Our Broken Compass: Unlearning Education as Schooling in A World Gone Awry

A lecture by Ijeoma Clement-Akomolafe

In this talk, I tell my story of my unlearning journey, of meeting my unschooled daughter in the spaces previously occupied by myths perpetuated by my extensive education. I share about our project, ‘Broken Compass’, and how we are reaching out to children and parents in India, helping them see that the old models may be defunct in these times of rapid changes, and enlisting them into a community of playful co-learners. This project is not an attempt to dismiss, demonize or essentialize schooling or to insist on a confident and new epistemology of learning; neither is this talk about a manifesto for a ‘new age’. Instead, I will seek to describe how shifts in the world are producing new concepts and ideas that address the displacements introduced by schooling.