Knowledge Fitness: Nourishment in the Age of AI

On choosing carefully, digesting deeply, and applying wisely

I was wondering… if the danger of our age is outsourcing thought, then what must we strengthen to remain not just human, but fully alive?

AI can solve problems, draft essays, and summarise books in seconds. What it cannot do is wrestle with meaning, carry memory as lived experience, or grow in wisdom. That should be the work of the new education - to build the capacity not just to consume knowledge, but to embed it, illuminate it and live it.

In my last reflection, I explored how even the so-called “future-proof” skills are being overtaken by AI. Which means the real question before us is deeper: not what more to add, but how to reimagine the very nature of learning itself. In Knowledge Mindfulness, we call this the New Learning - or more precisely, Knowing: not just learning, but a deeper integration of memory, reflection, and lived practice. How do we build the capacity to ‘Know’ for new ‘Why’s’. To carry Knowing in ways that endure.We envision this metaphorically as Knowledge Fitness. Like physical health, it is not built by endless consumption, but by rhythm, nourishment, and practice. Too much intake without digestion leaves us bloated and foggy. Too narrow a diet - lacking the quality and diversity of knowledge and ideas - leads to malnourishment and weakness.. And at the extremes, we risk either knowledge obesity - overconsumption without applying the emergent energy to meaningful action - or knowledge hunger - starving ourselves of the quality and diversity we need to build true ‘Knowing Strength’.

And - just as fitness is sustained in community, not alone - so too is knowledge. Teachers, peers, and families shape the habits of knowing together. Knowledge Fitness is both an individual discipline and a shared practice, cultivated through dialogue, reflection, and use.

As the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire reminds us, true education is not a mere transfer of information, but the practice of freedom - where reflection and action continually inform each other. In this sense, Knowledge Fitness is not about how much students consume, but about how they engage with, question, embed, and act on what they know.At its heart, Knowledge Fitness calls us back to three essential practices:

• Choose carefully. Just as diet shapes the body, the curriculum shapes the mind. Not all knowledge deserves equal weight. Select readings, projects, and perspectives that nourish - diverse, challenging, and meaningful. Ask: What is worth carrying forward?
• Digest deeply. Swallowing is not the same as absorbing. Knowing requires time for reflecting, questioning and memorising. Create spaces where students can wrestle with ideas until they become part of who they are. Depth cannot be downloaded.
• Apply wisely. Fitness is proven not by intake but by use. Encourage students to bring knowledge into practice - in projects, relationships, and communities. Reflection without action is empty; action without reflection is blind. The two must move together.

This is the new literacy of our time. Beyond technical skills, we must cultivate the ability to discern, to remember, to apply with wisdom. These are not competencies that vanish in a decade. They are capacities that endure across a life.

So as another academic year begins, perhaps the curriculum we need most is not around subjects alone, but of themes that build the strengthen to know well: the resilience to keep questioning, the patience to draw from memory while engaging the present with an eye on the future, and the wisdom to embrace the unknown and use knowledge in relation to others. Because in the end, machines may carry information. But only we can carry wonder, strive for meaning, and bear its cost.

So I wonder: if the first lesson was recognising the danger of outsourcing our minds, what would change if the next was becoming more mindful of our Knowledge Diet and cultivating our Knowledge Fitness?

With care for “All,”

Dr Laila Marouf and the KMD team