Essay on Learning

Question: It has been said that not all learning takes place in the classroom. Compare and contrast knowledge gained from personal experience with knowledge gained from classroom instruction.

We might be sitting in a classroom, listening to the teacher droning about algebra. We might be scrambling ourselves some eggs, realizing that it tastes better made with butter than with oil. Different these two events may seem, nevertheless we are learning something. When we think of learning, we usually think of learning things at school. However, not everything that we learn is from school. In life, through our experience, we also learn many things.

           These two methods of learning are in some ways similar, and in some ways different. The biggest difference is how we are taught, and what we gain by learning from these methods.

           Unlike learning from school, when we learn from experience we are not taught by teachers. In school, teachers plan out our education; what subject we learn, whether we will have to write essays or not, etc. In life, there are no teachers to guide us. What we learn will usually come from pure coincidence; for example, you might try scrambling eggs with butter because you ran out of cooking oil, and find that it tastes better.

           At school, we gain the ability to think more intellectually, and we gain academic knowledge. By learning algebra and geometry, we learn how to think more mathematically and logically. In history class we learn about past wars, mistakes of the human race. Through experience we gain common sense. We learn how to cook better scrambled eggs, how to survive when people around you are feeling upset.

           Although these differences exist, there is a fundamental similarity to both methods of learning; we learn, we gain something from it, and it is useful for our lives.

           Common sense that we learn from experience is very important, since it teaches us how to live life more easily. It teaches us how to deal with trouble with other people, like in the example with the angry parents. It teaches us how to enjoy life with tastier scrambled eggs, and lots more. At school we gain things that common sense cannot give us. We earn some valuable thinking skills and knowledge, with which we can solve problems which cannot usually be solved just by common sense. For example, if we learn engineering at college, we can probably repair cars better than people who have never been to engineering school.

           In school or through life, we learn many things. What we learn and what we gain, and how we learn those things are very different. However the most important thing to know is that what we learn from both eventually makes our lives easier.