🌱Seed 🙂Agree 🟡Consideration 📝Essay
Importance: 90%
The Big Idea
What is really worth learning? And how should we go about learning it?
Similar Note: Memory, the Things We Keep with Us
What is really worth learning?
I have a particularly vivid memory of first grade that I can still picture. I was sitting sideways in my little desk holding a clipboard. With crooked glasses I was working with a partner the teacher had assigned me. Each pair of us huddled together completing, or in my case attempting to complete, our letter writing assignment. I don’t remember her name, but the girl I was working with was the smart and capable student plowing through her letters with what seemed to me like impossible precision and speed. Meanwhile, I sat and struggled to make the shapes with a wobbly hand. My fingers desperately choking the long neck of my pencil as if that would make it do what I wanted. To her credit, she tried to help me. She traced the letter again and again. “Here like this” And over and over my lopsided attempt came out looking like someone sat on it. When we were both sufficiently frustrated with the exercise, the sentence she said next became one of those sentences that lodges itself deep. The kind that comes along with you into the rest of life. “Why can’t you get it! You just do it like this!”
All these years later, I don’t know if I truly “get it” anymore than back then, but that memory along with many others has framed my answer to the question: What is worth learning?
Or more forcefully, What is worth fighting to learn? All of us have those things that come naturally to us. We learn them without breaking a sweat. That little voice of pride sits inside us when we hear how wonderful we did even though we barley had to try. But what about the other things? Those things that make us feel frustrated. Learning them feels like smashing your head against the wall or flopping around like a lost fish out of water. Within those subjects, and areas of life, we can feel the importance of identifying the things worth learning.
Since this is so vastly different across people it can feel like it has to be an individual thing.
But that does not really address the underling issue of what is worth learning in the first place? It is easy to microwave a hotpocket but that does not make it a gourmet meal.
There are underlying approaches to learning that either takes us down the road of lazy learning or adventurous learning
Two core ways of approaching learning.
Learning to Store
One a collection of facts and figures. mastery is basically being able to regurgitate or concretely apply a set of information
learning how to regurgitate
Google it culture is only getting worse with AI
So if you don’t “have” to know anything what is worth keeping with you? Learning in an emerging AI environment reopens the age old question of what is worth learning and keeping with you in your memory?
talk through how the model of learning to regurgitate has become clearly irrelevant in a world with google and ai. no human can spit out random bits of information nearly as well or as predictably as these machines. And if that is all learning is then learning is indeed irrelevant
Learning to Speak
Example of learning advanced math and how it’s not useful or perceived as not useful. but if you ever talk to someone who really truly loves math they don’t see it like that they see it as a way to express how to world works in other words it is a language to talk about things we can’t always use words to discuss
Learning a language and picture of the world
or faith gives you a way to navigate the world or an actual language and picture of the world
versus learning how to tell a story
All behavior is communication told me by Katie
But if learning is about knowing how to employ a language then there is a lot that we need to learn. just like learning a real language knowing bits and pieces don’t really get you anywhere
You have to actually use it and employ it before it starts to become a part of you
What we keep with us in our minds and muscle memory are what we have with us when we face unexpected struggles or situations
A Fearful Foundation
Proverbs 1:7, CSB
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, CSB
 When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.
Learning to Confess
What we have with us in our minds is what shapes us over time
This is more important when it comes to learning and practicing the faith now as ever
the idea that the way we learn and seek information in the world actually affects the way we witness about Christ
Psalm 119:9-16, ESV
How can a young person stay on the path of purity?
    By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart;
    do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart
    that I might not sin against you.
Praise be to you, Lord;
    teach me your decrees.
With my lips I recount
    all the laws that come from your mouth.
I rejoice in following your statutes
    as one rejoices in great riches.
I meditate on your precepts
    and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees;
    I will not neglect your word.