Research Of James Yen’s Mass Education And Its Implications On The Contemporary Citizen Education

James Yen is an eminent mass educator overseas.1920s, James Yen began to carry out the mass education in China. He and colleagues adhering to the purpose of "eliminating illiteracy to cultivate new citizens", gave up the comfortable city life,went into the Ding country of Hebei province,started survey and social experiment.They formed a educational system that carry out the "literary education, living education, sanitary education and citizen education" through three ways of school,society,family.Then,the "Ding County Model" was applied to Hunan, Sichuan, Guangxi and other provinces, and the Institute of Rural Reconstruction was founded to training mass education personnel. After the1950s, James Yen began to apply mass educational experience to the world, founded the International Institute of Rural transformation, promoted the development of the third world countries’mass education. This paper attempts to study James Yen’s mass educational thought from the perspective of broad citizen education, excavates its essence, obtains inspiration for contemporary citizen education to guide our citizen educational practice.This paper expounds the theoretical source of James Yen’s mass education thought and practical exploration, carried out a detailed analysis on the essence of mass education thought that include equal educational concept, emphasis on the concept of practice; Systematic educational content; unique ways of education. On the basis of the above analysis,we can obtain some inspiration on contemporary citizen education. Achieving equality in education concept must establish the concept that the acceptance of citizen education is a fundamental right of citizens while the government should promote educational equity effectively. Based on reality in the educational process means based on national conditions and it will be a combination of localization and internationalization, while strengthening world citizen education in response to the globalization. Developing a scientific and systematic citizen education content should distinguish the level of citizen education content on the basis of constructing a comprehensive citizen education content system. Innovating the ways of citizen education should construct citizen education network that combining homes, schools and society network civic education, and make use of the advantages of information technology to find new ways of citizen education.