Yan Yuan strongly criticized the educational tradition of attaching importance to literature and neglecting reality for two thousand years since the Han Dynasty, including metaphysics, Buddhism and Taoism, and Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties. His advocacy of practical learning also has its historical basis. He thinks Yao, Shun, Zhou and Kong are the representatives of practical education. For example, Confucius' practical learning pays attention to practical activities, and his disciples or etiquette, or playing the piano, or learning to dance, or asking about benevolence and filial piety, or talking about commercial and military affairs, are all beneficial to themselves and the world, while Song Confucianism's neo-Confucianism education is quiet and respectful, sitting around with books in hand like clay sculptures, and focusing on explaining meditation, reading or epiphany in the lecture hall. That is, the talents trained by neo-Confucianism education are as weak as women and children and know nothing about the world. He pointed out that if students' study is divorced from their real life, even if they read thousands of books, it is useless. This kind of education not only harms itself, but also harms the country. The second is to "destroy the saints." He thought that Neo-Confucianism only studied hard on exegesis, thus falling into a world of literature and ink, in which the state took scholars, teachers gave lectures, fathers and brothers suggested and friends learned from each other, all by words, and abandoned the practical learning spirit of Yao Shun and Kong Zhou. Especially after advocating stereotyped writing to take scholars, the harm is even greater. The third is the World Games. Confucianism in Han and Song Dynasties corrupted the academic atmosphere and social atmosphere. Learning has completely turned into a word game, and the rulers used stereotyped imperial examination to imprison scholars in words, which caused great harm, and the corruption and exhaustion of social morality, economy and talents were all related to this. So he advocates taking practical learning as the agent.

Criticizing traditional education, especially neo-Confucianism education in Song and Ming Dynasties, is a prominent feature of practical education, and Yan Yuan is an important representative of this trend.

1. Expose the disadvantages that traditional education is seriously divorced from reality.

Yan Yuan pointed out that one of the most prominent drawbacks of traditional education is that it is divorced from reality, mistaking reading and learning for exegesis, or speaking clearly, or Buddhism and old age, while Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism is both, so it is even more divorced from reality. People trained by traditional education can neither undertake the sacred road nor help the world and people. Therefore, he believes that this kind of education is "harmful to the heart, to the body and to the country." He pointed out: "Those who lost the world by mistake were also learned by Song people." This shows that he abhors traditional education, especially Zhu Cheng's seriously divorced from reality.

2. Criticize the opposing view of justice and benefit in traditional education.

Another drawback of traditional education is that in ethical education, "righteousness" and "benefit", "reason" and "desire" are opposite. In view of this prejudice, Yan Yuan inherited and developed the thought of martial arts in the Southern Song Dynasty, and clearly put forward the proposition of "taking righteousness as benefit, knowing its way and calculating its merits". He believes that "benefit" and "righteousness" are not diametrically opposed, but can be unified. Among them, "profit" is the basis of "righteousness", and the purposes of "righteousness" and "Ming Dow" are "making profit" and "calculating merit". At the same time, "profit" cannot be separated from "righteousness", and "profit" must conform to "righteousness". Yan Yuan's thought broke through the traditional imprisonment and made China's understanding of ancient justice and benefit almost scientific. Yan Yuan profoundly exposed the harm of stereotyped writing system to school education and made a fierce attack on stereotyped writing system. In his view, the school is the right way to cultivate talents, and the traditional imperial examination system, which uses the current article (eight-part essay) to select scholars and replaces practical learning with eight-part essay, not only can't select real talents, but will lead scholars astray and delay talents. So he pointed out: "stereotyped writing is useless in the world! So stereotyped writing has no learning, no learning, no politics, no politics, no governance and no peace. So stereotyped writing is more harmful than burning pits. " (3) The fierce attitude against stereotyped writing system is vivid on the paper.

It is true that Yan Yuan criticized the traditional education under the banner of the ancients, that is, the so-called "one point must be broken, Zhu, beginning with a hole, Meng". However, under the social conditions of "neither Zhu Chuanyi nor Zhu Jiali" at that time, he dared not be afraid of "life and death" and made a fierce criticism of traditional education, especially focusing on Neo-Confucianism, which was a fearless and courageous spirit. This caused a great shock in the ideological circle at that time. Liang Qichao said that Yan Yuan was a big bomb in the ideological circle at that time, which was quite insightful. (However, if we contact Ren Gong's own thoughts and the contemporary situation, we can know that Ren Gong's worship of learning lent is also to broaden Yi-ology and get rid of the disadvantages of Neo-Confucianism. I don't want to completely abolish Lu Zhuxian's theory with Zhai's theory. )

Yan Yuan attaches great importance to the important role of talents in governing the country, pointing out that "talents are the foundation of politics" and "without talents, there will be no politics, and without politics, there will be no peace and people's life." Regard talents as the foundation of governing the country and the people. Therefore, in his policy of "nine words are the world", he listed "promoting talents" as the first place. He said: "If the sky is not wasted, it will be rich. There are seven words: reclaiming land, leveling fields and building water conservancy projects; Strengthen the world with six words: everyone is a soldier and officials are generals; Protect the world with nine words: cultivating talents, honesty and happiness. "Yan Yuan not only attaches importance to talents, but also further points out that talents mainly rely on school education and training. In his view, "the imperial court is the foundation of politics; Schools are the foundation of talents. Without talents, there will be no politics. "Talent is the foundation of political affairs, and schools are especially talented." Therefore, from the perspective of talents, Yan Yuan's above views are indeed reasonable. It correctly reveals the relationship among schools, talents and governing the country and highlights the important position of school education. It is of great significance for us to correctly understand the strategic position of education in the current socialist modernization.

Yan Yuan also has specific views on the training objectives of school education. He believes that "if all the scholars in the world are talented and virtuous, the minister of the future court will be the minister of economy", and if "all the scholars in the world are talented and virtuous, the minister of the future court will be the minister of mediocrity". (8) It can be seen that he advocates that schools should cultivate "people with practical talents and virtues", that is, people with noble qualities and practical knowledge. Although the purpose of Yan Yuan's proposition is to maintain feudal rule, that is, he said that "the court officials in other days are ministers of economy", which can "assist the king to rule and help the world", this is the limitation of Yan Yuan's thought. However, he attaches importance to the important role of talents in governing the country and emphasizes that talents mainly rely on school education, which is correct. At the same time, his training goal of "people with practical ability and moral integrity" has obviously broken through the shackles of neo-Confucianism education, and has the distinctive characteristics of applying what they have learned, reflecting the new requirements of the emerging citizen class for talents who require social production and development, which is undoubtedly of progressive significance at that time.

Yan Yuan's educational content thought appeared in the fighting posture of Confucianism against tradition, dogma and reality. Therefore, in order to cultivate "people with practical talents and practical virtues", Yan Yuan put forward the ideas of "true learning" and "practical learning" in the educational content. Its characteristic is that it values "reality" but ignores "emptiness", which is in sharp opposition to traditional education, especially to Zhu Cheng's neo-Confucianism education. "He takes its emptiness, I take its reality", "reality" replaces "emptiness" and "usefulness" replaces uselessness. Yan Yuan believed that the scholarship in Yao Kong's era was "true learning" and "practical learning", so he strongly advocated the "six academies", "three things" and "three things" at that time. The "six institutes" and "three things" mentioned here are "water, fire, gold, wood, earth and valley" and "exercise, use and health" mentioned in Shangshu Dayu Mo. Three things are Liu De (knowledge, benevolence, holiness, righteousness, loyalty and harmony), six lines (filial piety, friendship, harmony, marriage, agreement and sadness) and six arts (ceremony, music, shooting, imperial power, literature and number) described in Li Zhou Di Guan. In Yan Yuan's view, "three things" and "three things" are synonymous. In the "three things" based on six arts, Liu De and Liu Xing are the functions and performances of six arts respectively. Therefore, Yan Yuan advocates "six policies", "three things" and "three things". Its core lies in emphasizing the "six arts" education. Yan Yuan implied that the classic emphasized the "six arts", not really going back to the era of Yao and Kong, but entrusting the important task of reform to the ancient system, "seeking liberation by restoring ancient ways", and propagating his own ideas under the banner of "six arts" education of ancient sages and sages. In his later years, he planned Zhang Nan Academy, arranged six study halls, and specified the specific educational content of each study hall, which was the clearest and most powerful explanation of his "true learning" and "practical learning". The educational contents of the six houses of Zhang Nan Academy and each house are as follows:

Literature study: etiquette, music, calligraphy, mathematics, astronomy, geography and so on;

Wu Beizhai: teaching the art of war of Huangdi, Taigong, Sunzi and Woods, as well as the methods of attack and defense, camp, land and water, shooting defense and technical attack;

Classics and History Zhai: Examination of Thirteen Classics, History of Past Dynasties, Imperial edict system, chapter playing, poetry and other subjects;

Yi Nengzhai: Examining water science, fire science, engineering, image number and other disciplines;

Neo-Confucianism: meditation, arrangement, learning process, Zhu, Lu and Wang;

Tie Kuozhai: Take stereotyped writing as an example.

The temporary establishment of Neo-Confucianism Zhai and Tiekuo Zhai in Zhang Nan University is only for the purpose of "timely system", and once the accumulated habits of these two Zhai are corrected, they will be closed. Therefore, the educational contents of Yan Yuan's "true learning" and "practical learning" are not only fundamentally different from Neo-Confucianism education, but also greatly surpass the "six arts" education in breadth and depth. In addition to the knowledge of history, rites and music, a variety of natural science and technology knowledge and various military knowledge and skills are formally included in the teaching content, and subject-based teaching is implemented. This was really unique at that time, which already contained the bud of modern curriculum and pushed China's ancient educational content theory to a brand-new development stage. This is an important contribution of Yan Yuan to China's ancient educational theory, which deserves people's attention. Emphasizing "practice" teaching method is the most basic and main proposition about teaching method after the transformation of Yan Yuan's academic thought. At the age of 35, he changed the name of his family school from "thinking about the past" to "learning the past". Yan Yuan believes that if you want to acquire really useful knowledge, you must "practice" yourself and seek objective and practical things. Therefore, his so-called "practice" teaching method emphasizes the combination of practice and practice in the teaching process, and insists on the combination of practice and practice. Only in this way can the learned knowledge be really useful, otherwise, it is useless without knowledge combined with one's own practice.

Yan Yuan attaches great importance to the teaching method of "Practice Theory", which is closely related to his simple materialistic epistemology. He advocates "knowing by seeing things and knowing by doing", and "reason" exists in objective things. Only by touching things can practice obtain truly useful knowledge. On the other hand, the direct reason why he attaches importance to the "practice" teaching method is that he opposes the teaching method of Cheng Zhu's Neo-Confucianism. In his view, "talking to meditation about scriptures for advice and discussion" is because it is divorced from reality and cannot solve practical problems; Second, sitting in the study all day affects your health. In order to change the teaching method of Neo-Confucianism with books as the center and reading and speaking as the learning purpose, Yan Yuan strongly advocated the "practice" teaching method.

However, it should be pointed out that Yan Yuan's emphasis on "doing" does not exclude learning book knowledge through reading and speaking. He thinks that what is recorded in the book is "a poor article, a way of doing things, why not study at all". Therefore, acquiring knowledge through reading is "one thing in knowledge". However, "all learning depends on reading" and "learning for it is floating". The more books you read, the less practical ability you have. Similarly, empty talk cannot be abandoned, but it cannot be divorced from reality. Therefore, he advocates that reading, speaking and speaking must be combined with "practice", and more effort and energy should be put into "practice".

Although Yan Yuan's "practice" talks about personal actions, it ignores the guiding role of "knowledge" in "practice" and the importance of theoretical thinking, so it is meaningless in social practice. However, he emphasized linking with practice, attaching importance to practice and gaining knowledge from hands-on practice. This can be said to be the last liberation movement of hands and feet in the development of China's ancient teaching method, which runs counter to the teaching method of being divorced from reality, inculcating and reciting dogma. It can be said that it is a major innovation in the theory and practice of teaching methods. At that time, reading was poor, speaking and writing were poor, and the "literary world" divorced from reality was undoubtedly a fresh wind, which was refreshing and progressive. Paying attention to the teaching of agricultural knowledge and the role of labor in cultivating talents is another important feature of Yan Yuan's educational thought.

Yan Yuan lived in the countryside for a long time and personally participated in agricultural production and labor. Later, although engaged in education and academic research activities, but never divorced from labor. A well-known educator like him, who has never been divorced from agricultural production and labor all his life, is rare in the history of ancient education in China.

It is precisely because of his long-term participation in agricultural production and labor that he has a profound and clear understanding of labor. He not only believes that everyone should work, but also attaches importance to labor education for students. This thought of labor education is mainly manifested in the following two aspects.

Attach importance to traditional agricultural knowledge. Yan Yuan always puts the teaching of agricultural knowledge to students in an important position in his educational activities. He once said: "Rites, music, soldiers and farmers, caring about a person's life experience, and Qi Xin's concerted efforts are the right way to learn." In the self-made "learning fast doctrine", it is stipulated that "anyone who is my disciple should be determined to learn etiquette, music, archery, defense, calligraphy, mathematics, military books, agricultural books, money, food, water, fire, work and danger."

Attach importance to the role of labor in training talents. Yan Yuan believes that labor can not only promote economic development, but also contribute to the prosperity of the country and society, and also have an educational effect on people. First of all, labor has the significance of moral education. It can not only make people "healthy" and "self-cultivation", get rid of evil thoughts, but also make people diligent and overcome laziness and fatigue. Secondly, labor also has the significance of sports. Labor can keep fit, which is an important way to keep fit.

It should be pointed out that although Yan Yuan attached importance to the labor education of students, his thoughts still didn't go out of the barrier of the laborer governing others and the laborer governing others. This is the negative side of Yan Yuan's educational thought, and it is also the historical and class limitation that he can't overcome.