Students are taught to identify and use the difference between literal meaning in a text and constructed or mediated meaning. One of the most important tasks as a student is to learn the difference between the two. Now facts are not better than interpretation, and interpretation is not better than facts. Interpretations impose meaning on facts, whether they are statistics or a string of events in a story. Interpretations impose meaning on facts or parts of texts that do not make sense.
Interpretations are one way that social groups communicate and impose their world view on others.
Then I want you to identify which part of the answer is a fact, that is, an account of what is literally said in the text of Genesis . After that, I'd like you to identify the parts of the answer which are interpretations, that is, your own understanding of what the literal text means. For students of General Education 111, I'd like you to examine your answer in the capitalism debate . In that assignment you were asked to construct all your arguments from the text of Adam Smith. Then identify all those areas where you're imposing an interpretation on the text, that is, your own understanding of what the literal text means.