This month, we asked our students their opinion on the following topic:
“Not everything that is learned is contained in books. Do you agree or disagree?”
Our CISL San Francisco student Belén Candenas wrote an articulate essay on the subject and we are proud to share it on the CISL Blog. Congratulations, Belen!
Knowledge obtained from experience/books. Which source is more important?
I totally agree with this assertion. Is the usual question about theory versus practice.
Under my point of view, books (nowadays we could say internet, too) are invaluable to acquire knowledge and to know everything about our world. Books keep inside the wisdom that human beings have compile from ages hitherto, but the experience can never be replaced by them.
Usually is said: “learning by doing”. Try it, do it once, twice, three times, as many times as you need until you know how it must be done; nobody will become a painter only reading treatises about painting.
Learning a foreigner language is another example. One can spend his whole live trying to learn it from different sources (among these, books), but one just has a good command of this language if uses it and puts it into practice.
Moreover, there are many aspects related with emotions, personal relationships, feelings that are no possible known if one has not experienced them, even reading the most sensitive poetry.
No matter how much you have read about love, happiness, envy, tender, you do know nothing about of if you have not felt them.
To summarize, the information contained in books shows you how to do anything, but it doesn´t mean that you know to do it. Only your own experience, packed with successes and failures is able to does it.