Substantive education, also known as "substantive training", is an educational theory that appeared in Europe in the18 ~19th century. It is believed that the main task of general education should be to acquire valuable knowledge, and learning knowledge itself includes the cultivation of ability, and ability does not need special training. His ideas came from Herbart in Germany and Spencer in England. Compared with formal education, people think that the main task of education is to enable students to acquire knowledge. It is the bourgeois educational theory about setting school curriculum and choosing teaching materials for general education.