Image: “Mai” by Malvika Raj
“Learning is a place where paradise can be created”— bell hooks offers us this provocation not as a romantic abstraction, but as a political and ethical demand. To imagine learning as a site of possibility requires us to ask difficult questions about the conditions under which education is organised, whose knowledge is affirmed, and whose lives are made legible within classrooms and curricula. If learning can indeed be a place where something like paradise is imagined, even fleetingly, then we must also reckon with how often education has functioned as its opposite— a site of discipline, exclusion, and epistemic violence.
Education is often imagined as a forward-moving project. We accumulate knowledge, acquire skills, and progress towards greater understanding. Yet this linear imagination obscures an equally vital process: unlearning. To advance social justice through education, it is not enough to merely add new content, frameworks, or values to existing pedagogical structures. We must also critically undo the assumptions, hierarchies, and epistemic norms that education has historically naturalised. Unlearning, in this sense, is not a deficit or loss; it is a deliberate, ethical, and relational practice of making space for more just ways of knowing, teaching, and being.
This essay argues that un(learning) pedagogy, grounded in critical, feminist, anti-oppressive, and decolonial traditions, offers a robust framework for advancing rights-based and justice-oriented education.1 Rather than treating unlearning as a preliminary step before “real” learning begins, it is imperative to approach it as an ongoing, embedded process that reshapes how knowledge is produced, shared, and legitimised within educational spaces.2
Why is Unlearning Necessary?
Education does not exist outside of power; rather, social structures of power are reproduced within educational systems. Curricula, pedagogical methods, assessment practices, and institutional norms are shaped by historical and political forces— including colonialism, patriarchy, casteism, racism, ableism, and capitalism.3 Many of these forces remain invisible precisely because they have been normalised through education itself. As a result, learners are often taught what to think without being meaningfully invited to interrogate how certain knowledge comes to be valued over others.
Unlearning intervenes at this level. It asks educators and learners to pause and examine the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin educational practice: whose histories are taught as universal, whose languages are treated as legitimate, whose bodies are accommodated, and whose experiences are rendered marginal or unintelligible.4 In doing so, unlearning becomes a necessary condition for any pedagogy that claims to be committed to equity or human rights.
Importantly, unlearning is not a purely cognitive exercise. Scholars of critical and decolonial education emphasise that knowledge is deeply embodied, affective, and relational– shaped by habits, attachments, and ways of relating that are cultivated over time.5 This is why unlearning is often experienced as unsettling or uncomfortable. It disrupts not only what we know, but how we have learned to feel secure within particular systems of meaning.6
Genealogies of Unlearning: Critical and Feminist Pedagogies
The roots of unlearning pedagogy can be traced through critical traditions that challenge hierarchical models of education. Paulo Freier’s critique of the “banking model” of education remains foundational here. Freire argued that when learners are positioned as passive recipients of knowledge, education reproduces domination rather than fostering liberation.7 In contrast, his problem-solving model emphasises dialogue, reflection, and praxis; creating conditions for learners to critically examine the social realities they inhabit and act upon them collectively.
Feminist scholars, however, have long argued that critical pedagogy must also account for the ways power operates through gender, sexuality, race, caste, and other intersecting axes of identity.8 bell hooks, in particular, reframed education as a ‘practice of freedom’ that is necessarily embodied, relational, and affective. For hooks, unlearning involves dismantling the myth of the neutral classroom and acknowledging how experiences of marginalisation shape both teaching and learning.9 This feminist intervention deepens unlearning by inciting that personal experience is not opposed to theory, but a vital site of knowledge production.10
Within anti-oppressive pedagogy, unlearning further entails recognising how well-intentioned educational practices can continue to reproduce harm when they fail to address structural inequities. This included questioning meritocratic assumptions, deficit-based framings of learners, and the tendency to individualise what are fundamentally social and political problems.11 Unlearning here, becomes a refusal to allow education to remain quietly complicit in systems of exclusion.
Decolonial Perspectives and Epistemic Justice
Decolonial theory extends the project of unlearning by interrogating the colonial foundations of modern education itself. From this perspective, education has historically functioned as a tool of epistemic domnation— privileging western ways of knowing, while delegitimising indigenous, local, and non-western models of knowledge. Unlearning, therefore, requires more than diversifying syllabi; it demands a fundamental rethinking of what counts as knowledge and who is recognised as a knower.
The concept of ‘epistemic justice’ is particularly instructive here. It draws attention to the harms caused when certain groups are systematically excluded from meaning-making processes or when their knowledge is appropriated, decontextualised, or dismissed. Decolonial scholars argue that advancing justice in education involves cultivating a pluriverse— a world in which multiple epistemologies can coexist without being hierarchically ordered.12
Practically, this means creating pedagogical spaces that are attentive to context, history, and power. It involves resisting universalising claims and instead foregrounding situated knowledge that emerge from lived experience, community practices, and collective struggle. Such an approach aligns closely with rights-based education frameworks that emphasise dignity, participation, and cultural self-determination.
Phule-Ambedkarite Pedagogy and the Politics of Unlearning in India
Any serious discussion of decolonisation and epistemic justice in India remains incomplete without engaging Phule-Ambedkarite pedagogical thought. Drawing on the work of Savitribai Phule, Jyotirao Phule, and B.R. Ambedkar, scholars such as Sharmila Rege conceptualise education as Trutiya Ratna— the third eye, capable of cultivating critical consciousness among oppressed communities.
Phule-Ambedkarite pedagogy offers a powerful critique of brahminical hegemony within Indian education systems, where dominant caste knowledge traditions have long been positioned as neutral, superior, and universal. From this perspective, unlearning requires dismantling the caste-based assumptions embedded in ideas of ‘merit’, ‘culture’, and ‘intelligence’, and refusing pedagogical practices that demand Bahujan, Dalit, and Adivasi learners assimilate into dominant norms to be recognised as educable.
Rege’s articulation of a Phule-Ambedkarite feminist pedagogy foregrounds the lived experiences of Dalit and Bahujan women as critical sites of knowledge, challenging caste and gender hierarchies simultaneously. Unlearning here is not abstract reflexivity but a materially grounded, political practice— one that holds education accountable to histories of humiliation, exclusion, and resistance, and to ongoing struggles for dignity, redistribution, and representation.13
Situated within this tradition, decolonisation emerges not as an imported theoretical project but as a long-standing, indigenous critique of epistemic domination. It underscores that justice-oriented pedagogy in India must engage caste as a central axis of power, rather than treating it as an add-on or a regional concern.
What Unlearning Looks like In Practice14
An un(learning) pedagogy is not defined by a single method or toolkit. Rather, it is characterised by a set of ethical commitments and reflective orientations grounded in critical educational practice. These may include:
- Inviting learners to critically interrogate dominant narratives rather than memorise them through rote-learning.
- Valuing dialogue and co-construction of knowledge over unilateral instructions.
- Centering voices and experiences that have been historically marginalised, without reducing them to tokens or case studies.
- Attending carefully to relational dynamics in the classroom, including power differentials between educators and learners.
- Situating learning within broader social and political contexts, recognising education as inseparable from lived realities and struggles.
Such practices challenge the idea that education should be neutral, efficient, or frictionless. Instead, they acknowledge that meaningful learning often involves tension, uncertainty, and productive discomfort. Unlearning, in this sense, is less about arriving at a final state of correctness and more about sustaining a practice of critical attentiveness. 15
The Affective and Relational Dimensions of Unlearning
One of the most overlooked aspects of unlearning pedagogy is its emotional labour. Letting go of familiar frameworks, especially those that have conferred a sense of authority or expertise, can evoke defensiveness, grief, or resistance.16 For educators, unlearning may involve confronting their own implication within unjust systems, even when their intentions are ethical or caring.17
At the same time, unlearning can be profoundly generative. When learners are invited to bring their full selves into the learning process, their histories, questions, contradictions, and partial knowledge, education becomes a space of connection rather than compliance.18 19In justice-oriented learning spaces, moments of unlearning often emerge quietly– in pauses after difficult questions, in the recognition that a long-held belief no longer sits comfortably, or in the collective reworking of language to better reflect shared values.20
These moments remind us that unlearning is not an individual achievement but a relational process. It unfolds through trust, care, and a willingness to remain in conversation, even when answers are incomplete.
Constrains, Risks, and Commitments
Despite its transformative potential, unlearning pedagogy operates within real and often rigid constraints. Educational institutions are frequently structured around standardisation, productivity, and assessment regimes that leave a little room for sustained critical reflection. Justice-oriented educators may encounter resistance, surveillance, and burnout– particularly when unlearning is framed as a threat rather than a necessary ethical commitment.
There is also the risk that unlearning becomes diluted into a depoliticised buzzword, stripped of its critical edge and reduced to surface-level inclusion. To resist this, unlearning must remain tethered to structural analysis and collective accountability. It must ask not only how individuals change, but how institutions redistribute power, resources, and legitimacy.
Towards a Humanising Education
Ultimately, un(learning) pedagogy invites us to reimagine education as a deeply human practice, one that is accountable to histories of harm while remaining oriented towards more just futures. By foregrounding epistemic justice, relationality, and critical reflexivity, unlearning opens up possibilities for education that does not merely reproduce the world as it is, but participates in shaping the world as it could be. In a time marked by widening inequalities and ongoing epistemic violence, the work of unlearning is neither comfortable nor optional. It is, however, necessary. And profoundly hopeful.
About the Author
Tanya Gujaran is a psychotherapist and a Program Officer at One Future Collective. Their work sits at the intersections of mental health, education, and social justice, and they are especially interested in feminist, anti-oppressive, and community-based approaches to care. They love watching films, and love exploring food culture in their free time.
- Pedagogy of the oppressed / Paulo Freire ↩︎
- Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability
↩︎ - Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture
↩︎ - Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Gloria Ladson-Billings American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3. (A
↩︎ - A PEDAGOGY OF DISCOMFORT
↩︎ - Lost Subjects, Contested Objects – Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning
↩︎ - Pedagogy of the oppressed / Paulo Freire
↩︎ - Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw Intro
↩︎ - Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope
↩︎ - Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
↩︎ - Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice
↩︎ - Unlearning Communication for Social Change- A pedagogical Proposition
↩︎ - Towards Phule-Ambedkarite Feminist Pedagogical Practice- Sharmila Rege
↩︎ - Radical pedagogies for territorial contestations
↩︎ - Unlearning Pedagogy/ Erica McWilliams
↩︎ - Feeling Power: Emotions and Education/Megan Boler
↩︎ - Pedagogy of the Oppressed/ Paulo Freire
↩︎ - Teaching to Transgress/ bell hooks
↩︎ - A pedagogy of Hope/ bell hooks
↩︎ - The Cultural Politics of Emotion/ Sara Ahmed
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