Education (books) and experience are the main two channels for People to gain their knowledge. Each play different roles for people. In my opinion, knowledge from experience is more important than that from books.
Experience first can prove if the knowledge form books are true or false. Textbooks are very wonderful in teaching people essential principles, how is the world looks like? what is the basic law of change of people and things? We can learn a lot through primary school, secondary school until university. However, people can only understand the really meaning of those form books and justify them if they are right through practices. A few hundred years ago, people learnt from text book that the earth was flat. However scientists found that was wrong through observations and measurement.
The knowledge from experience can improve and advance the world and our society. As books have limitation, they only teach us the what people found in the past. The knowledge from the books are constrained to the certain conditions and environment. For example, mould and tools design for plastics industry, the university course only taught me very simple cases, most knowledge are obtained from various different and complicated cases in my career.
There are a lot new inventions and new products which could not be found from textbooks. Our society and world are developed through continuous practices, those knowledge, never found in books, such as internet, e-business etc. are all developed through new practices.
"The truth comes from practices and experience", people are continually discovering new things and assessing the creditability of the knowledge written in books. The knowledge