It has been said, "Not all learning takes place in the classroom." Compare and contrast knowledge gained from personal experience with knowledge gained from classroom instruction. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?
It is understood that people learn during all their life. They can learn from their own experiences and/or mistakes, from other people’s mistakes; they can be advised by other people, which are not teachers; or they can read a lot to acquire knowledge. All types of learning are good because the aim is good. In which case are the results better?
Schools have experienced teachers which can always advise or suggest what to learn and how to learn. They help us focusing on our main goal. Furthermore, teachers can suggest us reading literature, or they can help us to find the suitable for us book/idea/formula, etc. I am sure that people who prefer to learn alone would be able to find the same books, or to formulate the same ideas, but after a much longer period.
Another big advantage of school learning is the community. In school students enrich their skills, knowledge and abilities, but they also communicate with their peers and teachers and they develop their characters, their communicational skills without any additional effort.
I can not say that the knowledge gained from personal experience is not important. In earlier times people were not having the possibility to attend schools. Those people built the world we live in nowadays. We must understand and appreciate it.
On the other hand, the 20th Century was a real boom for all the sciences. Humanity needed thousands of years to discover the coffee and only 50 years to discover the wireless technologies, the internet, the moon and, generally, the space. It is obviously that all these wouldn’t take place if people would continue learning from their own experience.
In my opinion, people achieve more scientific knowledge in schools and universities. But there is another kind of education which can not be always taught in schools and has as subjects the respect, love, appreciation etc. People must achieve both types of education. So, I can safely affirm that both learning sources (school and personal experience) are extremely important.
When writing essays on a topic, I really try to debate, but I am not so good in it :) As I can observe, almost all the TOEFL essay topics contain the duality "to agree/to not agree". It means that the one who writes must be extremly radical or has to lie :) I think that this is why my essays are amalgamated and unstructured; it is because I usually think of both statements, like in this case. I do think school learning is good, but I can not ignore the other type, which is also good and important.So, sorry for not being able to provide a "five-steps-scheme" this time :P :)
Thank you in advance!