Mainstream WeeklyWhat do we actually mean by learning something? Is it memorising facts, writing exams, getting a good job, or achieving a certain social status? I know a doctor who has been practising medicine for almost 15 years, yet he does not allow his daughter to enter the puja ghar (small temple in the house) or kitchen during her periods. Is he a learned person? Has he truly learned medicine? This brings us to a deeper question: What does learning actually mean, especially in the context of the social sciences?
One of my professors at the Delhi School of Economics, Dr. Sunil Babu, once said that learning means a tendency in our mind; it is a mental process that reflects the potential for changes in our behaviour, actions, and thoughts.
The first thing that education teaches us is the importance of unlearning, which means challenging many of the ideas and assumptions we previously believed to be true. It can be shocking to realise that what we know is not necessarily the truth, but rather a version of the truth that has been produced by excluding other forms of knowledge. As Foucault explains in his concept of power/knowledge[[Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972