Everything we learn goes through a process. First, we take in information. Second, we calculate information. Third, we output information. Like most things in life, there are better ways to do all three of these steps. Let's explore a particular example to see what I mean:
Communication - learning to communicate with other people is a worthy path to study. God did not create us in a bubble, or even in a garden full of only animals, but rather revealed himself to us in two ways: Creation and the Word of God. Communication from God comes in two forms, and it is the latter form that we will focus on for this exercise.
STEP ONE :
While God has spoken to us in written form, in order to understand it we must first learn to decipher or read. That is the first process: decipher. In literature the end goal is to understand and communicate more effectively, which means that we start with reading. This is the stage when we spend countless hours learning how to read information.
STEP TWO :
The second step in the process is calculating - that is thinking. We quite literally spend hours contemplating, processing, and hashing ideas out in our brains. This complex process takes time and creates connections in our brain which broadens our mind and helps us to grow. Within the second step of calculating, we have multiple tiers.
- comprehension - what did I just read?
- conclusion - what can I conclude from what I read?
- condition - what information do I have that shows my conclusion is valid?
In short, we need to be able to understand what we are reading, make conclusions about what we are reading, and defend our conclusions. This is a long process.
STEP THREE :
Finally, we output all of that information that we've been processing. We learn to share our ideas, defend them, and show people why they matter. The form of output can be an essay or a speech. In this final step, we focus on clearly communicating. In classical education, this is the art of rhetoric, in which we learn to invent, arrange, and present information.
Everything that we learn goes through these three processes. First we take in information, then we process information, finally, we share information.