Unlearning to Learn
Last fall, after 35 years, I went back to school. I began an online masters program in social justice at Union Theological Seminary, a historic, independent seminary affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. It was exciting and more than a little bit scary to be a student again after so long. My family and friends were supportive, delighted, and somewhat puzzled about my decision to return to school, and again and again I was asked, “What are you going to do with it?”
“What am I going to do with it?” It’s a question I’ve been thinking about lately - and perhaps one buzzing in the air as millions of seniors receive their college acceptance letters in the next few weeks. When I was in their shoes, the well-meaning question of "What are you going to do with it?” was usually asked as “What do you want to major in?” Underneath that question was a silent one, “What career or job will this education lead you to?” And hidden underneath that question was a slightly more insidious one: “Does it have a path to success?”
Fast forward 35 years - which includes being a student, parent, and educator - and I can tell you honestly and happily that I don’t know what I will “do” with my degree. That is a wonderful freedom - a freedom available not just to me but to anybody engaged in any kind of learning. I can also tell you, without a doubt, that the path to my degree is already a “success” and not just because of what I am learning and who I am learning with. A huge piece of that path is what I’m unlearning, too, letting go of mindsets and habits that stop me - and any student - from being that vaunted “lifelong learner.”
Unlearning #1: Curiosity is easy. It sure looks easy when you look at a five year old in a sandbox. It looks joyful and playful and fun. But as an adult, curiosity asks us to do hard things. Like say, “I really, truly don’t know.” “I really, truly don’t know what the world looks like from your shoes.” Or, “I really, truly don’t know why I think or feel that way.” Or, even scarier when you are a leader, “I don’t know if this is the right decision.” When was the last time we admitted that and sat in that dark place of discomfort long enough to be simply curious? As an adult, curiosity asks us to seek out challenge and difference and to risk holding them closely with wonder and openness, even if they prickle, especially if they prickle. And sometimes, to be really curious, to engage in real learning, we need to step away from always needing to be “right.” How hard is that for an adult? For anyone?
Unlearning #2: Most learning is linear and leads to mastery. Perhaps it started with the numbered easy readers in first grade. Or feeling successful when I completed Spanish I, then II, then III. Or perhaps it was the jump from English 10 to AP English. Instead, learning about social justice or theology - perhaps learning about almost anything - seems to be more of a never-ending infinity loop, running from the assigned text, through the class discussion, through my head, into my heart, poking at my soul, then back outside to something I notice in the news or heard on a podcast or experienced at work and then around again. Not even in that order; sometimes it pings around. The readings in my class on the Black social gospel are one example. As I learn the stories of well-known and little-known civil rights leaders from the 1940s to the present day, I am challenged by questions that still resonate today: Can politics produce real justice in the world? What role does sacrifice or compromise play? Where does faith fit in? This kind of learning never gets closer to mastery; in fact, mastery seems to get farther and farther away with every new thing I learn. I’d like to say, in the best of moments, that it is fun. But as an adult who is used to (the illusion of) feeling competent and in control, I’m noticing that learning is often a mental game of watching my own resistance to it.
Unlearning #3: The most important learning happens in our minds. I know, I taught in a classroom, and there is certainly a role for your mind. We talk with students about learning for learning’s sake - and then ask them what they are going to do with their degree. But if I didn’t retain a single piece of content, particularly one that connected me to a career or a job, what would I be left with? This time around, what I find truly transformative is something greater than facts and figures. Last semester, for example, I walked away with the infinitely wider horizon of thousands of years of human history and loving connections to land and nature, shared through stories told by Indigenous speakers. The course on the Black social gospel is forging a deeper and more painful empathy for those who fought and are fighting still for civil and human rights. The fascinating stories of my classmates and their textured and nuanced search for faith, any faith, and all faiths has me holding my own with different questions than I might have had before. This hand - and heart - wringing experience is shaping and sharpening the critical lens through which I view the world - which also includes a growing honesty at seeing both my own value along with my own ignorance. Learning is above all an exploration of what it means to be human.
What am I going to do with my degree? Nothing.
What am I going to do with my learning? Everything!
