It has been said, “Not everything that is learned is contained in books.” Compare and contrast knowledge gained from experience with knowledge gained from books. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?
(a) People always are learning and practicing through their whole lives. From reading words in textbook such as toy, car, train etc., people have the concept and ideas. They further understand the actual meaning of these words by playing toys and riding or driving cars, trains etc.
Education (books) and experience are the main two channels for People to gain their knowledge. Each plays different roles for people. In my opinion, knowledge from experience is more important than that from books.
Experience first can prove if the knowledge from books are true or false. Textbooks are very wonderful in teaching people essential principles, how is the world looks like? What is the basic law of change of people and things? We can learn a lot through primary school, secondary school until university. However, people can only understand the really meaning of those form books and justify them if they are right through practices. A few hundred years ago, people learnt from textbook that the earth was flat. However scientists found that was wrong through observations and measurement.
The knowledge from experience can improve and advance the world and our society. As books have limitation, they only teach us what people found in the past. The knowledge from the books is constrained to the certain conditions and environment. For example, mould and tools design for plastics industry, the university course only taught me very simple cases, most knowledge is obtained from various different and complicated cases in my career.
There are a lot new inventions and new products, which could not be found from textbooks. Our society and world are developed through continuous practices, those knowledge, never found in books, such as internet, e-business etc. are all developed through new practices.
“The truth comes from practices and experience”, people are continually discovering new things and assessing the credibility of the knowledge written in books. The knowledge from experience helps us much more than those from books.
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