Leading to learning: unlearning

This strange word - unlearning - is confusing.

To be educated is, we suppose, to learn. We learn different ideas, numbers, facts and details. We learn that they must be applied and re-applied. This mumbo-jumbo of information fed into our brains appear to be pretty much the foundation of our future lives.

It is only when we leave the backpacks filled with textbooks, and, carry the trendy sling bag of regular life, that we realise the uncanny need to unlearn. We somehow feel that the learning of the yester-years is not enough. And then, we are in for a shock. We haven't learned to unlearn at any earlier point of time in our education! We didn't realise earlier that getting the highest grade in school is but one chapter in our lives!

Unlearning is nothing but beginning a new cycle of learning. This doesn't seem a tough task, does it?

It is elementary. But the problem is that we are trained in a school of thought that establishes repetition as the necessary idea. Unlearning is all about forgetting, or rather, letting go, of this habit of repeating. That sounds simple, but it's terribly difficult.

To be always a soft pile of clay is a challenge. To be a soft pile of clay once more, after it has been moulded and it has gained a form, appears impossible.

CAN A MIND THAT HAS BEEN MOULDED IN A PARTICULAR MANNER UNDO THE FORMER METHOD TO LEARN AGAIN?

Calvin and Hobbes comic strip © Bill Watterson and Universal Press Syndicate.

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