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

I agree with this statement. The author provides the idea that one should first be taught to understand basic ideas and concepts. Why? Because any fact is an illustration of more complex and sophisticated thing. One can memorize lots of facts. Nevertheless, if he or she can't explain these facts, can't drow any conclusion from them, can't compare them and put knowledge into practise, what's the use of all these facts? This man is like a parrot who can speak, but doesn't see any sense in such speaking. Person who doesn't have deep understanding of facts can't use his knowledge. The main assumption of this statement is that only understanding of facts makes these facts useful for us. Ideas, trends, and concepts give us such an understanding.

Moreover, let's look at the construction of this statement. “Educators should teach...” instead of “Students should learn”. To my mind, such an emphasis on a person, who teaches, is a crusial point. Why? Because the ultimate goal of any teacher is to explain. Student can learn something without any help. He or she can read about dates, events, etc. To memorize something is easy. But to understand is sometimes very hard. For this reason students need a teacher who can explain ideas and concepts as sophisticated and abstruse matters, which is difficult to understand without help. For this reason this statement seems very reasonable to me. Any teacher should explain. Facts can be read and understood without his interference.

My history course can be provided as an example. I had a great teacher at school. She always tried to give us the full picture of events and to explain what influence one event had on the future. She did not just retell the facts, she showed the interaction between them, and she gave us an idea of historical development. Causes and consequences were at the center of her lessons. She taught us to appraise any event, not just to memorize it. And we did it because we had a good base and understood the main historical ideas and concepts.

My friend attended different school, and she complained that her teacher forced the students just to memorize the dates and prepare for the tests. She didn't teach them, she just retold the material of the textbook. As a consecuence, my friend had problems at the university because of weak cognitive reasoning skills.

For these reasons, the aforementioned statement seems reasonable to me. Understanding of ideas, concepts and trends teaches students to think critically. It also teaches them not to just believe in facts, but to ask questions, to be more active in their research activity and to put knowledge into practise.