Challenging our knowledge systems, forms of social engagement and relationship to the natural world: and locating unschooling in cultural, social and political context.

Introduction: a few thoughts about SDE and social change

An important and growing group of SDE advocates view the objectives of unschooling/SDE as reaching far beyond the individual freedom of the child and consider them to be intimately linked to social and environmental justice, anti-racism, LGBTQ+ rights, liberation and decolonialization – from Western knowledge systems, capitalistic values, stress-filled lifestyles, hierarchical relations, and institution-bound living. 

This vision poses a challenge to activists over time who have aspired to transform or disrupt various institutions and yet have overlooked one of the most entrenched and influential institutions of all – the school. 

Proponents of SDE see unschooling as central to the realization of social and political transformation and believe that systems of oppression cannot be dismantled while the school – “the precursor to all other types of oppression” – remains intact, reproducing patterns of control, competition, and compliance.

These SDE advocates also highlight what they see as a contradiction between a socially and politically active life outside the home, and one that is conventional in terms of parenting or schooling. They identify family relations and early social and educational experiences as formative domains that can entrench cycles of power and control by restricting young peoples’ thoughts and movements or provide liberatory models of social interaction by affording children respect and autonomy. 

Proponents of this broader vision of SDE also question the entrenched developmental narrative that has presented formal schooling as the only route to salvation for children living in poor, low-income or marginalized communities, and the only way for children in the so-called ‘developing world be ‘elevated’ and join the ranks of the prosperous. They argue that Western style education has consistently failed children of color and reinforced the school-to-prison pipeline; stamped vibrant communities and young people in the Global South with the title of ‘failures’ who cannot ‘keep up’; discarded and often destroyed generations of skills and knowledge once central to the lives of indigenous or colonized people; and enveloped even those children who do succeed by the measures of school standards in a blanket of achievement-driven competition that dampens their love of learning and sets many down a path to anxiety and depression by their tween or teenage year.

You’ll find some of these voices below, and spread throughout The Great Family Tree. See section on SDE videos/audio (add link to that section) for videos of some of the voices below.

Zakiyya Ismail: Unschooling as Social Change https://www.growingminds.co.za/unschooling-as-social-change/

Why Unschooling as Decoloniation

https://www.growingminds.co.za/learning-reimagined-conference-why-unschooling-as-decolonisation/

Carol Black has a unique set of essays that contextualize unschooling in broader social, political and cultural contexts. 

Two of the best to begin with are: 

A Thousand Rivers: What the Modern World has Forgotten about Children and Learning http://carolblack.org/a-thousand-rivers 

On the Wildness of Children: The Revolution Will Not Take Place in the Classroom 

http://carolblack.org/on-the-wildness-of-children

Akilah Richards

Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work

Munir Fasheh: The Trouble with Knowledge

A beautiful piece about our “illiteracy” and our prejudices against indigenous knowledge systems 

https://shikshantar.org/articles/trouble-knowledge

A longer more academic version of this article

The Role of Mathematics in the Destruction of Communities, and What We Can Do to Reverse this Process, Including Using Mathematics (2011?) http://mujaawarah.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/The-Role-of-Mathematics-in-The-Destruction-of-Communities-and-What-We-Can-Do-To-Reverse-This-Process-Including-Using-Mathematics.pdf 

Chemay Morales-James: Liberated Learning: Practicing the Technology of the Sacred

https://education-reimagined.org/liberated-learning-practicing-the-technology-of-the-sacred/

Culturally Responsive Online Educational Tools

https://ctchildrenscollective.org/wp-content/uploads/CulturallyResponsiveOnline-Resources.pdf

Manish Jain: McEducation for All: Whose Agenda Does Global Education Really Serve?

https://shikshantar.org/articles/mceducation-all-whose-agenda-does-global-education-really-serve