Comments on: Unlearning http://www.teachingprofessor.com/articles/thinking/unlearning A teaching and learning conference. Mon, 23 May 2011 15:28:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Elizabeth Baile http://www.teachingprofessor.com/articles/thinking/unlearning/comment-page-1#comment-10774 Elizabeth Baile Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:59:17 +0000 http://www.teachingprofessor.com/?p=2032#comment-10774 I am deeply touched by your words, as they match recent and ongoing experiences of my own: my 91-year-old mother, my life-long model of intelligence, common sense and wit, is in a rapidly descending spiral of dementia. And just this week, she's fallen and broken her hip-or perhaps broken her hip and fallen. The downhill slide seems inexorable, either way. You describe the loss of faculties, the puzzling, dismaying and frightening awareness that what was once so simple and automatic is now a void. We are grieved to witness this in the aging, yet it still seems part of the natural way of things. But when it strikes even closer to home, it's unsettling. This spring I was working on my income tax declaration, nerdily using paper and pencil for the math calculations, and I suddenly realized I couldn't be sure that I was subtracting correctly. My heart skipped a beat: was this a sign of things to come? My mother is forgetting how to remember, forgetting how to think, how to converse, how to tie her shoes, to manage a fork and knife--eventually, it will be even how to sip, chew and swallow. Unlearning...the downward, backward part of our full circle, the return to the seed. Elizabeth Baile Registrar, Academic Coordinator & Director of Advising Suffolk University Madrid Campus Madrid, Spain I am deeply touched by your words, as they match recent and ongoing experiences of my own: my 91-year-old mother, my life-long model of intelligence, common sense and wit, is in a rapidly descending spiral of dementia. And just this week, she’s fallen and broken her hip-or perhaps broken her hip and fallen. The downhill slide seems inexorable, either way.

You describe the loss of faculties, the puzzling, dismaying and frightening awareness that what was once so simple and automatic is now a void. We are grieved to witness this in the aging, yet it still seems part of the natural way of things. But when it strikes even closer to home, it’s unsettling. This spring I was working on my income tax declaration, nerdily using paper and pencil for the math calculations, and I suddenly realized I couldn’t be sure that I was subtracting correctly. My heart skipped a beat: was this a sign of things to come?

My mother is forgetting how to remember, forgetting how to think, how to converse, how to tie her shoes, to manage a fork and knife–eventually, it will be even how to sip, chew and swallow. Unlearning…the downward, backward part of our full circle, the return to the seed.

Elizabeth Baile
Registrar, Academic Coordinator & Director of Advising
Suffolk University Madrid Campus
Madrid, Spain

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