Active or Passive Initiator: Cai Yuanpei's Admission of Women to Beijing University (1919-20)

摘要

The term "active initiator" normally refers to someone who actively takes the lead in performing a task that is of crucial importance at the time. In the case of Cai Yuanpei, however, he was an initiator of Beida co-education but not an active one. This "was because his decision to admit women to Beijing University was only a response to the growing pressure from some major groups of May Fourth radicals. Cai did not plan the event of women's admission to the university. His ideas on co-education before the occurrence of the event were not as progressive as the ideas of his radical contemporaries. While some of Cai's contemporaries suggested the policy of co-education at all levels, he encouraged the experimentation of elementary co-education. The fact that Cai played a passive role in the event of co-education in Beijing University owed very much to the following reasons.