Cai Yuanpei (1868 ~ 1940) is a native of Shanyin County, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province. Cai Yuanpei's investment in education was based on the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898. /kloc-in the winter of 0/898, he returned to Shaoxing as the prime minister of Shao Jun Chinese and Western School to advocate new ideas. Later, he served as the chief teacher of Nanyang Public College, advocating civil rights, running patriotic girls' schools, advocating equality between men and women, and running China Education Association and Patriotic Association, combining revolution with education. 19 12 was the first education chief of the provisional government of the Republic of China, and published "Opinions on New Education", which was recognized by the society as a programmatic document of modern new education in China, and put forward the educational policy with modern significance for the first time. 191710 became the president of Peking University in October, turning Peking University into a brand-new institution of higher learning in China and the cradle and center of the New Culture Movement. After that, I tried out the university district system, served as the full-time president of Academia Sinica, wrote educational papers, and devoted my life to the education in China.

19 12, Cai Yuanpei was appointed as the first minister of education of the provisional government of the Republic of China, and expressed his views on new education. Starting from China's national conditions, he absorbed the experience of modern education in Europe, America and Japan, and put forward the educational policy with modern significance for the first time. The new educational policy includes military national education (military and sports), utilitarian education (intellectual education), civic moral education (moral education), world outlook education and aesthetic education, which constitutes the core of Cai Yuanpei's educational thought and is the overall guiding ideology of Cai Yuanpei's educational reform. In order to ensure the implementation of new educational ideas and policies in modern times, Cai Yuanpei, after abolishing various feudal educational laws and regulations in the Qing Dynasty, formulated new educational laws and school regulations with modern progressive significance. During his tenure in the Ministry of Education, he successively promulgated the Interim Measures for General Education, the Provisional Curriculum Standards for General Education and the Official Order of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China. The main contents are as follows: (1) Reform the education system and replace the old with the new; (2) Revising textbooks and abolishing "classics"; (3) Strengthen general education and attach importance to industrial and military sports; (4) Advocating the development of social education. In addition, Cai Yuanpei also attaches great importance to the significance of sending overseas students in his educational practice. He believes that sending overseas students is one of the important ways and means to improve the cultural and scientific level of China. Therefore, he started by paying attention to improving the quality of selecting international students and asked schools at all levels to attach importance to the dispatch of international students.

Advocating and attaching importance to women's education is an important part of Cai Yuanpei's educational thought. He strongly advocated universal education and women's education, and more importantly, he pioneered coeducation in modern China. 19 12, as soon as he became the director of education, it was stipulated that primary schools should be co-educational. Then he became the principal of Beijing Comte School in 19 17, which was the first time that middle schools were co-educational. Two years later, in 19 19, he initiated the practice of male and female students in modern China University, which had great influence in political and ideological circles.

There is a very important content in Cai Yuanpei's educational thought, and that is his aesthetic education thought. He believes that aesthetic education is an indispensable factor to cultivate a sound personality, because aesthetic education can cultivate noble moral sentiments through the infection and edification of beauty. He believes that aesthetic education can provide people with noble entertainment activities, thus enriching people's spiritual life and improving and purifying social atmosphere. In the increasingly chaotic social environment at that time, it is undoubtedly of great practical significance to put forward this urgent problem in time.

In addition, Cai Yuanpei's efforts to cultivate students' independent thinking ability and attach importance to developing students' personality are the main contents of his educational thought and practice. Today, this still gives us endless enlightenment.