Educators should base their assessment of students' learning not on students' grasp of facts but on the ability to expalin the ideas, trends, and concepts that those facts illustrate.

As the expansion of education brings knowledge to a wider range of people, it has been a heat topic about how to assess the students’ learning. The claim believes that it is more appropriate to assess their ability of explaining the ideas ,trend and concepts which illustrate the facts, underlying the importance of realizing the trend and ideas behind the facts than merely memorizing them by rote. With few exceptions, I agree with the statement totally.

Although the claim stands to a large ground and embodies a profound meaning of study, I concede there are something that we just need to know literally. For example, in science area, it seems unnecessary or even absurd to know every cause and trend of every element on the chemical periodical table--- even if it can help you remember those elements more quickly, it is still acknowledged by most people that we need not waste much time on knowing the stories of them. It is the same with the alpha graph. When a kid enter into primary school, his teacher usually does not teach him the tales of every alpha, but just let him remember them. Since these knowledge is so basic that we only need to know the facts in order to spare more time employing them.

Nevertheless, when it comes to other kinds of facts, especially those require more understanding, it seems more appropriate for us to get familiar with the meanings behind them. Consider the case of teaching the famous theory of Einstein, the teacher need first to introduce the cause of the idea of relativity from Newton’s fundamental physical rules, otherwise the students may not able to have a good master of the complex system of knowledge. In social science field, students are also supposed to learn about the trends, ideas and concepts the facts illustrate. For instance, as to the evolution of social structure, different scholars of different classes purported various theories. Karl Marx’s social conflicts theory and Max Weber’s social stratification explain it from heterogeneous angles. Therefore, in order to command those ideas comprehensively, the students should better be evaluated through their realization of the roots of them.

To take the step further, in most cases, students could not virtually command the facts, let alone develop their own ideas about those facts unless they get to know the trends, thesis and the concepts behind them. As the saying goes, a man can never create a new theory if he does not know about the current facts .Take Einstein for example again, after examining deeply into former physical theories, he found them unable to illuminate the mysterious facts of the speed and state of a object when it travels at an extraordinary high speed. Finally he established his own theory to illustrate them. So, we can draw on these cases that how well a student learn need to be assessed through the degree to which he knowing about the history and concepts of those facts.

In summary, the facts themselves pale compared with the ideas and trends of them.In the process of pursuing true knowledge, the teachers are better assess their students in all-round perspectives, not just confine in how much they memorize the facts. Only in this way the education can really contribute to the cultivation of more independent thoughts and innovative ideas.