Influences Of Ancient Chinese Academy On Chinese Higher Education

As a pattern of higher education, Ancient Chinese Academy witnessed the remarkable development of Chinese civilization and followed the trend of governmental education(Guang xue). During the social change in thousands of years, it carried the essence of Chinese civilization, and predominately assume the responsibility of the cultural inheritance, the enlightening of intelligence, the critique of social evils and scientific research. Those all dedicated to the development and advancement of Chinese civilization. However, accompanied with the major changes in Chinese’s modern society, Ancient Chinese Academy gradually lost its vitality because of its internal characteristic of governmental. Ancient Chinese Academy ultimately eliminated by the historic process once competing with the Modern West Educational System and evincing its deficiencies and drawbacks.Even though Ancient Chinese Academy came to an end, Chinese civilization has to be inherited by other education patterns. Meanwhile, China was confronting with huge annihilated crisis. Therefore, it is urgent to promote national education and cultivate more intellects. The evolution from the academy to the school marked the first step of modern higher education. In the last Qing dynasty, modern Chinese educators(representatives as Cai Yuanpei, Mei Yi, Zhang Boling, Fan kezhu) adopted the advanced educational thought from Japan and the Western world and formulated the basis and framework of modern Chinese higher education. Above educator initially accepted and assimilated educational value from other developed countries since their recognition of academy culture and the enrichment of Chinese classical culture. The intercommunication possibility between the ancient academy and modern higher education attributed to the continuity of Chinese traditional culture embodied in both ancient and modern education system.Along with the modernization of education value and guiding ideology, Chinese higher education went through several transforms in the following century. The process of evolution triggered several problems because modern education continuously discarded traditional education thoughts and denied the advantages of academy education. Chinese higher education system lost it uniqueness and operability after the blind imitation of Western education system. In 21 century, globalization furthered the intensive competition between different countries, which leads to increasing significance of education, as an important component of the comprehensive national strength. How to promote the reform of higher education with more vitality is an urgent issue facing to China. The increasing tendency of “National Learning Craze", "Confucius Institute", and “Renaissance Academy” encouraged Chinese modern educator to start a new scrutiny to history. They may firstly learn from the unique originality of ancient academy and its educational though and blend into the intrinsic connection with Chinese education. Thus, they could provide the reform of higher education with advisable and appropriate theoretical guidance.