Like other experimental psychologists, Reich, a German bourgeois educator and experimental psychologist, tried to explain the problem of education by biological methods and regarded education as super-class and super-political. He believes that the basic principle of pedagogy is "action principle", so his educational theory is called "action pedagogy". His educational thought still belongs to the category of experimental pedagogy in essence. Ley affirmed that every living thing's activities are completed according to such a formula: "feeling-sequencing-performance (or expression)"; Of the three, performance is the most important. He mechanically applied this formula to education and teaching. He believes that students' learning is first to get impressions through observation and form perception (feeling); The second is to process (sort out) the acquired impressions and perceptions and finally put them into action (performance). He pays special attention to the performance (or expression) step in the learning process. He attributed all activities to "the reflection of movement". Of course, the activity of attention, memory and thinking is also regarded as the reaction of exercise, which is simply regarded as the action of muscles.

On this basis, Ley severely criticized the old scholastic schools, which were reasonable and unreasonable. He accused that in that school, students only pay attention to feelings, and it is not enough to process and sort out what they have learned, let alone express their feelings and sorts out. After absorbing knowledge, students only pay attention to paraphrase (written or oral) some things they remember, or solve some exercises, completely ignoring the most important performance (or expression). Lai believes that the reaction of sports is the basis of education and teaching, and schools should focus on painting, sketching, sculpture, drama, singing, music, dance and caring for animals and plants, which means that all subjects about expression should be put in the first place. Labor should not be regarded as an independent discipline, but as a teaching principle, which should be implemented in all disciplines. There is no systematic study of basic theory and training of basic skills, and the classified subjects in modern schools are completely abandoned as things that only train feelings.

Ley has formulated a set of "teaching plans" for his school, in which "there is no discipline system, no step by step" and only follows the principle of "everything comes down to performance". What people see is the expression of plastic sculpture (sculpture, experiment and caring for animals), the expression of painting form, the expression of mathematics (arithmetic and geometry), the expression of Chinese (speech, reading and writing) and the expression of body movements (gymnastics, games, dance and drama). This "lesson plan" is obviously subjective and unrealistic. Ley's one-sided emphasis on action, performance or expression is enough to lead to a decline in the quality of education. For example, most of the time in literature class is spent on writing and performance, and little or no attention is paid to the analysis of the content of literary works (structure, layout, language, characters, ideas and significance). Needless to say, this is a very one-sided and incomplete lesson plan.

Although Lai advocated that the pedagogy experiment should be conducted in the normal school environment and must go deep into teaching practice, he had already made subjective assumptions before the experiment and just tried to prove his assumptions through experiments. At the same time, he mistakenly adopted many artificial and unnatural methods and materials in his experiments, which made his so-called "experimental education" lose its scientificity and repeatability and become only an intentional explanation.

Spelling experiment is the most representative experiment he has ever used. He chose several meaningless words in daily life that students had never been exposed to as experimental materials (each word should be equal in difficulty); Then put these nonexistent words to all the experimental students in eight different ways and let them answer them one by one. There are 3000 subjects. Eight different ways are (1) to make students listen and write (shut up); (2) Let the students listen and write in a soft voice; (3) Let the students listen and write aloud (4) Show the students the words without pronunciation, and then let them write; (5) Show the words to the students, and then let them write (let the students pronounce them a little); (6) Show the students the words, and then let them write (let the students read aloud); (7) use spelling; Say a word first, and then write it in alphabetical order; (8) copying. Collect the homework of all subjects and make statistics, and then check the accuracy of the results in various ways. According to statistics, it is concluded that the best spelling in teaching is copying (the eighth form); The second is to show the students the words before writing. The sixth kind). This is how he proved that the reaction of performance or action is the best way to learn.

In his experiment, we can see (1) that his experimental materials are meaningless, in fact, they don't exist, that is, they are divorced from experience, real life and, of course, teaching practice, and they don't exist in the process of education, so the experimental results are meaningless to education and teaching. (2) His whole method does not come from teaching practice, but from learning hearing, vision and motor memory as a demonstration, so it is extremely one-sided. (3) There is no review of the experimental results, and there is no basis for repeatability. So it can be said that his experimental education is basically a failure.

In addition, his experimental pedagogy also enthusiastically maintains religion and religious education, and advocates instilling religious consciousness in the teaching of various subjects. At the same time, it also preached Great Deutschland and chauvinism, which became the educational theory of German monopoly bourgeoisie, laying the groundwork for the spread of reactionary fascist thought later. This is the political reactiveness of his "experimental pedagogy".