Cai Yuanpei's Academic Views and His Thoughts on Curriculum

From the purpose that college education was for the study of great learning, Mr. Cai Yuanpei had high regard for the unique function of theoretical sciences. So on curriculum he attached great importance to the rudimentary knowledge and basic theory aiming at cultivating all-around talents by means of high quality education. Therefore, Mr. Cai Yuanpei highly emphasized the decisive part of teachers' quality and made his effort to train the students to research on their own. At the same time, he defined moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic education as four education, which he thought should not be neglected when sound personality was to be formed. Mr. Cai Yuanpei vigorously advocated that we should choose and follow what was good and combat simple copy and wholesale westernization while absorbing advanced science and culture from abroad. And it's also important to assimilate what absorbed. All of these provided important guiding thoughts on curriculum.