Agree or disagree, it is more important to teach concepts and ideas than teaching facts

It is a highly debated issue whether or not learning concepts are more important than learning facts, and the following discussion can be approached from several angles due to its complexity. Some people say that learning facts is the important way to understand the material for anything. They say that learning the fact is easier than learning the concept. I understand this point of view, but I have a different opinion. I believe that learning the Ideas and concepts is more important than learning the facts, and the following discussion reveals my stand and reasoning.

To begin with, when you learn the concept, it becomes much easier for you to solve problems. For example, I work as a pharmacist, and part of my job is to make and mix medicines. Few weeks ago, I asked the pharmacy technician to prepare an ointment that contains three products in it. She just memorize the way of doing it, so, when she exceeded the amount of the oil, more than she should add, she stopped and couldn’t continue. It was so easy for me to correct the mass because I know the concept and I just made the calculation then add more form the two other products, and the problem solved. As you could see, because I didn’t memorize the preparation, and I learn the concept, it was easier for me to solve the problem.

Second, we could find facts easy these days. Because the internet, we could print any word and find all the information about it. For instance, two days ago, I was looking for information about kidney failure. I already studied the medicines that we used in this case, but I needed more information about it as a facts and reasoning for this disease. I found a lot of information about it on net. They all describes of what cause this disease and the treatment for it. Then, I asked my husband, he is a doctor, He explains to me the concepts of having a kidney failure, and how the body react through that. His explanation was so good and really helped me to understand the way the medicine help the body who have that failure. All the information on the net was about facts and you can’t connect them together if you didn’t understand the idea behind it, none of the information on the net explains the concepts because it is wide information that connect by each other.

In conclusion, I believe that it is much more important to learn concepts than to learn the facts. With concept, you could solve the problems and you can’t get it easily as you could do with the facts. That’s why I encourage teachers to concentrate on teaching ideas and concepts.