Unschooling dreams

On the overlaps and tensions between unschooling and peace education, between professorship and motherhood

Mar 07, 2024

“I assign a chapter from that book!” I excitedly told my friends from Ecoversities Alliance at our recent microgathering on campus. As soon as the words flew out of my mouth, I had to laugh at myself. We all laughed. What I said made no sense.

I was referring to a book called Raising Free People by Akilah S. Richards1, a book I love and highly recommend. It is about unschooling and deschooling as liberatory and healing practice. One of our friends was on the team of translators who translated the book into Spanish and had gifted a copy for the university library.

To assign as mandatory a chapter on unschooling is antithetical to the very idea of unschooling. Unschooling is fundamentally about choice and consent, autonomy and freedom, and to assign something as mandatory is contradictory, even hypocritical.

At the same time, we start the class with this reading, and it helps frame everything we do from that point on. It could be argued that it is important, perhaps essential, to include such a reading on a syllabus about peace education, as helping to frame our conversations around liberatory education and where it takes place, the systems and structures (or lack thereof) we create for it.

Mind you, my orientation to my syllabus reading list is more flexible than most. In my role as professor, I am required to create a syllabus. In my ideal world, it would be co-created with students (perhaps more on that another time; see syllabi as spells). I am also required to put a “required” and “suggested” reading section for each session (note to self: play with this). I tell students at the beginning of the course that the reading list is a lot, and to think of it more as a library that they can return to than as something they can reasonably read every word of in three weeks2. I encourage students to engage in collaborative note sharing, to figure out a system together so that they don’t necessarily have to individually do each reading.

This is an exercise in: we don’t have to do everything, and we don’t have to do it alone. Our learning is not an individual matter. We can collaborate and make the work lighter.

This is an exercise in: readings are only one part of our learning ecosystem, which includes our lived experiences, the world around us, our relationships with each other, among other things. Perhaps more on that another time, too.

This is an exercise it: let’s take responsibility for our learning. You don’t need my permission3, but here it is. More on that below…

I try to integrate unschooling principles such as trust, consent, choice, and autonomy into my approach to peace education in the formal graduate setting I teach in. Again, this might sound contradictory, but a lot of the unschooling folks I follow4 talk about unschooling as having less to do with where learning takes place, and more to do with the principles and orientations toward learning (and unlearning). It is possible to unschool while engaging in the formal schooling system. No matter where you do it, it is a practice - and one of the key elements of that practice is that learning takes place everywhere, and is a life-long journey.

In Raising Free People, Akilah Richards describes unschooling as “child-trusting, anti-oppression, liberatory, love-centered approach to parenting and caregiving” (p. 11) and “a way of life that is based on freedom, respect, and autonomy” (p. 46). She would be the first to tell you that there is not a singular definition, nor should there be, and clarifies this statement as how her family defines it. Richards further describes how “when education is forced and standardized, it stifles natural learning and the things to which learning inevitably lead, kills creativity, chokes out confident autonomy - it is an act of colonization” (p. 12). When carried out this way, education enacts and perpetuates violence.

Unschooling isn’t just for children, though, and we can think about unschooling as a lifelong process. For those of us adults with unschooling aspirations who have been through a lot of formal schooling, deschooling becomes an integral part of our path and practice. Richards describes deschooling as:

Shedding the programming and habits that resulted from other people’s agency over your time, body, thoughts, or actions;
Designing and practicing beliefs that align with your desire to thrive, be happy, and succeed (p. 36).

There is so much to shed. For me, at this stage in Daphne’s development, I’m working on trying to let her trust herself and take risks, and not be overly protective. This is so hard as a parent, and so necessary. Kids have to take risks to learn, and to learn to trust themselves. I have to learn to trust her.

There are a lot of mandatory aspects to our graduate programs: mandatory attendance, mandatory courses, assignments, grades, etc. And sure, it can be argued (and often is argued) that students chose to be here, chose to sign up for the program, and thus by default are choosing whatever we impose upon them. This is true, and I believe they should have more choice within it. I would love to move towards more electives for students, for example, but this is not an institutional reality at the moment. I try to build in choice where I can, with assignments and readings and how we spend our time, but it is somewhat limited. I am always asking, “Where can we create choice? How can we create more choice, given current institutional or structural constraints? Where can we co-create?” At a minimum, as Meg Wheatley teaches, we can always choose who to be and how we show up. All of this is a constant dance, and a tension.

We can also choose to have agency and take some of our power back. In a formal setting, if space isn’t offered in the curriculum, we can create things outside of it. We don’t have to wait for something to be created for us. This isn’t to say the institution (any institution) doesn’t have certain responsibilities, but it raises the question of: where can we take more responsibility and agency for our own learning and experience?

Returning to the idea of deschooling as shedding programming, one of the ways I notice this come up a lot, for me and my students over time, is around trust and agency, which I see as interrelated. Modern formal schooling, from the time we set foot in a classroom, teaches us to not trust ourselves. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, it teaches us to ignore our intuition and our bodily wisdom (you can only eat when you are allowed; you can only go to the bathroom with permission from someone else). It teaches us that we need permission for everything. We wait for someone to tell us what to do. We wait for someone to tell us what we should learn, and how we should show that we have learned something. School is supposed to provide the meal, and we are supposed to eat what we are given.

By the time we get to graduate school, we have many layers to shed. We have been seeking permission for all of these years. Raising our hands. Not trusting ourselves for all these years. Distrust and disempowerment run so deep. And distrust of ourselves, I believe, trickles over into distrust of others. It is a radical act to relearn to trust ourselves again and build relationships built on trust. We practice this in peace education by learning to honor and trust our bodies’ wisdom (this can be as simple as going to the bathroom when you need to and not asking permission), and building trust with each other through getting to know each other, being vulnerable, and repairing trust when it has been broken. I continue to dream into the ways I can practice unschooling and deschooling more deeply in the formal classroom. I continue to dance with and sit with the tension.

Meanwhile, I am at this interesting moment in life where I am straddling the educational continuum: myself, in a perpetual journey of lifelong learning and unlearning, and teaching at the graduate level; Daphne, my daughter, in her last year of kinder Montessori. She will age out of her current school at the end of this academic year (which in Costa Rica is December), and the decision of where she will go next year is actively on my mind. Even though it is only March (it is already March!!!), I know December will be here before I know it, and I know that we will need to figure this out long before then. It is preoccupying a lot of my waking thoughts.

Lately, she has been asking me, “Why am I away from you so much? Why do I only see you at night and in the morning? I don’t like it…” which breaks my heart. Clearly it breaks her heart, too.

When she asks why, I tell her, “Capitalism!”

To which, of course, she just gives me a funny look back. And then I explain that mama has to work, and I also love my work, and I love her more than my work (more than I ever have or ever will love anything). But that right now this is what we have to do.

But I am also wondering…there has to be another way. I cannot teach about liberatory education, and co-create liberatory educational spaces for others, without also trying to find or carve the most liberatory path for my daughter - with her - that we can find together. It would feel completely hypocritical and antithetical to my values.

Lately she has also been telling me she doesn’t like to be forced to do things (to be clear, this is rare; she was talking about the time before she was potty trained when her teacher forced her to use the potty). She likes to be free. As we all do. Unschooling feels as simple as that, in a lot of ways, and as simple as listening to children about what they need and desire, and letting them be the guide. I am trying to listen to her deeply, acknowledge her needs, and together, find a path forward. I trust that we will.

Lately I have been dreaming of an unschool in the forest next to campus. I am asking the forest about this possibility. I am holding this possibility with others and sharing this dream with you here. I am casting spells, asking for guidance and support. We will see what emerges and how the forest responds. I will keep you posted. In the meantime, I will be re-imagining education with folks at the Gross Global Happiness summit on campus, and will undoubtedly share what happens there! Stay tuned…

Today I leave you with:

Deschooling affirmations

I trust my body and its wisdom.
I honor my body and its wisdom by listening to it.
I trust in life. I trust in my path.

I don’t wait for someone to tell me what to do or give me the answers.
I follow my curiosity, heart, dreams, yearnings.
I reclaim agency. I take my power back.

I claim space to live my values.
I align my life with my values and desires.
I believe in my capacity to thrive, be happy, and succeed.
May we all thrive, succeed, and be free, together.

With love and care,

Stephanie

I know some of you are on similar journeys, too, and would love to hear how it is going on your path :)

Enchantable

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