abstract
He divided education into "subordinate to politics" and "beyond politics". Political education includes military national education, utilitarian education and moral education. Beyond politics are world outlook education and aesthetic education. He believes that two of the five kinds of education should not be neglected. In order to make Qiang Bing rich, we need military education and materialism education, but "morality must be the foundation". Civil morality is "freedom, equality and benevolence", that is, "righteousness, forgiveness and benevolence" of Confucianism. He combined the moral concept of European bourgeoisie with the traditional Confucian moral concept in China, and advocated to cultivate a complete personality in the real society.
However, the ultimate goal of education is to pursue the surreal material world and make people reach the highest spiritual realm. Therefore, there must also be world outlook education, that is, education that guides the educated to transcend the world and understand the highest spiritual realm. He believes that this kind of world outlook education is the unity of knowledge, emotion, meaning, morality, intelligence and physique. From the phenomenon world to the physical world, we can only rely on intuitive aesthetic feeling, which is a bridge between the two worlds. He advocated "replacing religion with aesthetic education", and all levels of schools and various social activities should carry out aesthetic education. Cai Yuanpei's educational ideology is based on military national education and utilitarian education, centered on moral education, with world outlook education as the ultimate goal and aesthetic education as the bridge.