My take on a question in Quora:

"Is it more important for students to understand ideas and concepts than it is for them to learn facts?"

Of course, in my view, it is always more important for students to understand ideas and concepts than it is for them to learn facts.

True understanding always implies a deeper intellectual engagement with the subject.

It goes beyond conceptual coherency and personal relevancy on the part of the learner, and entails the capacity:

• to explain each idea or concept to self and/or to others in own words;
• to draw useful examples or practical illustrations from own experience;
• to connect each idea or concept to a larger scheme of things;
• to apply each idea or concept to a multitude of application contexts or settings;

Learning facts, on the other hand, is more of a memorization exercise. Rote memorisation, to be more precise, and it’s always unstable, due to the dynamic and subjective nature of memory.

In most instances, learning facts alone often poses problems of putting theory to work in the real world.

As most employers of today often lament about new college and university graduates: Good only in theory, but very poor in practice.

In more realistic terms, they can talk, but they can’t do, let alone having the personal initiative to start a project, without being supervised.

There lies the dilemma of learning too much facts in today’s colleges and universities.