One of my biggest challenges in raising free people is my lack of tools I could use to raise aware people without transgressing the very principles of raising free people. There are many incredibly useful partnership parenting blogs sharing tools on navigating issues around eating, sleeping, hygiene, video games, TV, the internet etc. Yet, I haven’t found anything that speaks directly to how we raise young people that are aware of the subconscious biases they absorb from our deeply unjust society, of their (and our) privilege and how they/we might perpetuate oppression and how they/we are also affected by microaggressions and oppression. The closest thing for me has been the Akilah’s Fare of the Free Child Podcast.
So it is with great honour that I share this recording of Raising Free People | Raising Aware People. It is by no means a conclusive session. In fact we barely scratched the surface. The good news is that we’re planning on further scratching the surface and beyond. Akilah and I (but mostly Akilah) will be continuing to dig further into this space in season 4 of her Fare Of The Free Child Podcast. The first of these are up so head over here to have a listen to Akilah and I in conversation on Raising Free People | Raising Aware People
Some of my personal reflections in participating in this panel and then later listening to/editing the recording:
1) These young unschoolers wow me. I loved listening to and learning from them and simply witnessing them.
2) The question of resources came up more than once. It comes up in many other discussions too. For me, the one resource that I really needed and couldn’t access, was community.
3) So Bayo’s point on Community – at around 50+ minute mark, resonates deeply with me.
4) The connection between unschooling and social justice isn’t always apparent so I am sharing a piece on Unschooling As Social Change that I wrote a while back as I explore the nuances of unschooling.
Hope you find it useful. Would love to hear your thoughts and further contributions to the conversation.
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Mother | Wife | Unschooler | Education Freedom Advocate | Child Rights Advocate | Learning Reimagined Conference Convenor | She/Her
For the last 25 years, Zakiyya has been experimenting with living and learning in freedom, also known as unschooling. She is an advocate for freedom in education. Her three children have never been to school, living instead as if the idea of schooling doesn’t exist. She has been supporting and has been consistently sharing her reflections on the intersections of unschooling with decolonisation, social change and unschooling’s foundational role in social justice. She convened the Learning Reimagined Conferences of 2017 and 2018, both groundbreaking in their own rights with the 2018 conference being the first conference globally to focus on the socio-political dimensions of Unschooling, Decolonisation and Social Change.