cthewind's Blog

“I learned something new today…” was the most joyous and welcome contribution to the dinner table in my family of origin. My parents, both educators, encouraged us to seek and to celebrate learning something new—anywhere, at any time, from anyone.

After nearly 20 years of teaching and parenting, I now realize that unlearning is just as important. Perhaps even more so.

Unlearning, though of crucial importance in our lives together today, is not always as joyful, nor is it immediately welcomed. Instead, unlearning can be painful, undercutting deeply held beliefs about the world and unsettling identities, both individual and collective.

Unlearning requires skills we cultivate in schools—curiosity, research, analysis—yet it also requires courage, humility, and emotional strength—habits of heart and spirit not always cultivated in schools.

Unlearning seems directly at odds with the ways we’ve long seen and described higher education in terms such as “mastery,” “attainment,” and “credential,” publicly recognized through GPAs, rankings, “honors,” and “distinctions.”

Some of the most important work we can do in higher ed today will never lead to mastery and cannot be measured. In fact, it sometimes makes me feel incompetent and ignorant. I have not yet encountered rubrics or awards for unlearning. Yet I think it is a primary calling in higher education today.

Unlearning is an emotional and spiritual process. It’s painful to undo narratives of white supremacy and U.S. exceptionalism. It is gut-wrenching to hear about the violence done through stolen lands, children separated from families, and forced labor. Every hurt is compounded by evidence of the complicity of Christians as well as pretensions to dominance in law and culture.

Pain, sadness, anger, rage, guilt, wounded pride, despair, shame, ignorance, and incompetence are appropriate responses to un/learning truths of history and facing up to our present tense.

Unlearning is more bearable in community with others—not easier, just more bearable. It’s actually easier (at least in the short-term) to withdraw or hide. It’s easier to fall back on distancing techniques of the academy: observation, analysis, and critique. But given all that unlearning brings up, these emotional burdens are more readily borne in being shared and in being seen, even in the ugly-awkward-messy states of human we manifest in unlearning.

It’s time to make room for the emotional and spiritual work of unlearning—to steer the context of communal study and the considerable resources of the academy to work that matters most to our living today. We can learn how to hold space for learning and unlearning. We can notice and learn to navigate emotions that accompany learning and unlearning. We can make room for “It’s your turn” and “I don’t know” and “We were wrong” at the center of our work.

We can seek and celebrate hearing stories and telling our own. We can choose to welcome wisdom and prioritize just relations. We can learn to welcome with joy learning that comes in formats and methods we weren’t trained to see, hear, or value in the academy.