In terms of educational content, Yan Yuan put forward the ideas of "true learning" and "practical learning". Its characteristic is that it values "reality" but ignores "emptiness", which is in sharp opposition to traditional education, especially to Zhu Cheng's neo-Confucianism education. "He takes its emptiness, I take its reality", "reality" replaces "emptiness" and "usefulness" replaces uselessness. Yan Yuan believed that the scholarship in Yao Kong's era was "true learning" and "practical learning", so he strongly advocated the "six academies", "three things" and "three things" at that time.

Yan Yuan believes that if you want to acquire really useful knowledge, you must "practice" yourself and seek objective and practical things. Therefore, his so-called "practice" teaching method emphasizes the combination of practice and practice in the teaching process, and insists on the combination of practice and practice. Only in this way can the learned knowledge be really useful, otherwise, it is useless without knowledge combined with one's own practice.

Extended data

Yan Yuan implied that the classic emphasized the "six arts", not really going back to the era of Yao and Kong, but entrusting the important task of reform to the ancient system, "seeking liberation by restoring ancient ways", and propagating his own ideas under the banner of "six arts" education of ancient sages and sages. In his later years, he planned Zhang Nan Academy, arranged six study halls, and specified the specific educational content of each study hall, which was the clearest and most powerful explanation of his "true learning" and "practical learning".

Yan Yuan's "true learning" and "practical learning" are not only fundamentally different from Neo-Confucianism education, but also greatly surpass the "six arts" education in breadth and depth. In addition to history, etiquette, music and other knowledge, a variety of natural science and technology knowledge and various military knowledge and skills were formally included in the teaching content, and subject-based teaching was implemented, which was really unique at that time.

Baidu encyclopedia-Yan yuan