crises brought by specialized education.Along with the development of higher education reforms in China, many universities are now attaching more importance to general education and trying to put it into practice. However, problems still exist in the general education courses in the Chinese universities. For example, the structure is not reasonable and the quality still awaits improvements; University teachers and students have prejudice over general education courses. Many universities don't comprehend the potential meaning of general education and fail to provide the students with a scientific and reasonable general education system. Therefore, we need to summarize the successful experience of both the domestic and abroad in general education with an aim to adjust and reconstruct the system of general education courses in Chinese universities.The author applies the researching methods of material demonstration, comparison, document analysis, history study and positivist in the thesis and compares the general education courses in the universities of the United States and China respectively with an analysis into their characteristics in American universities and puts forward the idea of "realm-synthesis" model for the general course system in Chinese universities.The thesis consists of five chapters. In the first chapter the concept connotation of general education is introduced. In the second and the third chapter, the author elaborates the general education courses in the universities of both China and the United States, and compares their development respectively; thereafter, the author further introduces the foundation of the general education ideals in these two...