IS THIS FOR YOU

Are you a parent, teacher, caregiver, community based educator?

Are you wanting to gain a deeper understanding of unschooling and its intersections with decolonisation and social change?

Do you want to create a learning community/centre based on unschooling and indigenous pedagogies?

Do you want to send your children to a free learning space?

Do your children currently attend a free learning space?

Are you exploring alternatives to mainstream education?

Are you dreaming about a different kind of society – one that is egalitarian and includes young people’s participation?

Are you disillusioned with the current education system?

Do you want to connect with others that are reimagining learning?

Do you like to explore ideas in community?

Do you want to start forming a community?

If you answered yes to at least a few of them, then come along and join us.

WHAT

We will explore the role of schooling at a systemic, interpersonal and personal level.

At the systemic level, we will examine the current education system’s contribution to continued colonialism, explore its complicity in the degeneration of our cultures and the climate.

At the interpersonal level, we will explore the role of schooling in the loss of family and community connection.

At a the personal level, we explore the sense of loss and personal connection that comes with conforming to the requirements of schooling.

We will look at the relationships with young people.  We will explore these relationships in theory and in our everyday lived lives so that we can start seeing how we oppress children and together support each other in ending these practices.

Then, we will explore the philosophy and practice of unschooling through a decolonisation and social change lens. We will explore how we can start living unschooling today.  We will decolonize childhood and parenting in stepping away from power, domination and control inherent in our modern/western adult-young relationships. We will explore how indigenous cultures lived and learned in partnership.

Finally we will explore how we can create the spaces in our homes, communities and learning centres.  We will look at how we can start living in our homes, communities and resource centres in a way that reflects the kind of world we want to live in.

FORMAT

We will share resources that you need to work through on your own at the beginning of each two week cycle.  

We will gather online at end of the two week cycle to share, reflect and internalise our learnings.

The resources would take the form of links to articles, PDFs, videos and podcasts.

 The online meetings will be recorded and shared with all registered co-explorers.

TIME COMMITMENT

The minimum time commitment you would need to engage with the resources shared for the two weeks – is about 2 hours. The online meeting once a week or every two weeks should be between 90 – 130 minutes long.  

We will also share additional resources for you to peruse at your leisure.

There will be a forum where we can communicate, share, learn, ask questions and build community.  We can utilise this forum as much or as little as our time permits.

The guided exploration runs over 10 weeks from the 11 June to the 20 August.

With the exception of the Creating Learning Communities, you can also only register for specific sessions.

OUTLINE AND DATES

You can register for each of these sessions as stand alone offerings except the Learning Communities session.  This requires a deeper understanding of the four themes so there is no stand alone option for this theme.  If however, you feel that you do have an deeper understanding of these themes, please do email us directly to discuss this.

Every Alternate Tuesday – 7 p.m. South African Time. GMT +2

11 June  Online Introductions

25 June  Deschooling

9 July Children are people

23 July Unschooling

6 August Ancestral Parenting and Learning

20 August  Creating Learning Communities

COSTS

A key feature of this exploration is to find ways to create the kind of relationships and spaces we want to see in this world.  And we want to reflect this in this offering as well. So as far as costs go, when you apply to join this offering, you will be given an opportunity to offer an amount of money based on your own estimation of the value of the offering to you and your personal circumstances.  Once the exploration is completed you will invited to once again reflect on that amount that you initially paid. You can then leave it at the initial amount, increase it or ask for some back. This is is how we collectively get to practice gift culture.

YOUR GUIDES AND CO-LEARNERS

Mother | Wife | Unschooler | Education Freedom Advocate | Child Rights Advocate | Learning Reimagined Conference Convenor | She/Her

Hi, Zakiyya here.  My partner Ahmed and our 3 children (21, 19, 12) have been on an unschooling journey since they entered our lives.  I’ve been exploring living and learning in freedom as family, how it could function in learning communities and reflecting on the intersections of unschooling with social change and decolonisation for as long as I can remember.  Sometimes my thoughts make it into words right here on the Growing Minds website.   And when I thought I could, I convened the Learning Reimagined Conference of  2017 and 2018.  I dream of a world where learning communities and free children are the norm, that we live on a healthy planet that we see ourselves a part of and an end to oppression. (No, not like Star Trek).  This is my tiny little bit towards that more beautiful world that just maybe is possible.

Ché-vanni Beon Davids

Restoring dignity and humanity to the process of life, living and learning.