(1) Military national education: it advocates the introduction of military education into schools and social education, so that students and people can receive certain military training, and emphasizes the militarization of students' life, especially the militarization of physical education in school education.

(2) Pragmatism education: "Take people's livelihood as the pillar of general education" and strengthen the cultivation of vocational skills, which is also the embodiment of American pragmatism education thought in China.

(3) Civic moral education: Advocating civic moral education from Confucian traditional culture, its connotation is interlinked with the spirit of freedom, equality and fraternity pursued by the bourgeoisie.

(4) Education of world outlook: Cai Yuanpei was influenced by Kant's philosophy and divided the world into "phenomenal world" and "material world". The phenomenon world is the world of people's daily life, and the physical world is a higher level world. Cai Yuanpei advocates that people pursue the physical world on the basis of the phenomenal world.

(5) Aesthetic education: Aesthetic education is the main way to educate the world outlook, and it advocates replacing religion with aesthetic education.

Cai Yuanpei advocates that the "five educations" should not be neglected, military national education should be physical education, utilitarian education should be intellectual education, civic moral education should be moral education, and aesthetic education can assist moral education and world outlook education, which is the highest realm of education.

2. Educational independence thought

The idea of educational independence sprouted before the May 4th Movement and flourished in the 1920s. 1922 in March, Cai Yuanpei published "On Educational Independence", expounding the basic viewpoints of educational independence:

(1) Independence of education funds: The government designates a fixed amount of education funds, which cannot be used for other purposes.

(2) Independence of education administration: An administrative organization specialized in education should be set up, which is not attached to government departments.

(3) Educational academic nature and content independence: the educational policy should be stable, and the teaching materials can be edited, published and selected freely.

(4) Education is divorced from religious independence.

At the same time, in practice, Cai Yuanpei advocated dividing the whole country into several university districts, and each district set up a university to manage all educational affairs. University affairs are presided over by the Education Committee, but this is a failed educational practice after all, and the university district system has not been fully established.