unlearning

It is a strange business, this unlearning. I am not a beginner. I am further back than that, burdened with the work of forgetting what I thought I already knew. It is not a simple matter of thought, of replacing old facts with new. I am instead wrestling with my own muscle memory, trying to unravel my bodily notion of what it is to swim.

Alvin Toffler is credited with saying: “The illiterate of the 21****st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Often, our first tactic for making change is information. To improve diets, we tell kids about the links between donuts, soda, obesity, and diabetes. To improve efficiency, we inform staff about new procedures or values. These educational interventions draw upon the power of authoritative information to change minds and behavior. While this tactic

Adaptive literacy means you can recognise when your expertise has become a liability. When the thing that made you successful is now preventing you from seeing clearly. When you need to abandon what worked and rebuild from scratch.

Any lesson, even a necessary one, can be learned too well. There is a comfort in being disabused, a pride in turning up the lights and puncturing illusions that induces a different kind of blindness that needs to be challenged.