“How we learn is as important as what we learn”
Why, and how, is this important for Gender Studies?
Our approach to learning is vital in order to understand our relationship with it. Our experiences with subjects in the past will create a prejudice (positive or negative) about a certain topic. It is important to keep in mind that different people have different perspectives and backgrounds that will shape how they relate to certain topics and by extension to new knowledge on the subject. Of course what we learn is also important because it is the information that will become part of our thought process and will lead our actions.
Gender Studies haven’t ever been static or fixed; it is considered to be ever growing and changing due to its nature as a collective discipline. Changes and addings to every issue considered to be part of it depend on a list of factors such as the geographical, racial, social or political and backgrounds of the people who theoritize about it, hence the need to keep in mind how different realities impact on the way one can acquire the knowledge, the information that’s being obtained and, as previously said, the openness to it.
Changing people's minds is a difficult process because most of the ideas we have as a society are backed up by institutions or authority figures who endorse certain ideas. Gender studies questions knowledge that has been believed to be right by generations and that is backed up by several institutions, which means it is more difficult to change people’s minds on these subjects. In order to create effective dialogue it is important to consider people's backgrounds and cultures.
However, as time passes, societies have discovered that knowledge, as we conceive, is also changing day by day. What we tend to idealize as a static truth might be not as unquestionable as we think. When this possibility is presented to us, we tend to resist it in order to cling to what we already know, or at least we will try to limit this new knowledge by the previously acquired as a part of culture, values and traditions that have given life to a certain society for hundreds of years, establishing that the new knowledge directly threatens their way of life. This is why it is important to keep in mind that any knowledge must be learned, unlearned and relearned in order to establish a better understanding between people.
Constant learning makes us people capable of making a critical judgement on any topic or specific knowledge, however, in this cybernetic world of wireless networks we must bear in mind that not all the knowledge acquired is true or useful. People must be careful about the information they get. And conversely, people who give information must make sure that the information they provide will be received in an appropriate way.
It is essential to keep this in mind when sharing information about gender studies because it will be interpreted in different ways depending on peoples previous mindsets and cultures, it is even more difficult because gender studies is made up by subjective knowledge that will vary over time which means people will have to have continuous learning.
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