It has been said, “Not everything that is learned is contained in books.” Compare and contrast knowledge gained from experience with knowledge gained from books. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?

Knowledge is a very important part of our society. Not only because it helps human achieve making such great development in the past thousands of years, but also it helps us understand this world better. Some might hold the view that knowledge gained from experience is more important than the knowledge gained from books; others would disagree. In my view, the knowledge gained from experience is more important for two important reasons.

The main reason is that the experience provides us with the kind of knowledge that has more profound impact on the individuals. The knowledge in the book maybe true or interesting, but they are easy to forget. One the other hand the knowledge gained from experience is remembered much longer and can be constantly used in real life. For example, I was a very naughty boy back in the elementary school who liked playing with matches. Although it had been written in the books in class that children should not play matches because they would easily get hurt if not careful, I still couldn't help playing with it during the spring festival in China, where matches are needed for igniting the fireworks. And unfortunately I burned myself one time and I could never forget the pain I suffered at the moment. So after that experience I would never play matches again. As you can see, knowledge learned from experience has more influence in our lives.

Another reason is that the knowledge learned through reading books is not necessarily true but the knowledge gained from experience is. Books are written by people who sometimes need to use false information to fool the public or to get fame. Such case is not rarely seen in the history. For example, we all learned that earth is the center of the universe was a ridiculous concept of the ancient people throughout the globe because of the lack of understanding the nature and religious impacts. But people lived thousands of years ago did learn such misleading knowledge from books. And then many scientists had been able to prove it was wrong with scrupulous calculation after the gathering the data of the stars' movement through observation. From that example I learnt that knowledge gained from experience is more practical.

In a nutshell, the knowledge gained from experience is more important. Not only because it is more influential but also more practical. So people should experience more to learn more knowledge.