Opinion Essay
3. 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?
Knowledge is the key to strive excellence in our life. We gain our knowledge about our lives and the world around us from two channels which are books and experience. These two sources are indeed both important. However, most of our knowledge is based on our participation in real world situations. Hence, I personally believe that experience bares more valuable knowledge compare with books because it is more practical and reliable.
No doubt, I would not deny that the fact that reading books form a wide range of our knowledge. We obtain much knowledge about law, chemistry, history, mathematics, and language when we read. We could use people’s exposure that it is very difficult or impossible to do by ourselves such as journey to the space. In addition, with reading great stories of prominent people, we can get ideas and enlightenments about how they overcome their daily life problems, and how they tackle failure in life before achieving success in the future. These are valuable lessons an individual needs to learn in this lifetime.
Nonetheless, experience is more practical as the adage claims, “Experience is the best teacher”. There are many types of knowledge that people could not acquire just by reading books. Books do not deal with things such as feelings of love, tastes of delicacies, and music melody. In addition, there are many skills and techniques that we can learn from practice. It is pointless to learn swimming, to drive a car, and to ride a bicycle by reading books. These skills must be gained practically by our hands on. Thus, it is clear that learning from practice is more effective than learning from books.
Besides that, experience provides greater reliability. There is a Chinese proverb says, “Practice is the only criterion of
Knowledge is the key to strive excellence in our life. We gain our knowledge about our lives and the world around us from two channels which are books and experience. These two sources are indeed both important. However, most of our knowledge is based on our participation in real world situations. Hence, I personally believe that experience bares more valuable knowledge compare with books because it is more practical and reliable.
No doubt, I would not deny that the fact that reading books form a wide range of our knowledge. We obtain much knowledge about law, chemistry, history, mathematics, and language when we read. We could use people’s exposure that it is very difficult or impossible to do by ourselves such as journey to the space. In addition, with reading great stories of prominent people, we can get ideas and enlightenments about how they overcome their daily life problems, and how they tackle failure in life before achieving success in the future. These are valuable lessons an individual needs to learn in this lifetime.
Nonetheless, experience is more practical as the adage claims, “Experience is the best teacher”. There are many types of knowledge that people could not acquire just by reading books. Books do not deal with things such as feelings of love, tastes of delicacies, and music melody. In addition, there are many skills and techniques that we can learn from practice. It is pointless to learn swimming, to drive a car, and to ride a bicycle by reading books. These skills must be gained practically by our hands on. Thus, it is clear that learning from practice is more effective than learning from books.
Besides that, experience provides greater reliability. There is a Chinese proverb says, “Practice is the only criterion of