#I think that there’s an equilibrium between struggling to teach yourself and being taught material that works best. Having said that, I’m not really sure I’m qualified to have an opinion on that as I haven’t studied education. From my experience, however, building the discipline to research and figure out a problem for yourself is critical. If you are given fill in the blanks or reverse engineer tasks as the whole of your learning, you never have to really reach out mentally to complete your task. When you struggle, learn, and memorize on your own, I believe one is building new, stronger brain connections that promote real world on the spot ability to break apart and complete complex problems.
#To complement this, I think that help should be available from your instructors and community. With the former style of learning, you will come to a point where you might not progress further without help. The help doesn’t need to complete the problem for you, but should help guide you to the right ideas and the right path. Amongst all of this, I believe that certain fundamentals should be explicitly taught by an instructor. This varies widely by subject, but the student cannot be asked to learn everything completely on their own…especially when a repository of expertise (the teacher) is right in front of them.
#All of this is an unqualified opinion from someone who isn’t a master of education, but rather completed the main focus of my college career with a style of teaching very similar to what I’ve explained previously. It’s a hard, laborious way to learn, but I feel that it teaches you not only the subject you’re focusing on but also research and problem solving skills that are invaluable in the real world. I think it also hammers home your knowledge of the subject, as you are so immersed in it.