Mass Education Thinking

The writer attempts to study Yan Yangchu's mass education thought, who is a famous educator of home and abroad in the 20th century. We hope to master the theories and meanings of his thought entirely and objectively to benefit future research.The dissertation describes the historical background and conditions of Yan's mass theory thought at first, then traces back to its theory sources. On the basis of the former history background and the theory sources, the writer puts emphasis on the main connotation of Yan's mass education thought. The important part of the thesis is about the purpose of "eliminating illiteracy to cultivate new citizens", by means of three ways of school, family and social education. On the basis of the social investigation, drilling persons, following examples , Yan Yangchu hoped to transform the entire life by giving everyone of the nation the equal chance through the four educations—literary and art education to solve ignorance, livelihood education to solve poverty, hygienic education to solve weakness, citizen education to solve selfishness. The last part of the thesis is about features and its history comments of Yan Yangchu's mass education thought. After analyzing the main contents of Yan's thought, the writer points out that the mass education has some features, such as people-and-agriculture based and equality, scientific and moral, independence and initiative, practicality and usability and so on, which has historical significances and realistic values.