Are books more important than experience?
The most common ways we learn knowledge are books and experience. The signal of we beginning to learn from books is when we enter school and at the time we graduate, the book-learning days comes to an end. While the span that we gain knowledge form experience is as long as our whole life time. We are so curious about the world that can't wait to try everything seems not harmful to us during which we may sometimes hurt, but most of time learn to grow up and maturate, learn to get the whole picture of the real world we live in in the rest of our life.
Books, admittedly, are the most convenient way to wise your understanding of the universe, broaden your horizon of the changing society and increase your intellectual ability. We learn calculation and math, physics, chemistry, sharpening our logical thinking capability; We learn alphabet, reading, writing, speech, debate, improving our oral expression and the sensitivity of the beauty of world. It is book, unfolding itself thoroughly to those who respect them, turn to them and search for truth in them anytime. It is book that accompanies us in our adolescence which is the turning point of the development of personality and that bridge the gap between wise and ignorance.
However, the real world is built on the base of what we have created not the shakable foundation of what we take grant for. So we step on the journal of experience as early as born and as late as we pass away, much longer than the time spent with book. We learn to tell sweet or bitter by taste, learn to distinguish pretty or ugly by sight which comes mainly from the intuition of experience. When we grow up, we study the text knowledge of arithmetic at school, but we can’t master the skill until we calculate the expenditure of 2 kilograms of potato and 3 pieces of cucumber which at various price. We read James Shirley’s poem, but we can not really understand the magnificence and significance of the beauty until we gaze the vivid landscape of the natural; We recite William Shakespeare’s drama, but we can not be revealed to the deepest channel of the human spirit until we enjoy the excitement of sharing or afflicted the bitter of abandon. It is the experience, comedy or tragedy, enable us to steer the boat in the ocean of the complicated and demanding society.
Summarizing the said above I want to admit that both book and practice is important in the process of learning. While none of the two can be considered as absolute substitute for the other, I would place the practical experience in advance position in terms of importance. |