Issue28 不知道自己的写作有哪些问题，请楼主提出宝贵意见

magyzhangUID: 2611176

TOPIC: ISSUE28 - "Students should memorize facts only after they have studied the ideas, trends, and concepts that help explain those facts. Students who have learned only facts have learned very little."
WORDS:515
DATE: 2010/3/5
The speaker asserts that students should first study the ideas, trends, and concepts that help explain facts and then try to memorize these facts, because learning only facts is helpless to their study. I agree with the speaker's assertion that to study the ideas, trends, and concepts make us learn facts much more meaningful. However, in some cases it is very hard to do as the speaker said and only learning facts is also a right way of study.
I agree with the speaker's assertion that if we learn only facts we learn very little. On the one hand, if people only memorize facts and don't try to explain them, their learning stops on the surface and they get very little information. It is just like you eat food but don't digest it. On the other hand, rote memorization of the facts is a mental exercise, which only practice memorization techniques, and contributes nothing to our study skills such as critical thinking, innovation and imagination. Thus, students who have learned only facts have learned very little.
I also agree that to memorize facts after one learns ideas and concepts holds certain advantages. The world around us has its meaning since we gave it certain explanation. With a conceptual framework, students can get systematic knowledge from the facts. Therefore, they are able to memorize the fact to begin with, and hardly to forget it as time passes. By explaining the facts, they improve the ability of study-critical thinking, innovation and imagination. They also can find the similarities from many different and complicated facts, thus learning of these facts becomes easy.
Nevertheless, in some cases it is impossible for people to study ideas and concepts before they study the facts. When SARS first appeared, people couldn't use any knowledge they had to explain it. According to the speaker's assertion, people would never know what kind of disease it is and how to treat it. In fact from studying many cases, they found the causes, symptoms, and even the treatments of the disease. Thus, theories, concepts and ideas come from empirical observations-i.e., facts. And the speaker's assertion gets the learning process backward.
I disagree with the speaker for another reason: strictly follow the speaker's advice would lead to ignorant and wrong theories. If theories were not provided from the facts, they probably reflected people's hopes and desires. Accordingly, the creators would tend to find out facts that support their ideas, and overlook facts that refute them. In the feudal society ruling classes used dogmatism to enslave people's mind and furthermore control their behaviors. Many of their theories have been proved wrong and even dangerous. If students strictly adhere to the speaker's advice, they could hardly provide any advancement of knowledge, and human progress will stop forever.
In sum, learning facts only contributes little to our study skills and makes our learning not thorough and unsystematic. Yet, since facts are the very source theories, concepts and ideas come from, without facts we can learn nothing. In the final analysis, students should learn facts together with concepts, ideas, and trends.