All human abilities come from practice, memory is enhanced by memory, imagination is improved by imagination, reasoning is improved by reasoning, and so on. These abilities, if not practiced, will decline and weaken. Therefore, the main task is to find those psychological exercises that can train students' various senses most effectively. People think that instilling knowledge in education is far less important than training teachers.
Students' education time is limited, and it is impossible to instill all the knowledge. If their faculties are developed through training, any knowledge can be absorbed at any time. Therefore, the mastery of knowledge is secondary in education, and the development of ability is important. The value of knowledge lies in that it is used as training materials, that is, what has been learned is forgotten, but it still leaves a permanent and more valuable influence. Therefore, it is not necessary to attach importance to the practicality of courses and textbooks, but to their training role. Wolff and other functional psychologists originally opposed studying classical courses. However, when the classic curriculum is considered as the best tool to cultivate the sense of function, formal education and the classic curriculum complement each other. It is the automatic result of intellectual training.
Formal education theory is an early learning transfer theory. It is believed that with certain training, intelligence or certain abilities can be developed and transferred to other research. Students studying Latin, Greek and mathematics will be of great benefit to learning other courses and textbooks. This is because from the study of Latin, Greek and mathematics, we have improved our comparative ability, analytical comprehensive ability and reasoning ability, which can effectively adapt to other situations and can be transferred to the study of other courses and textbooks. Therefore, the function and value of functional training and its migration become an important basis for curriculum setting and textbook selection.