Anatomy: The Patient's or the Book's? Progress Report on a Teaching Experiment Which Reverses the Traditional Sequence of "Theoretical" and "Practical" Learning

An attempt to replace a tradition of theoretical rote memorization by objective oriented learning is described. The experiment reported concerns teaching of basic medical sciences in the context of clinical application. Both students and teachers were enthusiastic about the approach employed. In practice both groups experienced difficulty in meeting some of the demands of an independent learning system. The problems encountered were concerned with the difficulty of breaking old learning habits and with the simultaneous existence of traditional and experimental teaching systems in the same curriculum. These problems are discussed. The argument against the traditional approach and in favour of that of the experiment, is presented.