Here’s a small story from today. I was discussing an economics problem with a classmate, when another classmate, clearly annoyed, said: “XXX, why do you always like to come up with weird questions to trouble people? Just memorize what the textbook says! Why think so much?” In that instant I understood why some people spend a lot of time studying yet see no results. It’s not because they’re dumb. Their method is wrong!
Don’t you understand that learning and thinking must go hand in hand? While learning, you must also ask “why.” Only then will your memory be deep, and only then can you truly learn something, instead of memorizing everything. If someone asks you the reason and all you can say is, “The textbook says so, why think about it so much?”, then no wonder……
Of course, understanding something is harder than memorizing it. It takes more time, and it requires you to use your brain. But this is the real way to learn. Learning by understanding may be painful at first, but later on you’ll find things getting easier and easier, because your foundation is solid and the theories that follow fall into place naturally. This principle is not limited to any one subject. It applies to everything, not just school courses but learning in society as well.
People in the past always advocated against cramming education. Yet today, people are voluntarily cramming themselves?
Often people say, “I study really hard, but I make no progress at all.” Then they feel sorry for themselves and decide they just don’t have the talent. Perhaps you should consider whether your way of studying is wrong.
If you’re only willing to memorize everything, then why bother being a person at all? A person’s strength is not memory. Memory can be handed over to a computer. What a person should do is think!