On Tao Xingzhi's Village Education Ideas And The Practical Significance

In the village construction movement during the second two decades of the twentieth century, Tao Xingzhi made a valuable research, with the experiment of popularizing village education as the starting point of reforming villages. He mainly desired to improve the farmers' education, science and technology level and their civilization awareness, by developing village education. He aimed at delivering villagesand thus launched village education activities.This paper will systematically discuss Tao Xingzhi's village education idea and its practice, according to his personal experience and social background. His village education ideas are very important to the reform of our contemporary rural education.The thesis is divided info three parts.The first part: before discussing Tao Xingzhi's village education, the present paper starts with his personal experience and studies the individual and social backgrounds of the establishment of village education ideas. Tao Xingzhi, cherishing the ideals of saving the nation and people and reforming the society and aiming at finding a way out for villages, regarded it as his own task saving china villages, and undertook the mission as an educator actively. On the basis of criticizing that the traditional village education was divorced from reality, he advanced that village education should be centered by village, employ the method of combining teaching, learning and performing, and bring up large numbers of teachers who are enthusiastic about village and adapting themselves to village life. Thus they can train millions of talents to make some reform and build ourvillages.The second part discusses the theory system of his village education ideas and the educational practice. Tao Xingzhi's village education idea had a profound effect at that time, and was carried out smoothly through running Xiaozhuang Normal School. Nowadays, his idea still has a positive influence on us. China is forcefully advocating the socialist new village construction. Substantially speaking, it is the employment of Tao Xingzhi's village education idea in the new times. The most fundamental task of socialist new village construction is to transform the farmer's thought in ideology, and the transformation of thought depends on the popularization of education. Only relying on the function of education can the backwardness of villages be changed finally. And the village education construction is a very important aspect of national socialist new village construction.The third part focuses on discussing the practical significance of his village education ideas. Tao Xingzhi had left us forever, but his village education idea has become our wealth . We can derive the inspiration from his village education idea that the emphasis on village social education is a special national condition in China, and that the education emphasis should not be only laid on city education and the village education is ignored, for village social education plays a very important part in the village society.