Educators should teach facts only after their students have studied the ideas trends and concepts that help explain those facts

With ever-growing ideas coming up to explain a particular fact, students often see themselves in situations where they have to pick up a lot of pre-requisites to better understand the concepts delivered in the classroom. The prompt states that only after the students are exposed to the concepts that explain the facts does it make sense for the educators to convey the facts in the classroom. I mostly disagree with the prompt due to the reasons stated below. However, I do concede, in some specific cases when the level of facts being discussed call for a priori knowledge of some concepts, it makes sense for the students to study the details in advance.

Firstly, if the facts are being conveyed only after the students possess prior knowledge of the relevant concepts, the whole classroom experience is somewhat shattered. In my opinion, this would cause a hindrance to active discussion in the classroom since a student would be of the opinion that he has accustomed adequate knowledge of the topic and would be stuck with his own point of view. Moreover, directing the student to study all the background ideas to better understand a concept would consume a lot of his time and this must be avoided since the main goal of the classroom is to impart knowledge. Therefore, it makes sense for the educator to convey all the ideas related to the fact in the classroom after the student sufficiently understands the fact.

Secondly, the concept of studying about the subject beforehand kills the most necessary trait in the classroom – “curiosity”. For example, I distinctly recall that in one of my engineering classes, I had a “oh wow” moment when I could connect a concept that was taught in a different lecture. Students could potentially miss out on these kinds of moments which would be the very reason that makes the class entertaining. So, in my opinion, it is important for the educators to reveal the details related to the facts in the class, one by one to keep the students on their toes.

However, in specific cases, it makes sense for the students to spend some time on going through the concepts required to understand the facts. There could be some specific facts which require a priori knowledge of the current trends or might call for deeper understanding of related subjects. For example, I used to find my machine learning classes difficult since I didn't have the required math foundation which would have helped me to grasp concepts being discussed in the lecture. So, in specific cases, it becomes important for the student to spend some time going through the concepts especially when the complexity of the topics call for it.