The educational content of private schools in the pre-Qin period has its own characteristics. Among them, the private school that focuses on science and technology education and cultivating thinking ability education is Mohism. There were schools in the pre-Qin period, which were divided into aristocratic education and civilian schools, and aristocratic education was divided into university primary schools.

The characteristics of private schools in the pre-Qin period are mainly manifested in the following aspects:

1. Private schools are separated from the government. They are independent professional academic and educational organizations.

2. Private schools don't teach official laws and documents, but teach their disciples with their own political and academic ideas, hoping that they will implement their own political ideas. Therefore, disciples of all factions have a strong sense of participating in politics, and even think that "it is meaningless not to be an official."

3. Private school owners leave Wang Guan and do not enjoy hereditary privileges, belonging to the scholar class. ?

4. The expansion of educational objects has broken through the restrictions of kingship and nobility. All private schools basically absorb civilians in line with the principle of "teaching without distinction", which expands the social foundation and talent source of school education.

5. Private schools have broken through the closed old tradition of "learning is the official". The school transferred from the government to private teachers and gave lectures everywhere in a private capacity. Students can choose their teachers freely, and the teaching content is widely related to social real life, which has changed the rigid and unrealistic style of study of the government. Emancipating the mind, respecting rationality and attaching importance to the exploration of comparative theory have promoted the academic development, formed a grand occasion for a hundred schools of thought to contend, and created extremely favorable conditions for the cultivation of talents. ?

6. The rise of private schools has created a large number of classic works shining with wisdom, which is the result of free teaching. Not only the Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Mencius and other ancient books preserved a lot of educational materials, but also educational monographs such as Xue Ji and Xue Ji appeared, which summarized the rich educational experience and thoughts of this era, became the earliest self-contained educational and teaching works in the world, and laid the foundation of China's ancient educational theory.