I have recently reread with pleasure the book by Professor Álvaro d’Ors,  Letters to a Young Student  (EUNSA, 1991). I have been teaching at the university level for several decades, and from the beginning I have been interested in what we called—back in the 1980s—study methods to guide our students. Times have changed, the challenges are different, but the desire to find ways to facilitate the comprehensive education of young university students remains.

The aim of study, d’Ors indicates, “is formative assimilation, not possessive accumulation: the student’s being must be enriched, not their possessions increased. From another perspective, it can be said that the object of study is notions, that is, knowledge, and not data, which are always external (pp. 81-82).” Certainly, a person assimilates the food they eat when it is incorporated into their body. However, there are other people who, due to their metabolism, are unable to assimilate it. In this line of thought, the expression “formative assimilation” is a useful metaphor for understanding the use that both the student and the teacher should make of the data offered or researched in the educational process: elevating data to experiential knowledge. It is not enough to simply provide or accumulate information; a vibrant intellectual, volitional, and affective learning process must be achieved in the student.

The study, therefore, is about growing in  being  and not just remaining in the mere  possession  of data. In this regard, d’Ors’s observations in the early 1990s are illustrative, referring to computing as a useful repository of information, a database akin to an encyclopedia. A valuable instrument that, nevertheless, remains in the realm of  having  at the expense of  being . Along the same lines, Leo XIV’s recent encyclical  Magnifica Humanitas  points out that “the omnipresence of digital media generates a culture of immediacy and overstimulation, which fuels weariness, boredom, and apathy toward the effort involved in seeking the truth (n. 139).” That is to say, the speed with which we obtain information and “construct” a coherent discourse with AI undermines the slow process of cognitive assimilation through which we transform data into understood concepts.

“Educational processes,  ” Magnifica Humanitas reminds us , “require time to mature, a confrontation with reality beyond appearances, and a patient path (…). The speed and ease with which an answer or a synthesis is obtained risks extinguishing the desire to ask questions, which only bears fruit over time. As Plato writes, the deepest and most important things are only learned after much time and much effort (…). We must learn to do without AI and protect our young people from the promise of the perfect machine, from that subtle seduction that makes human thought seem useless precisely when it is most needed (n. 140).” Yes, thinking requires time, effort, and patience to consider things from different perspectives. Experience tells us that what is important and essential about people and things is nurtured gradually: the avalanche of data does not make us wiser.

It is unwise to abandon the pedagogy of personal effort in favor of the immediacy offered by digital technologies. Studying is not simply about collecting data; it involves the effort of repeatedly revisiting information to truly grasp and understand reality. Only in this way can we become familiar with what we study and transform it into the very essence of our being.