ESL Blogs

Schools are places where we can start learning everything as a basic knowledge when we were a child. That knowledge maybe helps us when we grow up and start working in our society. But, between 2 ideas, things learned in school or through life experiences, I think things learned through life experiences are more important to a person’s education, because beside what we learned in schools, there are also a lot of things we can learn outside our schools.

First of all, we are just taught by our teachers and sometime by our friends at schools. Depend on teachers’ knowledge and the ways they teach in classes, the knowledge and information we input can be changed. Good teachers certainly have good teaching methods, but in a small space like school, those teachers are limited and what we can learn from them is few and limited too. Opposite to that, in life we can find out “good teachers” everywhere we go, because everyone we meet has at least one good thing that we should learn from them. We not only learn from them, but also be learned by them, we and people around us can become teachers to each other in many ways.

Besides, in most of school, books are used as the most necessary tool in teaching and learning, but the knowledge in books is not enough and parts of them are just used as theories. Theory and practice are different and there is a long distance from theory to practice. It doesn't mean that all we learned at school can be used in life and of course, in the contrary, there are a lot of things in life we cannot learn at schools. In other words, to a certain limit and depend on different situations, the knowledge in books can or cannot be used in real life where we have to learn by practicing as more as possible. Moreover, books are written by people who are chosen and considered as professors at any field. So, the more they can write in books the more they have to learn and practice themselves through life experiences, because the valuable theories are ones which have been proven by practice. In short, like us, they had to learn a lot before they can write any book, to the utmost extent we can believe in what they wrote but we need not believe all. We can check and find out by ourselves through our experiences instead of believing passively in all which are written in books.

In addition, real things in life are more interesting than boring letters in books. We can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste everything we want. We can feel them by our own ways; of course learning things is included. We know what is needed and can choose the best way to learn for ourselves. Information and knowledge are almost opened, so we can choose whatever we want to know, to learn and can learn actively by ourselves whenever, wherever. Life is the most interesting and largest school where we can learn everything forever.

In conclusion, because human’s knowledge is unlimited, so the more we learn, the less we understand. We should learn as more as we can as an interest, not as a duty. And with above reasons, I agree with idea that things learned through life experiences are more important to a person’s education.