Unconditioning our minds so we can think differently about "school" - A Conversation with Manish Jain

Apr 13, 2025

Manish Jain is a visionary educator and co-founder of Shikshantar and Swaraj University in India, dedicated to transforming traditional educational paradigms. He discusses the necessity of unlearning systemic biases ingrained in education and advocates for fostering independent, community-oriented learning. Jain highlights innovative concepts like Ecoversities, which celebrate local knowledge and emphasize experiential learning. He also urges a shift away from conventional schooling methods that undermine self-worth and creativity, promoting a more holistic approach to education.

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INSIGHT

Schooling’s Harmful Impact

Traditional schooling often labels many children as failures, damaging their self-worth permanently.
Real education should reveal everyone's unique beauty and capacity to contribute meaningfully to the world.

INSIGHT

Exam Pressure and Student Suicides

High-stakes exam pressure in places like Kota, India, leads to tragic student suicides.
Institutional responses often ignore root causes, focusing instead on superficial fixes.

ADVICE

Embrace Unlearning to Transform

Prioritize unlearning to overcome limiting mental models and societal definitions of success.
Use unlearning as a foundation for shifting consciousness and adopting new ways of seeing.

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Is it possible to unlearn the conditioning of our minds, that many of us who have had traditional educations have experienced, such that we can think differently about what an education could be? This week's guest has seen both sides of this experience, and is weaving incredible communities and new institutions all over India and the world!

Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse local knowledge systems and cultural imaginations and is one of the strong planetary voices for de-schooling our lives. He has served for the past 20 years as coordinator and co-founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India, and is co-founder of the Swaraj University, Creativity Adda, Learning Societies Unconference, Walkouts-Walkon network, Udaipur as a Learning City, and Families Learning Together network in India. He recently helped launch the global Ecoversities Network and the global Giftival Network. He is a featured speaker / advisory member of the Economics of Happiness network for localization. He has edited several books on vimukt shiksha (liberating learning) on themes such as learning societies, unlearning, gift culture, community media, and tools for deep dialogue. Prior to this, Manish worked as one of the principal team members of the UNESCO Learning Without Frontiers global initiative. He has also been a consultant to UNICEF, World Bank, and USAID in Africa, South Asia, and the former Soviet Union. Manish also worked as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley. He has been trying to unlearn his master’s degree in education from Harvard University and his BA in economics, international development, and political philosophy from Brown University. He and his wife Vidhi have been unschooling themselves with their 15-year-old daughter, Kanku, in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Manish is passionate about urban organic farming, filmmaking, simulation gaming, bicycling, group facilitation, clowning, intercultural dialogue, and slow food cooking.

Links to Manish's communities of practice:

www.shikshantar.org
www.ecoversities.org
www.swarajuniversity.org
www.udaipurlearningcity.org
https://complexity.university/
www.jailuniversity.org
www.farmversities.org
www.creativityadda.org
www.creativityconsortium.org