Pedagogy of Unlearning

pedagogy of GNINRAELNU UNLEARNING

s c h o o l

o f

g n i n r a e l n u

notes : an anti textbook “But worse than this, textbooks are concerned with presenting the fact of the case (whatever the case may be) as if there can be no disputing them, as if they are fixed and immutable. And still worse, there is usually no clue given as to who claimed these are the facts of the case, how “it” discovered these facts (there being no he or she, or I or we. There is no sense of the frailty or ambiguity of human judgement, no hint of the possibilities of error. Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward the truth.

Textbooks, it seems to me, are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and trivial learning. They may save the teacher some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on the minds of students is a blight and a curse.”

Neil Postman, The End of Education

The Pedagogy of Unlearning In late October 2014, three friends and I travelled to the Danish Art Academy in Copenhagen to meet the department of Walls and Space, a student run department of the university. At the time, we were building mobile components of a school that could exist within and in parallel to CSM as an auxiliary platform for education and hoped to exchange ideas and methods of autonomous learning. We stayed at an artist’s studio during our four day trip—her name was Deidre and I accidentally stole one of her books.

The book was Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich.

Despite that this was not my intention, it was still a stolen book, and this stolen book became my most influential resource as it created the foundation for my approach to educational thinking that informs my current practise.

Illich describes the flaws of our capitalist society through criticising the process of schooling and how it exists as the commodification of knowledge in our consumerist society.

Each level of school is presented as a package which is a prerequisite for the next. It is a form of institutionalisation, in ways, less forgiving than prison, which is mandatory as a framework for childhood and growth. It is a process of learning consumerist behaviour to then fully participate in a consumerist society. Illich expresses the need to de-institutionalise our society by creating autonomous systems of learning that are not mandatory, and the possibility for exchange of skills, knowledge and learning as a currency. Illich’s views, along with the ideas of freedom, childhood and learning expressed by John Holt, A.S. Neill, Maria Montessori and Neil Postman have been highly influential to my work beginning with Sandbox, my pedagogical experiment with children in urban China.

The pedagogy of unlearning is an extension of deschooling on a micro level. The possibility to deschool the generation currently in control of our world is slim, as they are deeply rooted in the history of institutionalisation. The greatest potential for change exists with the children who will create the future, for the possibilities in a child’s mind are endless. But what if we reverse the conventions of adulthood? What are the possibilities if the adult inhabits the mind of the child?

“The capacity to control and overcome one’s nature became one of the defining characteristics of adulthood and therefore one of the essential purposes of education.”

Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

what can unlearning mean? what could be unlearned? unlearn language? unlearn anger? unlearn walking? unlearn technology? unlearn CONTROL unlearn ADULTHOOD

unlearning ≠ not learning unlearning ≠ erasing learning unlearning ≠ forgetting

reconnecting mind and body unlearning ≈ engaging the thinking hand thinking with the body re-experiencing motor-sensory learning

black square = reference

bodyspace-motionthings, robert morris 1971

“Creative capacity as well as ethical judgement call for imagination. It is evident, however, that the capacity of imagination does not hide in our brains alone, as our entire bodily constitution has its fantasies, desires and dreams.�

Juhani Pallasmaa

experiences for the head

mind

body

sandbox, guangzhou, china 2015 red square = my work

乖 (guai) - is the chinese character meaning

obedient or well-behaved. it is the most primary and essential descriptor of children when discussed by adults from parents to strangers. a child is good if the child is guai a child is bad if the child is not guai

“how did you teach your child to be so 乖 ?” “your child is so 乖, mine needs to be more like yours” “a 乖 child is a good child, do you want to be a good child or a bad child?”

containers of childhood

LITERACY

OVERCOMING NATURE AND INCLINATIONS

ACCEPTING INFERIORITY

SEDENTARY BEHAVIOURS

framework of childhood = learning adulthood revisit childhood reconstruct childhood

“It is evident that an educational change concerning the significance of the sensory realm is urgently needed in order to enable us to rediscover ourselves as complete physical and mental beings, to fully utilize our capacities, and to make us less vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation.�

Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand

sandbox, guangzhou, china 2015 [children]

drawing (v.), the street, csm 2016 [adults]

unlearning ≈ mutation of thought / method types of mutation in DNA substitution insertion deletion frameshift

conversion intervention: fa (error) ct intervention: fa (error) ct intervention: cognitive restructuring intervention: injury, mistakes, boredom

learning is not .ssecorp raenil a to unlearn, we esrever tsum and renavigate tcurtsnoced and make space .modeerf rof

boustrophedon: “turning like an oxen in ploughing� boustrophedon is a form of bi-directional writing that was commonly used in ancient greece before the conventional direction of written language was decided. the alternating motion required to navigate this style of text reflects a behavious that assists the process of unlearning. exercising a fluidity in constant cognitive reconfigurations how does the structure of language influence thinking?

deconstruct unfold: adulthood conscious - control subconscious + action CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL

trusting the absent minded hand â€œâ€Śinstinctively. I forget the whole maze of problems for a while, as soon as the feel of the assignment and the innumerable demands it involves have sunk into my subconscious. I then move on to a method of working that is very much like abstract art.

I simply draw by instinct, not architectural syntheses, but what are sometimes quite childlike compositions, and in this way, on an abstract basis, the main idea gradually takes shape, a kind of universal substance that helps me to bring the numerous contradictory components into harmony.�

Aalvar Aalto

collection of pen testing sheets from art/stationary shops in london

sandbox, guangzhou, china 2015

space for unlearning

“Most modern institutes of education, despite the apparent neutrality of the materials from which they are constructed (red brick, white tile, etc.) carry within themselves implicit ideological assumptions which are structured into the architecture... the hierarchical relationship between teacher and taught is inscribed in the very layout of the lecture theatre where the seating arrangements -- benches rising in tiers before a raised lectern - dictate the flow of information and serve to ‘naturalise’ professional authority.”

Dick Hebdige, The Meaning of Style

primary school in fengkai, china photogtraph

putting the classroom to sleep sleeping classroom moorssalc gnipeels sleeping classroom moorssalc gnipeels

“The present disjunction between an adult society which pretends to be humane and a school environment which mocks reality could no longer be maintained.�

Ivan Illich , Deschooling Society

silent rebellion - the anti-school bags a statement of presence through absence big space, csm, 2015

drawing (v.) the street, csm 2016

untitled, rachel whiteread 1997

“In a world without books and schools, youthful exuberance was given the widest possible field in which to express itself. But in a world of book learning such exuberance needed to be sharply modified. Quietness, immobility, contemplation, precise regulation of bodily functions, became highly valued… The natural inclinations of children began to be perceived not only as an impediment to book learning but as an expression of an evil character. Thus, nature had to be overcome in the interests of achieving both a satisfactory education and a purified soul.”

Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood

fake books at heathrow airport, terminal 4

the library of unread books during a tutorial in second year, i asked my tutor if she had read deschooling society her response was “no, but i’ve held it in my hands before� what is the value of this statement? does a haptic experience with a book suggest an intellectual alignment?

intelligence as ornament for place and person

unread books, 2015-2016

fake books/ unread books/ book blocks

“All the toys one commonly sees are essentially a microcosm of the adult world; they are all reduced copies of human objects, as if in the eyes of the public the child was, all told, nothing but a smaller man, a homunculus to whom must be supplied objects of his own size.”

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

“The adults say: ‘Children want them; they see us working so they want to do the same,’ but the things they give them to work with are useless; the copies of fruits are stone fruits, they cannot prepare them nor eat them. It is a mockery.”

Maria Montessori, Absorbent Mind

magnetic (repellling) word toys, 2016

“...there are still readers and there are many books published, but the uses of print and reading are not the same as they once were: not even in schools, the last institutions where print was thought to be invincible.�

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

cardboard study, 2015

exam i, 2016 [adults]

exam ii, 2016 [adults]

AN ITNA TEXT KOOB