doctrine of formal discipline
a pedagogical theory, now discredited, that was based on the old idea that the mind is divided into general faculties (e.g., reasoning, memory, attention) that, like muscles, could be strengthened through exercise. Training that strengthened a particular faculty was thought to benefit performance on any task that relied on that faculty. For example, students memorized texts and poems because training in memorization, regardless of the content, was thought to increase general memory capacity. See also transfer of training.