Hutchins' Educational Thoughts And General Education

Robert Maynard Hutchins was a famous theorist and practitioner of American higher education. Through understanding Hutchins'educational thoughts, this thesis presents the dilemmas and the problems of American higher education from the 1930s to the 1940s, and it analyzes the solutions that Hutchins pointed out.In this book, Hutchins pointed out that the confusion of American higher education was caused by the pursuit of money, the confused notion of democracy and the erroneous notion of progress. After observation and consideration, Hutchins put forward some solutions and put them into effect when he was the president of the University of Chicago, which was the most radical, complete and overall general education reformation in the American history. During the process of the general education reformation, Hutchins reformed the system of the University of Chicago completely. In addition, in the content of courses, he advocated reading Great Books. He urged students to go back to the pursuit of intelligence and truth rather than pursue materials such as money and good positions.Hutchins'educational thoughts have great and enduring influence on the University of Chicago, the United States and the whole world. In the University of Chicago, system has been improved after Hutchins'reformation of management system, college system, department and discipline system, elective course and credit system. In addition, many students were influenced by Great Books project so much that they missed the scene of reading classics after graduating for many years. In America, many scholars had carried forward Hutchins'educational thoughts, and many famous universities'general educations, such as Harvard, Stanford and Yale, were influenced by Hutchins'educational thoughts. Moreover, Hutchins's educational thoughts exist in many universities in the world.The effects and the contributions that Hutchins'educational thoughts made will be indelible. In modern era when well-rounded characteristics are highly valued, humanistic education is paid attention to again. Hutchins'educational thoughts are even more valuable and meaningful at present time.