Stuart's Educational Thought Research

John Leighton Stuart(1876-1962),American Protestant missionaries,Chinese educator in modern society.He has been teaching in Pantops Academy, China’s Nanjing Jinling Theological Seminary, Yenching University.His educational ideology of "freedom" as the main line, contains the factors of tradition and modernity, religious and secular.He used the unique way to found the Yenching University,at the same time,made the developing school rising suddenly.Leighton Stuart’s religious view in education not limited himself in the traditional religious education, but based on the liberal religion to make them mutual mixture and growth.He believes that use the Christian culture to replace Chinese traditional culture with growing thousands of years in Chinese soil is impossible, if only to instill religious education is bound to fail.The purpose of the church University should develop the Chinese people have own cultural identity,then acknowledge Christian Thought.Yenching University’s aim was divided into three areas, namely, "following the times,services the society" secular education, "search for truth, pursuit of freedom" spirit education and "increased physical fitness, fair competition" physical Education.Three Educational goal seemingly separated,actually they are solided as entire section, secular education for students will living in modern society, spirit education for students were concerned about the students spiritual areas, at the same time, health is very importment, so Leighton Stuart pay attention to the physical education.To achieve these objectives, Leighton Stuart setted up the humanities curriculum with developing spirit, practical courses with learning modern technology and religious curriculum for serving society, three types of courses for students contribute to the comprehensive development for students and for society development more balance.In curriculum implementation, Leighton Stuart adopt three ways that included elective system and credit system, tutorial system.About the methods of education,he utilized the emotional transference, practical methods and model demonstration.The way of emotional include the atmosphere cultivate,personality strength and organization activities education;practical methods mainly reference to combining the theory with practice;model demonstration contained the rigorous study and open-mined.As for the concept of educational administration, he said he had done for Yenching University is only to ensure keeping free environment and to ensure teachers and students can freely express truth. However,Yenching University existed the freedom and democracy atmosphere, the rule combined with the emotional, and absorbed the social forces to participate creating school, so he did is not just ensure the school has an air of freedom.The era of Leighton Stuart living is changed very quickly,he tryed to explain that students were the hoping in national tomorrow.Maybe he had the mysteries in his mind,but as a educator,his behaves are respected.As an idealist, Leighton Stuart has the spirit of sincere, the attitude of humility, loving others with lenient. In the history of Modern Education in China and Sino-US cultural exchanges, Leighton Stuart make a certain contribution,we can exploit the way from his preservation of chinese traditional cultural and heritage, meanwhile,the development of modern university could adopt from his educational practices.