Unlearning as anti-oppression education
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@fridaae29
Learning
As children, we are constantly learning and quickly making sense of the world. Our brains are receiving an overwhelming amount of information and stimuli that needs to be interpreted and responded to by our nervous system. To do this efficiently, (perhaps too efficiently), we subconsciously turn early life experiences into a reference point for what the rest of life must be like. In this subconscious process, we add the stories that we tell ourselves about life which often become self-fulfilling prophecies by nature. To use an example: when I was 7 years old, I witnessed a male family member being physically violent towards his female spouse and in that moment, my 7 year old mind decided that he was bad which, in turn, meant that all men are bad. This is how my brain and nervous system was able to make sense of a traumatic experience and protect me from the perceived threat of harm from that moment on. Needless to say, my adult relationships with men being entirely framed by the subconscious story of ‘men are bad and out to get me’ has not proved very successful in the love and romance department.
It’s important to understand how these stories function as filters or lenses through which we see, think, feel, and interpret everything around us, throughout our lives. We live in these stories and these stories live within us — often detached from the reality of what is taking place and compelling us to act out our traumas on the people and planet around us. As trauma-informed performance coach Mastin Kipp reframes “we do to others what has been done to us”.
So going back to this intensely formative early learning process, as young humans we form attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs (what I call the ABBs) which either equip us for personal and communal wellbeing or they become invisibly counterproductive and sabotaging to it. In order to rid ourselves of the more unuseful attitudes, toxic behaviours, and false self-limiting beliefs that took root once upon a time in our childhood traumas, we need to engage in unlearning. Though there is much debate about the definition of unlearning, here I define unlearning as: a deliberately deep process of surfacing, examining, evaluating, and deactivating our default attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs in order to heal and grow by choosing, practicing, and integrating alternative ways of thinking, doing, and being. Where learning involves acquisition through information, unlearning involves excavation through interrogation . Put more simply, learning piles on layers of new knowledge while unlearning peels away layers of old knowledge. This process of unlearning can be done at the intersection of cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual levels and is ultimately about visibilising our invisible stories in order to step out of them and create a new and improved neuropathway to wellbeing.
Unlearning
Most diversity and inclusion trainings that I know and have led for the past three years are severely time-constrained in that they are usually one-off interventions that last anywhere between 1 hour to 3 days (the latter if you’re lucky). For example, I have been asked on multiple occasions to facilitate anti-racism workshops in less than 2 hours. Now, knowing that racism as a system of oppression has had centuries to develop and perfect itself by design, I’m personally not convinced that we can adequately tackle its insidiousness in a couple of hours. “I’m a facilitator, not a magician!” is usually what screams from my mind. However, despite whatever small amount of time that workshops are allocated, sometimes it is possible (because I actually am a magician) to conjure up some of the most beautifully nourishing and liberatory group magic dynamic in the image and spirit of an alternative anti-oppressive world. Upon completing the workshop, there are usually more questions than answers which is always a good sign and learners show real hope and determination for transformative change. It is this very magic that drives me out of bed every morning, honestly. But this magic is more often than not short lived and therefore ineffective and here is my hypothesis as to why.
In these educational interventions (workshops, trainings, conferences, seminars, etc), as educational practitioners we fall short of interrogating the very deeply entrenched ABBs that create the internalised and externalised conditions for oppression. The world becomes a breeding ground for injustice when there are lots of humans acting like angry or scared 7 year olds unleashing their lived traumas on everyone and everything around them. Add unequal power relations to the mix and consider how we got to the global crises we have on our hands. Without a deeper interrogation of how trauma informs our adult decision-making, any behavioural change intervention created in the proverbial classroom is doomed to being nonpermanent at best and tokenistic at worst. This is because when our learners return to their everyday lives and contexts, all of the old, default, and habitual ABBs that breed oppression are instantly and/or gradually re-triggered, reinforced, and rewarded by the people, pressures, and structures surrounding our hopeful learner. Sooner or later this leads to relapse which left unchecked and unsupported morphs into a missed opportunity for lasting impact — as educators we are leaving so much potential for transformation on the classroom table. This model of learning becomes a false economy that panders to a quick-fixing box-ticking mentality that may be good for business but is even better for business as usual.
Quote by Brianna West. Image found here.
How can we expect people to radically transform their ways of thinking, doing, and being in a day-long workshop, when they’ve had their entire lives to develop and perfect their default ways of being? Not to mention all the payoffs they receive from being these default ways. How can we expect to really tackle racism in 2 hours when racism has had centuries to up its game and stand the test of time? Instead, what we need in addition to some of the great anti-oppressive pedagogy out there is unlearning.
We need to design a process of unlearning that unearths and uproots unwanted yet persisting ABBs that, in some warped way, may protect our individual survivals in the short term but that kill off our collective humanity in the long run. Crises such as inequality, violence, and climate change are winning and we need to acknowledge this so we can go beneath the surface of learning to understand why. This unlearning and relearning takes time and commitment because it requires extended and repetitive practice (with support) and that will be uncomfortable, exhausting, and humbling at the best of times. Think of it as a physical fitness regime but here we are strengthening the entire body muscle for new and alternative ways of being — in the same way that getting fit doesn’t happen in a day and needs ongoing attention and refinement. Unlearning is necessary to almost any behavioural change intervention because ultimately the best way to find your way out of a maze is to go back the way you came.
Relearning
So why does this topic of unlearning for anti-oppression pedagogy interest me so much? Well, because I’m currently running an action research project called Radicational which explores the question: How might we design radical unlearning that enrols humanity in collective liberation? Through this research question, Radicational takes aim at 4 different socialisations:
Competition.
Control.
Compliance.
Consumerism.
At first glance, these might look fairly harmless or even beneficial to our human development (and that would not be entirely wrong either, binaries don’t tend to be helpful) until we begin to question for what and who’s purpose. If the purpose is for every human to feel a sense of freedom and belonging in a world free of oppression, then these socialisations are not fit for purpose. They breed all kinds of inequalities which is not useful or aligned with our collective liberation. Radicational aims to dig deep into what it will take for youth, educators, and leaders to step out of these socialising stories to radically transform the world.
Radicational = Radical (getting to the root) + Education (drawing out what is within) x Collective Liberation.
Radicational as action research investigates how we can build muscle for unlearning through the dismantling of our epistemological understanding of knowledge as we know it (or think we know it). Building on these findings (and with this new muscle-in-training), how might we engage in deep unlearning as a deliberately designed process that surfaces, examines, evaluates, and deactivates learned and lived experiences of competitiveness, control, compliance, and consumerism? Once we have been able to grasp at their roots, we can begin to draw out from within what existed before the trauma-bound stories. We can learn to be whole and connected again. We can begin to relearn our ways of being in the absence of constantly competing, controlling, complying, and consuming the people and planet around us. This is what it is going to take: unlearning and relearning to choose to be and to relate another way.
Quote by Max Pree. Image found here
Want to see how Radicational is coming to life? Stay tuned for my next article: Radicational @ The Royal Society of Arts (action research reflections)
If you would like to contribute wisdom/resources, or keep up to date with how Radicational evolves… you can follow the journey on Medium | Website | Instagram
Written and managed by Vanessa Faloye