What's Worth Unlearning?

There's an important conversation going on in many schools right now on the subject of What's worth learning?

Inspired by the work of people like Professor David Perkins, it is hard to avoid the growing consensus that traditional ways of being school are no longer relevant to today's generation of students.

Alongside this endeavour to redefine the new "what" of curriculum, however, I would suggest that it is equally important to consider another question: What's worth unlearning?

The origins of this idea are not new. There is a Buddhist proverb that goes, “Learning to unlearn is the highest form of learning”. In the same vein, a little over fifty years ago, Alvin Toffler prophetically declared in his book Future Shock, when considering the pace of change that is likely to impact humanity in the 21st century:

“The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

The emphasis is mine, but highlighting this notion of unlearning for a moment may help us to consider some of the things that students grow up thinking, believing, seeing - about themselves and the world around them - that need to be unlearned if they are going to live a happy, successful, and ethical life in today's world beyond school. 

The point of this reflection is to invite each of you to consider, from your vantage point and experience of learning, what might be worth unlearning. And to get the conversation going, here are my top-3 suggestions of things that our students would do well to unlearn, in no particular order of priority, to throw into the ring.

1. The myth of more. We convince ourselves that life is a game of constant addition. More knowledge, more stuff, more money, more connections, more status, more followers… and so on it goes in a cycle of endless accumulation. Yet, buying into the "myth of more" means buying into something that is governed by the law of diminishing returns. And, in the end, it diminishes us until we are no more. 

2. Life is for grown ups. From a certain age, we conjure the idea that life begins when we turn 18 or 21, when we can finally leave school, drive, consume alcohol, find a life partner, buy a house, and engage in any number of grown up pursuits. We map out the trajectory of our life as rehearsal, followed by the main act. We believe that life is for grown ups and that childhood is but an interim shadow state. The reality, though, is that childhood is part of life, not its precursor.

3. We can be anything we choose to be. We believe that we are the centre of our known world, perhaps because for a time we were. But as we grew, the world got bigger and our power to control it and our own destiny began to decline. And yet, stories continue to be told, each one designed to convince us that we are still masters of our destiny, of the universe, and that we can be anything we choose to be. We choose to believe these stories, even if only some of us get to be what we choose.

A Zen Master once said that, in order to be ready to learn more, we need first to empty our cup of ideas to allow room for more. Perhaps the same is true for those of us who are wondering about what the future of school might be…

… and what's worth unlearning.

Cover photo by Wix.