Street Knowledge vs. Books Knowledge: Compare Learning from Studying and Learning by Experience

People always are learning practicing through their whole lives. By reading words in text book, such as toy, car, train, etc. people have the concept and ideas. They further understand the actual meaning of these words by playing toys and riding or driving cars, trains, etc.

Education (books) and experience are the main two channels for people to gain their knowledge. Each of them plays different roles for people. In my opinion, knowledge from experience is more important than that from books.

Experience first can prove if the knowledge from books are true or false. Textbooks are very wonderful in teaching people essential principles: how is the world looks like? What is the basic law of change of people and things? We can learn a lot through primary school secondary school, until university. However, people can only understand the real meaning of those from the books and justify them if they are right through practices. A few hundred years ago, people learnt from text book that the earth was flat. However, scientists found that the statement was wrong through observations and measurement.

The knowledge from experience can improve and advance the world and our society. As books have limitation, they only teach us what people found in the past. The knowledge from the books are constrained to the certain conditions and environment. For example, mould and tools design for plastics industry. The university course only taught me very simple cases. Most knowledge are obtained from various different and complicated cases in my career.

There are a lot of new inventions and new products which could not be found from textbooks. Our society and world are developed through continuous practices. Those knowledge are never found in books, such as internet, e-business, etc. they are all developed through new practices.

“The truth comes from practices and experiences”. As the saying states, people are continually discovering new things and assessing the creditability of the knowledge written in books. The knowledge from experience helps us much more than those from books.