Here are a few more thoughts, if you are wondering….Is this for me? How can this help? And why do I need to learn about SDE if my children are in a “good” school or a “progressive” school?

For a great deal of human history children were educated by and within their families and communities. Many scholars have shown how in hunter gatherer societies and indigenous cultures there was almost a complete absence of ‘teaching’ : rather, children learned through observation, social engagement, continuous play, and experimentation. Even in early ancient or early modern times, when children were likely subjected to many strict, value-laden, and often aggressive approaches to children and childhood, many had time for free play, engaged in apprenticeships, and learned from the people who knew them best and considered themselves competent to impart skills, convey knowledge, pass down invaluable inherited wisdom, and prepare children for their future lives.

Since the advent of schooling, and in particular compulsory schooling, we live in a very different reality, guided by radically different ideas about where learning takes place and who is responsible for dispensing education.

In this new reality, learning and living are no longer intertwined and the experience of children is separated out into pre- and post-school.

In their pre-school years children are often considered to be natural explorers and competent learners who acquire mental and physical skills without formal instruction, and their playfulness, curiosity, independence, initiative, and creativity are encouraged. We recognize that their creative, embodied, emotional, spiritual and intellectual development are united in their growth, and we cherish the cross-disciplinary detours they take to explore a passion.

Once children enter school, their learning content becomes primarily academic, leaving creativity and embodied learning to after-school activities. They are no longer considered capable of learning on their own, and their choices and movements are controlled or determined by others. Adults tell them what they should learn, how they should learn, when they should learn, and with whom they should learn it. Their time for play, pursuing their own interests and risk-taking is reduced to a bare minimum. They must set aside their passions and study a limited number of subjects with little connection to their daily lives. They lose the right to learn-through-play, socialize with multiple ages and enjoy the present. Instead, at a tender age they are placed on a ladder of achievement often populated by rankings, exams, over-stuffed and highly regulated schedules, and future oriented goals, with continual monitoring and workloads that leave little room for play or initiative.

Further, once children are in school, education is by and large considered to be beyond the jurisdiction of the family and community. No matter how involved we are in our children’s schools, classes or homework, and whether we send them to public or private school, we by and large have to outsource their learning to other individuals and institutions for the whole of their childhoods. And while parents, older relatives and community members are understood to provide love, values, wisdom and support, they are no longer considered ‘educators’. Rather, educators are usually teachers within a school setting who have been trained specifically to convey certain subjects and manage classroom dynamics. Of course, many teachers provide much, much more – intimate connection with and support for individual children and families, positive role modelling and inspiration, social and emotional learning and community building.

Nevertheless, the teaching itself is around pre-selected subjects and group learning, and the process is adult-led. Baked into the school system is the idea that only some subjects qualify as worthy of study — 'academic' subjects that lead to an academic degree rather than those that require embodied, creative, or emotionally-based knowledge. In addition to depriving children of the right to learn with all of their being and explore their own proclivities, this also perpetuates a social cycle whereby children are influenced to respect people with degrees over those who work with their 'hands and hearts' (See Gandhi on the education of the Head, Hands and Heart and blogspot “We are all Octopuses”).

In short, we have substituted the idea of learning with a concept of education – something we consider children need to acquire in schools in order to pass tests, obtain a degree, get into college, get a job and become socialized. It is generally understood that this form of learning can only be conveyed in a school setting, and by school teachers.

In fact, the school-as-life narrative has so captivated society that most people rarely question the assumption that schooling is natural and inevitable, and that without it children would be adrift, unemployable, and socially outcast; or that it is necessary for the lives of children instantly to change when at a tender young age they cross the threshold and enter school.

SDE is a Family Affair

The movement for liberated learning practices is not new. Over times and in dozens of cultures there have been innumerable attempts to address these issues and change the nature of schooling and education, from the emergence of progressive schools, free schools, radical experiments, school reform movements and more (for an early incarnation of the idea of education having no location, no method and no goal, see HERE. (View Piece on Tolstoy).

What I mean by this is that if you sent your child to a ‘progressive’ school, as a parent you might or might not choose to question your own ideas about children and learning. But when it comes to unschooling, the whole family needs to be engaged: a child will struggle to be self-directed if their parents are not “deschooling” themselves, and parents cannot impose SDE if their children are not on board.

When as a family we engage in a ‘deschooling’ journey we often realize that the very act of offering our young people new forms of respect, trust and autonomy reveals to us that no matter how progressive or gentle we consider ourselves to be as parents or educators, we likely are deeply schooled in our approach to learning. We might notice more about how the culture of schooling – what Akilah Richards has termed “schoolish thinking” – defined (and limited) our own assumptions about learning, work, play, freedom and socialization, and our expectations of what educational outcomes and “success” should look like.

Examining these assumptions through an engagement with concepts and practices around SDE can be a beautiful experience for a whole family, and a deeply liberating one for children. Even if (perhaps especially if) you children are in school rather than homeschooled, or if you are a teacher within a conventional educational setting, practicing SDE may open new venues, impacting your family life, your children or students’ learning journey, or the choices children make about what to do in their free time.

In our workshops we’ll be exploring many of these issues.

And if these workshops aren’t for you, feel free to explore the questions at the end of this post on your own, or follow some of the links on the The Great Family Tree, many of which can help guide you in your SDE journey. On The Great Family Tree you can also find people or spaces and workshops that might be a better fit for you in terms of your interests and needs.