Students should learn ideas and concepts or learn facts?

Truth be told, today, thanks to the improvement of science and technology, the range of knowledge that could be learned is too vast inasmuch as no one can maintain all of them in his or her mind. When it comes to question that which of them is more essential for students to learn ideas and concepts or facts, there will be a hectic debate because everyone holds a different attitude. In my perspective, we should attach more importance to the understanding of principals than facts. I will elaborate upon my opinion in the next paragraphs.

First and foremost, according to the opinion of a large number of scientists, by learning concepts, one can easily predict most of the facts. By way of illustration, in chemical science, if someone is familiar with the chemical bonds and their strength, then it will not be difficult for him or her to predict the melting point and the boiling point of a great number of compounds.

The second reason that should be taken into consideration is that nowadays, many of facts for instance in chemistry, such as enthalpy, or combustion energy of materials can be found in tables that are always available. As a matter of fact, an excellent student is someone who can use this data, know the significance of them, and even is aware of their origins and the way that they were obtained.

Last but not least, as everyone knows, concepts usually go to the long-term memory and once a student learned them, he or she can remember them anytime they want. In contrast, facts are forgettable material that often after the test day, if you ask many students about them, it is difficult for them to answer your question, because they had been forced to learn them for the exam, and after the test, there is not such a force anymore.

All in all, taking thoroughly all the above mentioned reasons into account, this conclusion can be drawn that, students should be required to learn ideas and concepts instead of facts because the principals are more essential to be understood, and one can use them to predict facts. In addition, facts are accessible everywhere in the form of charts and tables, and learning way of using them is necessary, not to maintaining them in our minds. What's more, people usually forget facts soon, and devoting time for their understanding is actually a waste of time.