Inherited Study and Practical Study

Chen Shujie

In the paper, two types of learning approaches are elaborated at length, namely passive learning and active learning. Passive learning is what we call “learning by only accepting what teacher is telling”, which is mainly determined by the performance of teachers and which is realized by the approach of giving-and-accepting. As opposed to passive learning, active learning is based on students’ passion and cognitive sense of discovery, requiring students to put book-told theories on trial and get knowledge through practices. The paper holds with detailed supportive reasoning that both ways of learning were formulated and developed in a spiral way, and therefore combining them together would be justified reasonable as is coincided by the formulation of the twin spirals of human’s genes. They both take on the features of twin spirals, able to co-exist and co-develop in a mutually dynamic manner. To meet the different requirements for both approaches of learning, the school designed two types of curriculum. One is featured by traditional subjects and the other by practice-oriented subjects. Both approaches and the curriculum designed for them could not be simply judged as to which is better than the other as they are supplementary to each other. Based on this understanding, education reform in nature is a matter of coordinating the two cognitive processes. The paper finally emphasizes the exceptional importance of spreading the practice-oriented learning approach, reasoning that it is an inevitable trend in future education, and put forward the requirements on technological support as well as the values and rewards that the approach is going to present.