There is no doubt that the method of remembering plays an important role in our daily lives in many places. Some say that learning facts at school is crucial for students, others disagree. They may have their own reasons to support their views. If I had to choose one, I would say that understanding ideas and concepts is more important. Here are some reasons.
When you know the ideas and concepts of something, you can remember them for a long time, and when you recall them, you know how to explain them to yourself and others. For example, when I give a paper on a disease in class, I first focused on the facts and read the papers, and I wasn’t sure if my classmates understood well what I was talking about, because their reaction wasn’t very good. The next time, I changed direction and explained what causes this disease and how it affects our bodies. I made an effort to focus on ideas and concepts so that people could understand them better, and when I did that, I really didn’t need to read paper because I had concepts and maps about it in my head.
Another reason worth mentioning is that humans have a limited capacity to remember everything. You can get a good grade if you remember everything from the textbook, but are you sure you will remember everything after a month without ideas and concepts? Even one of my professors advised me not to try to memorize all the diseases and their treatments. She said that was impossible, instead try to understand how it works and how it happens so you can apply it to other diseases.
In short, I strongly believe that it is more important for students to understand the ideas and concepts in order to have a longer memory span and be able to apply the concepts to other things relatively easily. All in all, the importance of ideas and concepts in learning cannot be overstated in the pursuit of better knowledge and skills in life.