Tao Xingzhi

Also known as Wen Jun

Tao Xingzhi came from She county in Anhui; first named Wenjun, he renamed himself Zhixing and in 1934 reversed it to Xingzhi, putting action before knowledge. After graduating from the University of Nanking in 1914 he went to the United States and studied education at Teachers College, Columbia University, under John Dewey among others. Returning in 1917 to teach at Nanjing Higher Normal School, he joined James Yen and others in 1923 to found the National Association for the Promotion of Mass Education and its literacy campaign. In 1927 he opened the Xiaozhuang experimental rural normal school outside Nanjing, teaching that life is education and society is the school, until the authorities closed it in 1930. He then promoted his little teacher scheme, in which children taught what they learned, in Shanghai, and in 1939 founded the Yucai school at Hechuan near Chongqing. He died of a stroke in Shanghai in July 1946 and was buried at Xiaozhuang.