Huang Yen-p'ei 黄炎培, who criticized the utilitarian education which was advocated in the education circles during the Republican Period, made a plea for the use of pragmatic education. We can see here clearly the influence of the idea of 'pragmatism education' developed by among others John Dewey. However, because such educational methods did not show sufficient results, a vocational education, which was said to be broader, more concrete and more social, was advocated against a background of the need of rearing a national industry in China, the decadency and depravity of the business schools, the deterioration of the employment situation of graduates, and the abuses of a traditional aesthetic education. Huang played a central role in the development of the movement for vocational education as the head of the office of the Chinese Society for Vocational Education (Chung-hua chih-yeh chiao-yu-she 中華職業教育社). This society founded the Chinese Vocational School, and also supplementary vocational education moved positively forward. Most of the members of the society were national bourgeois or people from the education circles. In the first part of the twenties the Educational System also started to attach importance to vocational education and the number of organisations for it increased, but in fact the movement for vocational education ･could not produce the talents hoped for by the national bourgeois and the movement lost its attraction and gradually declined, because the content tended to become decadent, the methods became mechanical and humans seemed only tools. Within the movement, especially vocational education for women and agricultural education were backward areas. The vocational educationists aimed at the spread of the concepts of 'sacredness of labour' 'equal employment', and so they tried to regain lost ground, but finally they did not succeed. Huang advocated a 'Big Vocational Education-ism' (ta-chih-yeh-chiao-yu-shu-i 大職業教育主義), trying to install some sociality in vocational education, but he hardly received any response, and during the period of resistance against Japan he volunteered for the Patriotic Anti-Japan Movement, besides striving for vocational education. The movement for vocational education can be credited with certain results such as the increase in number of members of the Chinese Society for Vocational Education and the expansion of dependent schools, but it did not have a all-persuasive influence on society because it did not break down completely the abuses of the traditional aesthetic education, and the solution of some comprehensive problems had to wait until after the liberation.