I do not actually agree with the opinion that it is important for students to understand the concept rather than the the facts. I refute about this idea because of three reasons.
First of all, we are not sure for the accuracy of the ideas or the concepts. There might be mistakes or even fallacies and that means we have to examine it every time. For example, in the medival Europe, every people believed that the sun is rotating the earth while earth is stading just still. Galilei, however, proved that concept is totally wrong. Of course he could have killed because of his bold suggestion which was the earth is rotating around the sun, and it turned out to be true and it affects our lives and the scientific studies of today. it means every ideas we undoubtedly accept should be scrutinized before it is taught to the students and all we have to do is teaching them the facts
Secondly, understanding only the ideas or concepts will limit the students' creativity. If students focus only on the ideas or concepts they are likely to ingest them without doubt. As I mentioned above, the Galilei's case, every people including the distinguished scholars didn't even had the doubt about the false ideas : the sun is rotating around the earth. I think that is because the people in that era had just tried to take the concepts into them without critical thinking and this led the people believe the false idea for centuries. This is the case when we place greater emphasize on the concepts or ideas rather than the facts.
Lastly, imposing students to understand more about the ideas and theories than the facts will lead us to the impracticality of our lives. The ideas are useful only when they are appliable to every human beings lives. Thus, the fact that you don't know how to apply the idea to the real world even though you have perfect understanding of that theory is useless. However, if you learned the facts very much, so if you are able to explain almost all phenomenon occurs around us clearly you can persuade people, and the ideas or concepts will be applied naturally according to that facts. You might think it's quite reversed but it is true and this way is more effective.
I do not suggest that we should only take advantage of learing facts. Of course it is worthy to understand the concepts or theories and they are even the best way of begin the study. However, understanding concepts without learning facts will not influence our daily life. And it will be problematic in the sense of practicality of human life. |