In this day and age, society is gradually recognising the importance of practical skills and appreciating these skills more than in the past. Some schools and educational institutions are also starting to promote teaching them as well. Therefore, there is a growing debate about whether hands-on experiences or traditional subjects are more worthy to be taught to students. While I acknowledge that academic curriculum is valuable, I believe that soft skills are ultimately more beneficial.
It is undeniable that studying theories assists students to build up the basis if they want to research more in an academic way as well as carry out experiments in reality. The reason is everyone who wants to put their knowledge into practice has to learn or read them first through some certain books or documents. If not, they may get into trouble as they do not know what equipment is required and what they should do during the process. For instance, cultivating plants is not just digging holes, putting seeds in them and waiting for the result, farmers have to learn what soil is suitable for the plants, how to prevent them from diseases and insects and so on. To become a skilled expertise at a field, everyone have to pick up knowledge from several academic sources.
On the other hand, practical skills bring more advantages in studying and in real life. Firstly, if students put knowledge into practice by doing real actions themselves, they could figure out how the theories actually work. As a result, these hands-on experiences help students to achieve higher scores at school without learning by heart every single word of the lesson stressfully. Furthermore, everyday life events happen in a flash, so preparing life skills previously enables students to solve unpredictable problems faster and more easily. In particular, imagine two grade-8 students both having fire accidents at home – compared to the child studying academic subjects, the other child mastered at problem-solving skills would not be worried and know what to do to save themselves first as well as how to apply his knowledge into real life quickly.
To sum up, while traditional learning has its merits, I hold the opinion that teaching practical knowledge for students can bring more advantages considered to all aspects from education to practicality. In the future, if there is more schools agree to foster real-world practice, I hope that our national education will change completely in a positive way.