Yan's educational thought can be simply summarized as "one great discovery"-brain mine, "two great inventions"-the theory of civilian education and rural construction, "three modernizations"-school, society and family, and "four great educations"-literature and art, people's livelihood, health and citizens.

"Five combinations"-with real life, theory and practice, science and rural reality, material civilization and spiritual civilization, individual and collective, "six major constructions"-politics, education, economy, self-defense, health and customs.

On the basis of in-depth investigation and statistical analysis, he came to the conclusion that "stupidity", "poverty", "weakness" and "selfishness" are the main problems of the people, so he advocated that ordinary people should be educated by running civilian schools, and then systematically implemented "four major educations": combating stupidity with literature education and cultivating knowledge; Eliminating poverty through livelihood education and cultivating productivity; Attack the weak with health education and cultivate the strong; Use civic education to combat self-interest and cultivate unity.

During the experiment in Dingxian County, Hebei Province, he founded Farmers Weekly, a mobile library, a farmers' theatre and the earliest rural radio station, all of which were unprecedented innovations in China. His educational thoughts are profound, concise and easy to learn, with strong practicability and operability, and have achieved particularly obvious results.

Extended data:

Yan's thought of civilian education is a national education thought with China characteristics. It came into being in the 1920s, and then took root, blossomed and bore fruit in China. Later, Yan planted his harvested seeds in barren land all over the world, and continued to irrigate for decades, which yielded extremely fruitful results and trained a large number of civilian education experts and rural construction talents for China and underdeveloped countries and regions in the world.

Yan, a native of Bazhong, Sichuan, China, enjoys a high reputation internationally. He is known as the "father of the world's civilian education" and was hired as a lifelong special adviser by the United Nations.

Strict civilian education thought has its own characteristics. According to the ancient motto of China, "People are the foundation of the country, and this is the foundation of the country", he linked and promoted civilian education and rural reconstruction as a whole, and created the thought of civilian education with one discovery, two inventions, three ways, four educations and five combinations, forming a fairly complete system, which deserves great attention.