When attempting to learn, we have different methods available to us. Consider two categories of learning...

When attempting to learn, we have different methods available to us. Consider two categories of learning, labeled "Active" and "Passive."
Passive learning, in this context, can be considered to include all methods of learning that involve the source of the information taking on the activity of imparting knowledge. This would mean the person is a "witness" or a passive player. Examples of this type of learning would be watching videos, listening to books, and attending a lecture.
Active learning (again, simply in this context) is anything that requires active effort on the person to glean the information they seek. Obvious examples here would be reading a text, performing an experiment, or reasoning in a structured manner on your own.

Does this dichotomy make sense to you as an important divide in learning? Is there any current data that highlights this divide, or is it simply a matter of interest and attention, as I have read in other places? Does anyone have massive qualms with this dichotomy?

This was thought up primarily in regard to how easy it is to maintain attention to a particular method of learning. Distractions from a socially-engaging technique like lecture or videos (which are also engaging a sense from the outside) are hard to completely derail your train of thought, but if you do not have proper discipline, being distracted from reading is incredibly easy (this is simply a feels-and-sounds-good postulation, and nothing more).

With that in mind, I think my reasoning is primarily rooted in the fact that humans are using their eyesight only during reading, and so your other senses can be sources of dilution of your focus, as well. This might be an entirely separate point that I cannot properly trace back to the original post's point, however, which is why I defer to the contrarians of Veeky Forums.

As far as I know, passive and active are already defined terms in tgis context. Plus, you distinction is completely meaningless as you've defined them. Why is reading a book different than listening to someone read the same book as regards passive/active? From a learning standpoint you seem to have desrcibed equivelent and analagous actions as somehow differing? If there is any distinction between your two categories it seems to be one of intent, not of action, but even that disrinction is tenuous, because someone can attend a lecture with the same intenr to learn as reading a text. What, exactly, are you trying to achieve?

Reading a book requires you to look (use your sight from an interior-motivation) and actively read the book, while completely ignoring your other senses.
Watching a video (with audio) or a lecture involves directing your sight, but for the purpose of observing something already happening. Reading does not happen until you make it. A lecture is not an action where you "personally dive into it." I wish I had a better word that highlighted the difference between WATCHING and LOOKING, or SEEING and SCANNING.

This could be that one is a more convoluted usage of your senses. If I'm decoding text with my eyes, that is different than if I am simply doing what my ears already do (which is decoding sound waves into speech).

Why do you say that reading is more complex than listening? Why is one considered active and the other passive? You seem to be confusing your own ability to concentrate and understand with a universal quality of action.

The outside world is happening constantly. Humans already have massive experience focusing on events already happening, but it takes a different mindset (or does it) to interact with that environment.
Reading is an interaction. You are actively moving your eyes over a static object and discerning its contents.
With a lecture or video, it's being pumped into your senses. With reading, you're doing the pumping.

so youre saying that if i read something very complex and listen to it, with the option of re-listening part i don't understand, even if both have the same degree of complexity one is passive and the other active? and if so would you think that there are different parts of learning involved such as that one has a more reflexive or deepened understanding in the active form and the contrary with the passive?

When you read, is light not being pumped into your eyes? And is not that pattern of light intentionally designed by another mind (or set lf minds) so that your mind might come across it? And what about video? Is that not also a pattern of light projected into your eyes with a specific design and intent? How does the nature of the input have any bearing on the action or non-action of the receiver? Your language is ill-defined.

Yes. I'm saying that there is either a neurological difference in the two activities (more brainpower dedicated to interpreting speech as concepts rather than writing), or something else available. I have no full information, here.
You have to pay attention in both contexts, but it's still easier to hear than to read (you can process more information through listening to a fast-speaking voice than reading a fast-going text, for example).
You need to rephrase the second part of your reply; it's illegible.

When you read, you're EXTRACTING the concepts from the text by actively directing your eyes to specific focus points, refocusing and using up neocortical pathways that you could usually use for reasoning (this is falsifiable, and I am not 100% certain).

If it were easier to listen, there would be more musicians, and nobody would bother with sheet music. Your assumptions are baseless.

I cannot see your logic here. Humans are incredibly musical (humming, singing, drumming with their fingers), and so much more of them can keep a pitch with just their ears while almost none of them (statistically/comparatively) can bring a pitch from sheet music.

And when you listen you are extracting meaning from abstract sounds. And to understand the meaning of a spoken sentence requires active will. How many times, after all, have you asked somebody to repeat themselves because they you were not listening? Or how many times after a lecture have you needed to review your notes in order to know what was said? And what are notes anything other than extraction, whether they are notes in a speech, or notes on a text? Furthermore, why can two people hear two different things from the same speech unless they each took different things from it?

Yes, but you are not consciously doing the extraction. Language processing via sound is a pathway you've learned since being a baby. People who read often still go through the extra step of talking to themselves in their own head, adding another tick on the "aural is default" tally.
Yes, it requires attention, but I already addressed that. Attention and discerning perception are different. Picking apart someone's intonation is actually a part of the brain's auditory centers: It's hard-wired. Text-reading is a learned concept that is isn't hardware accelerated.

How about you ask an actual musician if, to learn a piece, he'd rather read it from sheet music, or try to recreate it by ear? If it were really so easy to learn by ear, then why was sheet music invented? And still, how does anything you've said have any relevance to action versus non-action? Are there not lines from books that are easily remembered? And while many people tap theur fingers, dont many people doodle also? Or skip? Shouldnt there be some consideration for the complexity of a thing according to its category? Lastly, most people cannot hold a pitch.

>An ACTUAL musician
Please elucidate what makes an ACTUAL musician better at using their ears than someone who also plays music by ear, other than appealing to Academia.
Yes, people doodle, but that is a visually ingrained habit--You're drawing a picture, which is an image, which isn't a written language.
The complexity is directly outlined in the post above you. Many people can *generate* a pitch from an example pitch. The direct translation/mimicry is, obviously, easier because of the neurological structures behind it.

You haven't addressed anything. You are presenting no arguments. You keep just stating unconnected assertions without any connecting tissue or evidence. Why do you assume babies are not active in their learning if language? Again, the concepts of active and passive are already established in psychology, and your definitions make no sense. Obviously something that is learned by accidental habit is different than a thing learned intentionally, but this distinction is not limited by medium. One may intentionally learn something by reading it or by listening to it. Likewise, one may accidentally learn something either by reading it or hearing it. The closest you get to truth is that people are typically more intentional about what they read than many ither things, but this is not a statement about medium or potential for thought. Rather it is only a statement about habits.

A written language is literally just a set of images that a group of people have come by habit to associate so strongly with abstract sounds that they cannot see anything else in them without significant effort.

>Why do you assume babies are not active in their learning of language?
Because they cannot use one of their senses actively to cognitively translate from sounds to senses. They pick up language through associative methods that then HABITUATE language. Assuming babies are cognitively active and decide to pay attention to sounds and discern their meaning is laughable.
I am absolutely connecting the arguments I've laid out, here. An argument is simply a statement--what kind of shitty definition do you use to skirt around that concept?
>Already established in psychology
Propose a different set of terms that doesn't hurt your sensibilities, then.
>Definitions make no sense
I already stated that a better set of terms would work just fine. I'm not vying for the usage of specific terms, I'm discussing a conceptual dichotomy.
It does not take significant effort to "disassociate" the wording. Defamiliarization can happen with only a few instances of the word. Saying or reading "from" four or five times will make it seem like it's not a real word. Simply LOOKING toward a page will not give you any meaning; you have to actively enter the "read this text" mode, where you use saccades to scan the text, in order to derive any meaning. Reading is an effortful activity, while listening is not; you have to actively ignore other voices (unless you are focusing on another voice of your own accord, hijacking the cocktail-party effect that is ingrained in your head already).

If reading is an effortful activity, maybe you aren't very good at reading.

Are you telling me you can read just as well in a loud bar setting as you can when sitting alone?
Your brain has the capability to isolate sounds it considers speech and can track moving targets (reflexively) visually, but it does not seem to be able to do this with anything regarding reading. Can you falsify this?

Everything i have told you already falsifies it. And yes, I find it much easier to read in a bar than listen. Effort is a matter of familiarity, not intention.