Cai Yuanpei was the first educational thinker who proposed that "the national education of soldiers, the education of materialism, the education of civic morality, the education of world outlook and the education of aesthetic education should not be neglected", and advocated the simultaneous development of five educations, which is a remarkable feature of Cai Yuanpei's educational thought.
According to the different requirements of the autocratic era and a Republic for education, from the perspective of cultivating the sound personality of the people of the Republic, he put forward the educational thought of combining military education, utilitarian education, civic moral education, world outlook education and aesthetic education, which broke through the talent training mode of "Chinese style and western use" in modern China society and embodied the inheritance and transcendence of traditional educational thought and the positive absorption of western educational thought.
Five educations at the same time is the first educational thought in the history of modern education in China that fully embodies the unity of social value and human development value and pursues human freedom and harmonious development.