Experience or Books?

There is always a heated debate that "which is a better way to learn?books? or experience?" it seems that each side has their convincing argument. Those who support books say knowledge in the books is most important while those who support experience despise books. so, who is right? here our journal provides two essays to clear your doubts.

BOOK?

OR EXPERIENCE?

 賴仕偉
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken.” After reading Chapman’s Homer, John Keats thinks himself as an astronomer who has found a new planet. According to Keats’ poem, we can know that a good book has such a tremendous influence on a person. Surely, books can change a person deeply; but it is experience that has a more direct impact on us. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that I suppose the superiority of experience to books. In my opinion, experience and books complement each other and none of them can be absent from our life.

For me, books are the accumulation and concretization many forerunners’ experiences. When we are reading the books written by them, we can gain their thoughts, their experiences and even their worldview. In view of this, sometimes we can prevent ourselves from the danger that we may get into. What’s more, since the world is too large for us to travel around, books are exactly a good medium for us to know the outline of it. However, books may also be obstacles for us sometimes if a person thinks the contents in them as his whole world. There is a word in Buddhism: “As long as the Buddhism and its scriptures exist, people can definitely not arrive at enlightenment without other’s guidance.”

Books have limitations, and that’s the reason why we still need the experiences gone through by ourselves. Undoubtedly, we have gained a lot of knowledge from books, but we cannot deny that those books inevitably include the subjective opinions of their writers. Some authors only write down what they delight or what they want to write. Therefore, at this time, an experience is a process which is used to prove and correct the views we have got from the books and finally reconstruct them to be our own thoughts. Also, experiencing is the most direct way to contact this world, and no matter how awful and depressing an experience is, it is still an experience worth remembering.

So, I suppose we cannot lack either of them, and both of them do not surpass each other. Truly, we need to experience what the predecessors have experienced in order not to be confined in other people’s thoughts and values, and an experience is also a way to reflect what we have gained from books. However, books are still the foundations when we have to do something like the authors had gone through before. An experience is a gun while books are bullets. Without a gun, we cannot shoot out any one of them; and without bullets, a gun will become useless no matter how sophisticated it is.

To sum up, whether we prefer experience or books, we cannot deny the importance of the other. On the one hand, we will lack basic knowledge and understanding of things if we don’t read books at all. On the other hand, without experience, we will live in the ivory tower which is made of other people’s worldview. Therefore, only when the moment we go out to experience with the knowledge in certain degree, we will be able to act as if carrying a loaded gun, firing it continuously

        

        宋菀欣

Well goes the saying “life itself is a constant learning process.” From the cradle to grave, we keep learning, undergoing a metamorphosis from an ignorant child to a mature citizen. Nearly everyone agrees that learning is critically important, but in what way? It seems to be extremely controversial. Some say we should work hard on academic success. To paraphrase, they think knowledge from books is better. In contrast, others strongly recommend that we should gain knowledge from experience, rather than books. As far as I’m concerned, I believe experience and books are equally important; they are indispensable to each other.

Both experience and books have the efficacy of gaining knowledge, but the process is slightly different. Experience allows us to engage in an activity personally. In the process, we make, find the mistake, and learning from it. Also, experience will give you a profound lesson that only belongs to you, and you may be able to draw inspiration form it. In contrast, by reading books, we get knowledge from other’s account. These books are timeless wisdom of generations of people. Reading text in the books, absorbing knowledge, we will ultimately change it into our own wisdom. To sum up, both experience and books are ways to learn, broaden our view, and make us mature adults.

However, some people place too much emphasis on either experience or books. Some of them firmly believe that only through experience can we fully understand a thing, while books are less practical and flexible. Therefore, they just constantly participate in activities, ignoring books. Unlike those who support experience, other people prefer books. They think that reading books is the best way to explore the treasury of knowledge whereas experience takes too much time.

As a matter of fact, the best way to learn is a balanced combination of experience and books. If one just focuses on books and ignore experience, he or she will definitely lack the ability to solve problems, and then become a so-called “nerd”. Actually, although experience is time-consuming, getting some experience is necessary and worthwhile for those who completely focuses on books. Similarly, if one puts too much emphasis on experience and doesn’t care about the knowledge from books, one will see the surface of an event, only to find that he or she learns little from experience when encountering problems. Take travelling for example; travelling is a good way to experience charming local culture; however, a paucity of historical knowledge about this place will be a hindrance for you to get a deeper insight into the local culture. In other words, if a professor who specialized in the Maya culture travels to the Macha Picchu in Peru, he or she will get a deeper understanding into the culture while we who know nothing about Maya culture will simply be amazed at the spectacle of Macha Picchu. Only when one thoroughly understands the knowledge from books can he or she think deeply when one gets into a special situation.

In conclusion, I think it is high time for everyone to realize that experience and books are equally important, for they will complement each other, and a balanced combination of experience and books will infinitely enlarge the effect of learning. By striking a balance between experience and books, I believe that we will soon become a mature, well-learned adult.