127: Doing Self-Directed Education

Jen  00:03

Hi, I’m Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at your parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you’d like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free guide to seven parenting myths that we can safely leave behind seven fewer things to worry about. Subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the your parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you’ll join us.

Jen  00:59

Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. A long time on the show, we were lucky enough to hear from Dr. Peter Grey on the topic of self-directed learning and how learning can possibly happen when nobody is teaching the child what to learn. That conversation was quite a popular one, and today we’re going to do a long delayed follow up on this topic with Akilah Richards. Akilah is a writer, and unschooling organizer, and host of the Raising Free People podcast. She’s a founding board member of the Alliance for self-directed education and the author of the new book, raising free people, unschooling as liberation and healing work. Her focus is on helping Black indigenous people of color communities, use unschooling as a tool for decolonizing learning and for liberating themselves from oppressive exclusive systems. So we’ll have lots here for those members of the audience today, as well as what White folks can do to support this process and use self directed learning in a way that helps to break down tools of oppression rather than perpetuating them. During the episode, I mentioned this supporting your child’s learning membership, which is currently accepting members for just a few more days until the end of December 2020. Will get you and your child started on the path of self-directed learning that we discussed in this episode. As you’ll hear, so much of this work is our own work to do, rather than just making sure our child is doing the right things at the right times to make sure they’re successful. So you’ll get help in understanding how learning actually happens in a child’s brain so that you can recognise it and gain confidence in their abilities and in your abilities to help them learn. You’ll learn how to document their learning in a way that doesn’t require testing and grades, but instead recognizes the learning in all of its complexity. You’ll be able to scaffold their learning so you can sensitively provide just the right amount of support to help them overcome a challenge without taking over the project yourself. And you’ll get guidance on supporting the development of skills like critical thinking and non-cognitive learning. Which is learning that happens in our bodies and not just in our brains. Underpinning all that is a deep respect for children’s own ideas and opinions, and we listen closely to those to help us understand how to support our child’s learning rather than assuming that we know what they need and then teaching it to them. So if this sounds like the kind of thing you’d like to spend time doing with your child. I encourage you to check out the membership at yourparentingmojo.com/learningmembership. It’s suitable for parents with children old enough to ask questions through the end of elementary school, whether you’re homeschooling, thinking about homeschooling, zoom schooling, or in school full time and looking to supplement that outside of school hours. Once again, you can find more information at yourparentingmojo.com/learningmembership. Now let’s get going with our conversation. Welcome. Akilah.

Akilah Richards  03:37

Thank you, Jen. I so appreciate the invitation.

Jen  03:40

And so I wonder if we can start with public schools. Which I know you have some experience with and maybe you can start by telling us what you see as being, I hesitate to use the word wrong but I can’t think of a better one. But, what’s wrong with public schools? Why did you opt out of this system? And are there some aspects of it that you actually think work quite well?

Akilah Richards  04:02

Yeah, So I feel like for the work that I do, I feel like it’s less important my opinion about public school. I think, Jen, that you and I probably have a similar experience. That many people have lots of opinions about public school and they’re often not so great, even with the elements of it that we love, like teachers. I think that’s an element that most people love. Yeah, that’s certainly been my experience like falling in love with teachers who are also trapped inside of that same system and the constructs and confines that come when we focus on results and standardization instead of personhood and ways to humanize practices. That’s pretty much my spiel about public school. It doesn’t feel useful to go on about the issues with it, and I also, in terms of my own story, essentially, my daughters, they were only in elementary school when we left. I began to see how much of their personhood was being compromised at the expense of student hood and I got to see that because Miley and Sage they expressed it they talked about not having time as I talked about in the book. Miley kept saying she didn’t have time to think her thoughts, you know, instead they kept peopling on her because that’s how it felt to be in a space where you have to like move your body a certain way, put your finger over your mouth to display quiet and to walk in the line and the these things that might seem simple and normal and maybe even good were much like lots of other things that seems simple and normal and good. Violence, acts of violence against their bodies, against their personhood,  and against their practice of consent. So essentially, that was the issue with my kids, and that’s also my issue with schooling generally.

Jen  05:53

Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of parents might feel that maybe sense it and just not have the language to verbalize why they’re uncomfortable with this environment that they went through. You know, I went to public school as well, and to see these incongruencies between the way that we want to raise our children and the practices that happened in school and to just not know how to reconcile that tension. 

Akilah Richards  06:18

Exactly. Or even know what to do with what you know, because, for example, among Black communities in varying countries, not just the U.S thing. We know that schooling was not designed with us in mind, right? Like, it can be a form of subjugation across the board, but particularly when you talk about non-White bodies and specifically, when you talk about Black-bodies and non-Black indigenous bodies, that information is so harmful. The things that are missing on purpose repeatedly years upon years, the same stuff my mother said should have been in school when she was in school, were the same issues that I had with stuff, the same issues that you know, going on generation beyond generation. So there’s also that element of people, cultures, peoples who can see what school can be but are also trapped inside what school never was and they never gonna be for some people. So that’s another element of it that makes it deeply unattractive and problematic for me.

Jen  07:24

Yeah, And so I don’t want to spend much more time on schools, but I do want to address one question. I get a lot. I get a lot of pushback for being anti-school and I tried to respond that I’m not anti school. But the peer reviewed research that I looked at says that school is just not designed to teach children in a way that supports their learning and development. That. That from the peer-reviewed side and then all of the experiential stuff as well, that you’re talking about is there as well. And so the people who are asking me these questions, the parents are asking me this question, are often committed to public schools for some reason, that children are going to be attended, and they want to know how can we support parents and children who are in the school system, either by choice? Or frankly, some of them don’t have a choice? Are there ways that we can support those families?Given what we know about the system?

Jen  08:11

In my opinion, of course, first of all, yes, there are many ways that we can help, and it will probably be good to talk to people who are focused on that, because I am not. What I’m focused on is building systems and community, and language and practice. For those who have escaped and for those of us when we can, and also so that we can bring self-directed skills and focal points, things like agency and consent and partnership, so that we can sprinkle that into all the waters and all the places because though everybody can’t leave school, self directed education, those skills apply all across the board, their life skills and so my thing is if we can get more exposure and practice around self directed skills, including people who are still opted into or trapped into school, then it’s going to make our society, our relationships, our ways of being together, safer and healthier and hopefully, Jen for me, hopefully, we fade school out and what we do instead is a thing that includes a school but doesn’t center it and the inclusion of school will be humanized. That’s my hope. Yeah, Not reform, not what to do with the people. What none of that.

Akilah Richards  09:32

Mm hmm. Yep, I love that vision and you mentioned already about your daughter Miley and that she didn’t have time to think her own thoughts and I was so struck with that because I read that in the book. And that was a conversation you’d had with her years ago, and then you released an interview with her. You interviewed her on the podcast not so long ago, and I listened to that and I was so struck by her self-assuredness and her confidence, and the contrast between that and what you said about the fact that she was losing her confidence by being in school. She wasn’t asking questions anymore. She was worried that she was asking the wrong questions or just being too tired to ask any questions at all. And so I’m wondering, what implications does this have? this idea that you don’t have a chance to think your own thoughts, have for our children’s not just learning? but they’re being in the world?

Akilah Richards  10:24

 Yeah,

Akilah Richards  10:24

I love that you brought that up. Yet, It was such a stuck point for me. Like I all the time I said, I don’t remember a lot of things. Like just like, generally, my memory is just like, wow. But that was that one really stuck out. Because it what it reminds me of is when I watch movies, thankfully, I haven’t experienced this in my real life, where somebody is in a coma, like a type of coma where they can hear you, they can see you, but they can’t do the things that they would want to do, basic stuff, let alone. You know, like breakdancing, right. So like that, to me, is its own curriculum. It is its own course of study. The fact that it is normal for us to be in an environment where someone explicitly states what we should be doing, not only with our bodies and our time, but with our cognition. What we should be pondering,how we should showcase this pondering? Dude, that’s wild. That’s normal. To me, it is, listen, the fact that that is normal to me is something that we need to be with. And when Miley said that, it allowed me to reclaim a bit of myself that I could then tap into and free my children. Because for me, the implications of that is that we become really well versed at performing, thinking and performing presence, to the point that it becomes something that we cannot even distinguish for ourselves. The times that we do want to actually be present for something we feel bad or guilty or we can’t reconcile that, we have to not do something else that needs to be done in order to address this thing. Because schoolishness says, if you do this from nine to 10, and 10, and 11, and then you take a break here, and then if you finish at three, if you do that, for four years. This is the end result. So then we now learn we become acclimated to that type of dehumanized process, we apply that we attempt repeatedly and fail to apply that to our actual selves, and we also hold other people responsible to that. So there’s no like deep research team that need. We see this all the time, we see this in our relationships with each other. Those are the results. Those are the effects of the normalizing of that way of someone else having that level of agency over things. Including how you think, what you think, and what you do with what you think.

Jen  13:02

Yeah, when you put it like that, it is absolutely wild and the fact that we can no longer distinguish between what we’ve been told to think and what we actually think.

Jen  13:14

So much of adulthood is like unraveling that, like who am I, outside of the ideas of who I’ve needed to be, or someone else’s ideas of who I should be, or who I am, or who I was, so much of our own. Necessary unraveling is that, and I feel like some of that is maybe unavoidable, right, because we’re people raised by other people. So it’s not like this whole thing is like, you know, messed up from the beginning. It’s the elements of it where we do not have the space to think our own thoughts, that the things that feel like a luxury, we have to have the money to go on a retreat to be with our feelings and thoughts and think about what you know, like Satguru said in this moment, and how does that connect with my body. These things that feel so like, like they’re for rich White women, essentially, these are life skills that everybody has, but that there are things in place in our society that puts something in front of that level of self inquiry and exploration, and organic to gathering that I think is very much embedded in school. 

Jen  14:20

Yeah, I definitely have seen things that I’ve learned in the last 18 months. Thinking about body awareness, and awareness of how I process information. And oh my goodness, wait, it’s like why is that not the curriculum of schools?

Jen  14:36

Exactly, Jen. Like, why wouldn’t we know these things? Like even our digestive system? 

Jen  14:41

Yes. 

Akilah Richards  14:42

Right. Like, we learn about it right quick and we take the test. Boom. I know it. You know, we might

Jen  14:46

I know what the parts are and which order they go in. So I know what they need to know.

Jen  14:50

Exactly, but the actual knowledge 

Jen  14:53

Yeah, 

Akilah Richards  14:53

Let alone the wisdom which is for us to process and synthesize that knowledge and apply it to our actual selves in our communities. We don’t get to do any of that. So then when I’m sick, and I’m just like, I don’t know, doctor, take a pill. I don’t know. Because, but I don’t know that this. There’s a simple thing that I can do that is old as time, that I could do to actually get my body back in what there are things that I can eat, that I can be in partnership with. We know nothing of partnership and everything about power over. 

Jen  15:25

Wow,

Jen  15:26

We know nothing about partnership, and we know everything about power over.

Jen  15:29

And that’s not okay.

Jen  15:30

Yeah, yeah. And that, that lives in so many aspects of our society and parenting as well as education and racism. And I was where you were saying actually reminded me of a conversation that you had on the podcast with Michaela Celeste. She actually, actually moved to the Bay Area from England and I met her

Akilah Richards  15:48

Shout out to Michaela. Love her.

Jen  15:50

Yeah, you and she were talking about intentions. And she was explaining on the show how she’s a doctor. And that was decided for her. Her parents decided that for her and her father would introduce her as the doctor before he even said her name. And so that idea of her being a doctor preceded her into any room she walked into. 

Akilah Richards  16:10

Yeah,

Jen  16:10

and and I loved what she said that she said, not only is the intention, not enough, but people often don’t realize that the intention is its own harm, and drawing a parallel between what we were just talking about education, and also parenting, and we think, well, we have the best intentions for our children. And so therefore a power over relationship with them as appropriate with racism, you know, we don’t even examine the power relationships. And that can, can you say some more about intentions, and how…what role you see for that?

Akilah Richards   16:40

Yeah, I mean, everything you just said, the way that it works across so many different dynamics. It’s not just about intergenerational power, you know, in terms of adults, as parents, or teachers, or whatever. It’s all of the elements of power. It’s the way that in self-directed education spaces, for example, that are predominantly White. So I do a lot of work, you know, with White folks who are wanting to shift what’s happening so that belonging is actually happening in the community with not just them. And so much of the work that we do is around intention, like the fact that you have this good intention does not negate the fact that you bought the place in this area, because you could afford it because it was less expensive than where you probably would want it to be. And that when you did that, because of all of the elements of how racism is structural and not just personal, you didn’t even think to reach out and connect with the Black church of the road where the people who might be a part of your community would be coming from or to find out what potlucks are happening and how you can contribute to it. Like we don’t again, we don’t know anything about partnerships. So your intention is one thing. But if your intention isn’t inviting feedback from the people who you intend to influence in a positive way, especially when they’re not you and you all come from the same space, it’s harmful. It is an act of violence, not one that cannot be repaired. But one that certainly can be perpetuated. It happens all the time, with well- meaning people, including us as parents. I mean, I think about it all the time, like when I used to be physically violent with my daughters. My intention was the best intention ever. My intention was rooted in their safety. And that as a, as a Black body person, and my daughters,  also Black body people, that they could not walk around with the same kind of free, that Peter talks about. They couldn’t do that. Right. So then I needed to offer them the type that they would survive. So it felt completely like the right thing to do. My intentions. My good intentions were intact. 

Jen  18:53

Yeah.

Akilah Richards  18:53

Also, so was the violence. What changed that, unfortunately, was not the feedback from my daughter’s it was actually the feedback of another Black woman who was doing the same thing, and I was judging her for it. And when I caught myself judging her, I also saw myself in her story, and that’s what shifted it for me. I was fortunate that the invitation, the awareness, showed up in front of me over and over again. But now that I am practiced, I don’t need the invitations to be at this level, which is what unschooling does for me. It gives me practice to recognise the ways that I also carry these tools of oppression. And not only am I affected by them, I also can perpetuate them. We all can. And if we’re not in community where we’re inviting the feedback, we just gonna keep on doing it, and then our other friends gonna be like, Girl, you did good, because at least you didn’t do this, or you’re the nice White person because you didn’t do this. You’re the nice parent, my mom. I want to beat her up. You know, like, if we’re not doing that with intentionality, then it just becomes another form of violence.

Jen  20:00

Yeah, Okay, so I want to then segway into the focus of your work, which is what is unschooling? And the unschooling is not just an approach to learning. We’re not just talking about, ah, we don’t use a curriculum, we’re talking about how are we in relationship with other people. And I have sort of a whole slew of ideas that have been percolating in my mind and that I pulled from your work and that I’d love to talk through, but how would you frame up that conversation?

Akilah Richards   20:30

So I’m really curious, actually, about as you’ve been engaging with the podcast and, you know, your own even ideas around schooling? I actually, I’m curious about how you see that. Like, do you see unschooling and the broader self directed education as something that’s more than what they learn? And you know, what curriculum they use? That actually, maybe we can start there? Like, what do you see beyond the stuff?

Jen  20:58

Sure, wow. Not often, I have to ask the questions. Yes. So I guess I came at this work from parenting, from respectful parenting, and the idea that I knew that I love my daughter, but I didn’t want to be the one who had to say no to her all the time. But I didn’t know how I would not raise a child who would walk all over me and stumbled on respectful parenting, which has its own issues. I think it’s very much kind of in a White paradigm of framework. But that overall idea just felt right to me that it was the love plus the respect to that made me want to gravitate towards it. And in that same period, when I was starting to think about school. I remember seeing an article in The Times about teachers being paid based on their students’ achievements on standardized tests. And I was thinking hadn’t done a master’s in education. At that point, he was probably still early in the Master’s in psychology and thought, well, what’s wrong with that, you know, we want results, we want our students to do well on exams, we should incentivize people to get the results they want. And then, of course, came to peel back the layers, and realize that there are deep, deep problems with that system. And that if I was going to have this respect-based relationship with my child, and then put her into school, I just could not reconcile the cognitive dissonance between those two ideas. 

Akilah Richards  22:24

Yes.

Jen  22:25

So that was how I came to the idea of what are the alternatives and unschooling. Okay, they don’t use a curriculum. And that’s great. And it sounds really freeing and exciting, and she can learn what she wants. But then marrying that back, to where did I come from and, the, the idea of respect, it just became this sort of yin and yang to me, where they do complement each other that you’re not talking about, we’re just not going to use curriculum, because it’s boring. And she’s not going to learn that much anyway, because she’s not interested in it. But the idea of curriculum is grounded in a power over a model. And if I’m not using a power over model in my relationship with her at home, when we’re sort of in quote, unquote, not learning time, why would I want to be in a power over model with her in our quote, unquote, learning time? 

Akilah Richards  23:12

Right.

Akilah Richards  23:13

I and how even Yeah, right, like, how? Because the more that, yes, the more she got, because this speaks to me, this speaks to your question, because the more acclimated our children also become to this, especially if they were schooled before, anything. Either way, you start to get that dissonance, you start to recognise that I call it serving to Gods because that’s what happened cuz mine did not come from respectful parenting, like payments into the elements of that as a result of leaving curriculum. And even the leaving curriculum was not just about that, like you, it was this kind of like, I don’t want to be in a certain type of relationship with my kid. And it turns out I was already in it. And as Miley and Sage were expressing themselves, and we were there, they’re hunting them, me and Chris, like, okay, right. Everyone complains about this. Yep, you’ll get over it.

Jen  24:06

Yeah, it’s this is what life is. 

Akilah Richards  24:08

This is what life is, you suffer through the things that teacher said. You’re doing this, then you do. So there was just so many disconnects between the human Miley and the human Sage and the student to Miley and the students Sage. So when I think about unschooling, the way that it is a practice, it is such a meditation for me, it is such a sacred space for me, because it is about the humans. It is about how does confident autonomy develop in a human with support from other humans that they trust? I started to recognise that trust, that word, was really at the core. If we had a curriculum, that’s what it would be. Like, do I show up as trustworthy for my children, and it turns out that if I’m negating their feelings and their thoughts, the little ones, the big ones, then I’m less trustworthy. And so if I am less trustworthy, then because I’m also their mom, I’m in such a position of influence. It also determines how much they see themselves as trusted, you know, and trustworthy. And the people are, that whole ecology of trust is so influenced by me, I am so powerful simply because I’m mom, that I had to look at the whole thing. Like, we couldn’t just stop using the textbooks. I had to think about what they were saying, and to think about how I responded when they made me uncomfortable, or when they made the people who have power over me uncomfortable, and how I respond. So I started to see it as a relationship between people and not a relationship just with learning. So the learning and the unlearning is in books, it’s not in books, it’s in the people, it’s in the conversation, it’s when we’re lying down, it’s when we’re not even using words. It’s when we are using words. It’s what we share with each other on Instagram. It’s what we do, and we’re just asleep. You embody a level of questioning and learning and unlearning that can sometimes include a curriculum if you want it, by the way, because it’s about consent, not whether a curriculum is present or not. So that’s why, so there’s a relationship with curriculum, there’s a relationship with the people. And so unschooling is about, as Miley so beautifully put in emotions and like what you do with how you feel about anything, including schoolyship. 

Jen  26:50

Yeah, so

Jen  26:51

You were talking about trust in there, and I just joined a network that you’re a part of. It’s called True. I forget what I’m new to it. I forget what the acronym is. Can you spell it out? For me? 

Akilah Richards  27:00

Oh, yes.

Akilah Richards  27:00

Yeah. So so it’s Towards Radical Social Change. 

Jen  27:03

Right.

Akilah Richards  27:03

 And it’s about unschooling and parallel education.

Jen  27:06

 Okay.

Jen  27:07

Okay, So, so, I joined that fairly recently. And I was so struck by something that a commenter on a post that I happened to read. I think in my first day in the group, she said something like, White supremacy just teaches us to stay in our lane. And to not come outside our lane, in my mind immediately went to some friends of ours where the wife was incredibly sick a couple of years ago, incredibly sick. And we are close enough to them that we can kind of kind of get a sense for what’s going on in their family, and offer to help, of course, but I just felt like we were intruding that they had someone there to help. And I felt like it’s not my role. It’s out of my lane to offer to help. And I could feel like I wanted to do something more. But I didn’t trust myself to do that. And it wasn’t until I read that comment in your group. It wasn’t even about, you know, anybody being sick. It was just, Oh, yeah, I see how the idea of staying in your lane shows up in my life, that I didn’t try to even trust myself to do something that I knew to be right.

Akilah Richards  28:09

Exactly.

Jen  28:10

How do we even see these things happen? I mean, this is White supremacy all over it, right? And we see it because it’s the system that we’re in. Yeah, you started to see, how do you see? How do you feel?

Akilah Richards  28:22

Exactly what you just said, Jen two. I felt it, you know, how you were like, you know, I couldn’t even it’s not like you could articulate in that moment, if somebody said, What are the three reasons why you’re not helping this level? Right? Not necessarily, but you could feel it, yeah, that you’re part of this. When you have the room to think your thoughts, you also have the room to feel your feelings. And I think that one of the ways that we dismantle the ways that we battle and begin to dismantle White supremacy is to feel, is to allow that feeling. Now, of course, that in, in and of itself is nuanced, right? Because all the feelings are not in tidy little pockets. And sometimes the feelings are what incite the violence. However, so do words, and we use that all the time, so does religion and many of us are in that, you know, we can power things we can power it and we can disempower and one of the things that I’m very excited about now in this time, when we’re not getting to be together in the same ways that we is that we get to feel together. Not only do we get to feel Jen, so to your question of what we do is one, we allow the feelings, and then we move away from the schoolish approach of trying to resolve or solve or dismiss the feeling. Because it doesn’t just show up from 12 to 12:30, when we scheduled a break, and when it shows up at four o’clock in the middle of the meeting with your partner, it might be bringing you something that you need, it might be I love the term disruption, I consider myself a disrupter. If I get new business cards, that’s gonna be all my calls. Because

Jen  29:59

Disruptor in-Chief,

Akilah Richards  30:01

Yes, I love it. Because we need those things to be disrupted, we need to disrupt the idea that we can solve things all the time. Sometimes solutions and structure, and the right thing to do is emergent. It comes as a result of the people being together around the thing and allowing energies, seen and unseen, to converge for solutions to show up that we can’t necessarily manage with cognition. And a sound like a big part of White supremacy was the squashing of the knowledge and the systems that are indigenous to humans, the ones that are germane to like how we thrive together, not how we compete, which is very White and schoolish, not how we shine and make one person look like this, while everyone else is just regular. You know, that was a part of Miley’s problem in school. It was just like the adults were giving her all the points, which meant around her peers, they also looked at her like a little, no, at all, a little show off a little. This is in the design of school, right? So then all these other students are here, and they’re getting all these negative messages. Miley’s also getting negative messages, but inside the school system, it looks positive. But outside of that, when you try to bring those same, I know the answers, everyone. Here’s how we do it. If you would just conform to what I think it would be, right? We all have had supervisors like that. We’ve had, you know, we know that that’s problematic, yet it’s the thing that shines. So this work is about re-humanizing to come out of what happens when we’re all around in the settler colonial mindset, where we are in a lane, where if you are this, if Jen, if you have these degrees, then you better show up like this, don’t talk to me about body and feelings about research and data, right? You don’t get to be all of Jen, you get to be the Jen that people decided and checked out.

Jen  32:00

I get negative reviews for not being the Jen they wanted.

Akilah Richards  32:02

Exactly. Exactly. And those things matter. Even when we talk about not caring, or whatever. It shows up in how we see ourselves, it shows up in how we blame other people for the things that we didn’t get a chance to develop. So what we do is we, we acknowledge. I talked about this four-part thing where it’s like awareness, disruption, deschooling, and unschooling. When you become aware of those feelings, one of the simple ways that you can disrupt that is to go against it to say, you know, it feels like I don’t even maybe I’m not even equipped, or I’m intruding, but here I am. Anyway, I brought this thing over because I’m really trying to work through that sometimes you only say it in the mirror before you get out the car. Sometimes you say it to the actual person. And oftentimes they welcome that because they’re also navigating the schoolish feelings that we deal with. We name it. And that’s a part of how we disrupt it. So that awareness and the disruption, then we begin to deschool from it. So what happened when I said it out loud? She wasn’t like, Oh, I’m glad you said it, because I don’t want you here. So that feeling wasn’t, hmm. So I wonder where else I can, you know, flesh out where this is happening. I’m having this whole conversation and life experience. And it’s not even real in this context. That’s the deschooling when we begin to face it and shed it. And then, the unschooling is really just to make that practice to make that not a thing that happens in a reactive space. But you’re in community like how you and I met in the community, that thing around belonging, we’re in communities where people, the feedback is right there, and somebody says, I don’t like when you said that, or Jen, that question actually isn’t a good fit for me. And you didn’t like, cut off the call, you were just like, Oh, these are the ways that we bring ourselves back into human practices of how-to-together. This is what it’s. It is just this, it’s this.

Jen  33:52

Yeah, so sort of central to that is the idea of validation, then, and you talked a little bit about Miley’s getting validated in school for doing well within a system that says that doing well means reading before a certain age, and all that stuff. And then, of course, I think there’s a validation that comes from other people who are important in our lives, our parents who have a certain stake in all of this.

Jen  34:17

How does that show up for you, the idea of validation? 

Akilah Richards  34:21

So I love that you said our parents like, so. You know, because I am parented and I’m also a parent. So that validation, it often is tied to intergenerational trauma. Okay, the idea that, even though we as parents ourselves, maybe we can get comfortable with our kid being free or even just freer than we were just that, but then we think about them, but my dad has a really particular way that he likes and, you know, and the validation of all the hard work that he did and how he came from Jamaica, and, you know, I’m him and my mom brought me and my brothers here, you know, so what feels like validation for them is like the straight A’s and the shine and the gifted status. And when Chris and I bought our house in the nice White neighborhood, and by, like all of those things, so again, it is to become aware and to disrupt those awarenesses. Your awareness of it is its own disruption. And then you continue to be in practice of that awareness by inviting that conversation by not just having it be a thing that you talk to with your friend in the kitchen. But a thing where you join a whole network of other people who are struggling with these things, people from completely different backgrounds, people who you’re probably gonna offend, people who definitely go offend you like this, this is how we learn to get out of that lane. And then to develop the skills to be like, well, what happens when somebody says something that both pisses me off and offends me, but also feels true? You know, what do I do with that? You know, we get to be in practice with that sense of like, Oh, I get my sense of validation when people agree with me. So now I get to be in practice of what it means to validate my own process by saying, This is valid, because I’m here and being with it. What are the feelings that come up? What are some of the ways that I work these feelings without weaponizing them? You know, by charging back at the other person, or being shitty to my kid, because I couldn’t charge back at the other person? Why am I in this mood? Well, this is how we start to look at things like validation and say, when does it have its place? Because now that I’m not afraid of it, and now that I’m not feeling guilty when I have it or don’t have it, I can look at the times when it feels really good from Miley when I say, get these things done by three o’clock, because she wanted that, you know, or when Sage is like, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month, not because I’m writing a book, but because I’m going to use it for these things. So I’m going to do my chores, maybe a little more sporadically, because I’m going to be all in this zone right here. And the rest of us in the house can be like, Oh, my God, you’re going to come into the whole thing from Yeah, we’re going to help with the chores because now it’s not about the chores we humanize the ecology of this whole person, which cannot be about her being validated when she does the chores. So now, what does validation look like? validation looks like mom smiled. When I said, I finished my word count that day, which is not just about mom smiling. It’s about me affirming a thing that I said I was going to do. It’s about me being held accountable. Because when mom said I didn’t finish that time, she was like, but I do see you over here drawing though. What’s going on? And you know, then it becomes not about me policing my kid, but me offering a level of accountability that was consented to. And that validation now has a place where it can be really useful, instead of this dangerous thing that continues to make us feel like we’re not enough.

Jen  37:54

Yeah, and it’s so hard to get there. Right, because of the way that we were raised, and we just get completely flooded when our kid does something that I mean, you, you’ve written in the book about.

Akilah Richards  38:05

Yeah, and it’s how good it feels when other people are like, Oh, wow. And you’re like, I know, right? What am I kidding?

Akilah Richards  38:12

Me? Right? Yes. And it’s so narcissistic, right, like Moti talks on the podcast about the way that as a parent with a kid in school, there’s a level of inherent narcissism, because so much of it is like, look at you good parent, your kid is out here, shine in, you must be doing something right. And we crave that, and when we do not have it, it feels bad and wrong and irresponsible. Wild, Twilight Zone type stuff.

Jen  38:46

Yeah, and the implications that that has for our relationship with them. Right? If our children are reflections of us, then it is our job to develop them as assets.

Akilah Richards  38:54

Yes.

Akilah Richards  38:55

You said was this child this child of what you speak, if it’s just about how they look through our lens, right?

Jen  39:03

It’s deep stuff.

Akilah Richards  39:05

Exactly. This is not just be about the curriculum.

Jen  39:09

Exactly. That’s what I was gonna say. This is why it cannot be just about the curriculum, inherently cannot be. And so then I kind of think back to something that somebody asked me about how this intersects with our relationships outside of our little home bubble. You know, maybe, maybe we can be in this consent-based, respect-based environment in our bubble at home, but the rest of the world does not operate in that same way. I mean, my daughter spends 90% of her time naked. She wears underwear, but the rest of time she’s, yeah, almost entirely naked. And there are people who basically think we’re raising a feral child.

Akilah Richards  39:45

Outside, and do that. And when she’s at people’s house, does she take all our clothes on?

Jen  39:49

Well, when we’re staying with relatives, Yeah, she will wear nothing but underwear.

Akilah Richards  39:53

in spaces where she feels safe.

Jen  39:55

Yes, because she’s hot. She overheats and doesn’t doesn’t want to wear clothes. So that there are interactions between this environment that we’re trying to set up and the expectations of the broader world. How do you navigate that? 

Akilah Richards  40:08

Yeah, so that to me, again, is about the difference between the way that schoolishness asserts, like the, the assertion is that it’s preparing you for the actual world. But to me, school is the bubble. If that’s the bubble, I don’t think your daughter’s in a bubble and you’re in, I think that you’re, she’s first of all, connected to her body, right? She’s connected to what’s happening for her, and that we can have conversation over and over again about what thing is safe and appropriate? And what are the options in between there ways that you can still keep self intact from that space. Whereas if it was the opposite, and you’re to wear this uniform at all time, at all costs, and don’t show your legs because legs are bad. And if someone sees your neck and wants to do this, then this is your fault. That one, that one is a lot harder. So to me, I scoff, I cackle on purpose, the idea that the life skills that come from self directedness are bubble skills, nah, bro, these are real world skills, the capacity to know what my needs and my boundaries are. And to be in community with other people who are also learning and on learning what boundaries need to be for them, and gaining language through our own messy processes. And through support of other people who have, you know, dived deep into it, that, to me, those are skills that are for the real world. So yes, much of the world is not clear about how consent works. And also, much of the world is super patriarchal, doesn’t mean then that the training is to do more of that so that you can be part of that, or is the training that first of all, you don’t need training for the real world, because we live in it. So there are elements that will be there. As much as you allow your daughter, there are many other people who are going to give her the side eye and straight up tell her that it’s a problem, right? I see you nodding. So what’s the one thing the messages are gonna be there? You’re gonna also have is the level of again, language and practice for recognising yourself inside of the context of this greater world, and having a type of personal leadership that allows you to not just like contort and conform and surrender to the system, but to know it and know your place in it, and to also cultivate the sort of safe space that expands the type of world that more of us are interested in. Because if we all figure out how to do well, inside the system, which is impossible, you know, you could do well at some elements, but you’re going to lose elements of yourself, if we’re focused on how to be who we are, and how to together in ways that don’t exclude people. So essentially, if we’re looking at belonging, then I think that allows us to develop over time, collectively and individually, the skills we need to change the problematic ship that we keep having a to do. That’s what I think about that. I don’t see it as a bubble. I see class as a bubble. Where else do you sit with everybody who’s your age in your neighborhood all day to one person telling you information that that one person did not have any influence over? Like, come on.

Jen  43:20

when you say it like that?

Akilah Richards  43:23

Yeah, school is the bubble, bro. That’s what we need to recognise. That’s the bubble. And then you leave it and you’re like, I’m help, right? Like for so many people, or you just do more school, because that’s what you know, and that feels safe. And you get all the validation for that. That’s a problem. That’s not the path. That’s a problem. We can choose school. But mostly, we don’t choose it. We don’t. 

Jen  43:48

Yeah, it’s a choice that’s made for us.

Akilah Richards  43:50

Yeah. Or from our fears

Jen  43:52

By well-intentioned people.

Akilah Richards  43:54

Boom. There you go. Are here, are old, fear-based spaces, but it’s usually not an empowered choice, which is so unfortunate, especially when he’s talking about higher education, because I think that, you know, at the university level, it is so rich and exciting to geek out about what you’re into. And if more of us can do that with ourselves intact, how much richer could those experiences be? You know what I mean? Like, what might college look like if it was a classroom where most of the students were as excited as that professor? 

Jen  44:26

Yeah. 

Akilah Richards  44:27

How much different would it be? Where would we be? What would we be learning? We’d be levitating. And yeah, I think it would just be so different for, for humanity.

Jen  44:37

Yeah, I’ve seen definitely research and anecdata as well talking about how home schooled and unschooled specifically children, young adults are tend to be the professor’s favorite students because they come in with this deep, deep passion. 

Akilah Richards  44:52

Yeah, exactly. 

Jen  44:53

And they engage with a professor on it on a one-on-one level, not in a you’re going to give me an A because it’s my right In a, I bring knowledge and experience to this. I see your knowledge and experience and I value that, how can we collaborate? 

Akilah Richards  45:06

Exactly.

Akilah Richards  45:08

I hear that all the time. I’ve seen studies about it too, like, you know, even some of the Ivy League schools, and I’m now working with some of them doing belonging work. There’s such an excitement around self-directedness. And I feel like we are at, you know, there’s an opening here for self-directed education. Yes, you may. That’s exactly how I feel. There’s an opening right now that we can really, there’s a big opportunity to normalize, to begin to normalize some of these self-directed practices, and I am so here for it.

Jen  45:42

Yay, hear you. You’ve been waiting for this. You know, let’s be real.

Akilah Richards  45:47

Now. It’s like double dutch chocolate like, and when anyone come in, yeah.

Jen  45:53

So as we wrap up, I hosted a membership for parents who are kind of dipping their toes into the water with self directed learning and just starting to figure out what this is like, and they love your show. And so I, as soon as I found out that we were confirmed for this interview, I posted in the group. I said, What do you want me to ask her? And so, there were sort of two main categories of questions that I bundled up. And one of them it was asked by the members of the group who identifies people of color, and they’re asking around how you maintain personal values when you’re the only person of color in a self directed learning space. That I mean, many of them, we have to say are, tend to be White. Yes, I dominated. How do you advocate for yourself and manage potential power struggles that come up in and otherwise all-White group? And when do you just say, you know what, this is not worth it.

Akilah Richards  46:43

Right. Yeah. 

Jen  46:43

What advice can you give to those parents?

Akilah Richards  46:45

Well, I can offer perspective for sure. Because it’s going to vary, you know, myself and my friend. And also does my comrade in this movement, Malika Diggs of eclectic Learning Network. We tend to partner on a lot of the work around belonging and equity, and specifically around Black bodied people. And then broader non-Black, indigenous, and people of color, because, of course, it’s all different. So that’s the first thing, right? The first thing is to, if you are in a position to and when you can, because it can be really hard for people, especially if their kids are a part of the school, to advocate for the importance of diversity, naming it. Black people, it’s okay to say Black even though every person who’s Black, you know, people who are showing up in Black bodies, all of us don’t identify in that way. Right? It’s still okay to say it and let the people who need a different thing tell you that, and then you can honor that. So that’s the first thing, the whole idea of like the people of color, they’re also different peoples and will need different things. So that’s one thing. Another thing is to advocate for those spaces to educate themselves. So that you are not always doing so, Malika and I have this workbook, which a part of the reason that I’m so excited about it is because of how many of our like White people in our space. Some of them are good friends, are like this thing has changed my life. We use it. It’s called developing a disrupter’s ear. And that workbook is, it came as a result of Malika and I having so many deeply disheartening conversations, particularly with Black women, and also Latin ex-folks who were part of SDE spaces. And we’re so sick and tired of being the one that showed up, like the problem. And feeling also afraid, because in some cases, they work at the space and their kid is at the space. So how hard is it? And how tiring is it? So to advocate for the people in those groups to do things like the me and White supremacy workbook, right? And to do things like developing a disruptive ear, because developing a disruptive ear is specifically for self-directed education. 

Jen  49:00

How we can we find that?

Akilah Richards  49:02

On raisingfreepeople.com. Yeah, and if you and it’s so crazy how much has happened as a result of that we’re now doing versions of that workbook, again, for higher ed and for corporate leadership, because a lot of the issues are very similar, that it’s like you have this idea of how it’s supposed to look so that so advocate for them, to educate themselves, reach out to Malika, me about some of the resources that we have in place, make sure that they’re listening to fear of the free child, because this isn’t like, you know, a promo of my podcast. It’s like, the purpose of the podcast is specifically for things like this, because we become so frustrated that sometimes we need to leave, and even when we leave, the space still needs this work. So make sure they know that there are resources and that you as that person in that body. You are not there to be that educator unless you choose that and because consent is something that you can remove at any time, you need to make sure they know check in with me before you come, you know, ask me because that’s what it feels like, you know, the wokeness that a lot of White people are experiencing now that we’re like, so but I’ve said this to you a million times, and it only matters now you keep saying George Floyd, as if there weren’t so many other people before and after. And during, right, like, as White people, you have got to be more diligent about educating yourself and consistently asking for consent for the people around you who are not White, when you, you know, have a moment of Oh, my God, there’s a thing, that that’s what I think, and also know that you can leave. And that you can also ask for exclusivity. Can there be meetups for just the BLACK folks in this space? Can there be one for just by PLC people in this space? Sometimes, that medicine, of being able to express things together without needing to explain it at a certain level, also allows for the emergence of potential solutions that you can then bring back and say, y’all do this? And we’ll tell you how this feels. Yeah, it was some of the things that I’ve seen the effective in spaces. 

Jen  51:19

Okay, yeah,  and White people who are listening, If a Black person says to you can we have a space where only Black people are going to meet to talk about this, this is not our place to be offended by this. And to feel like we, we need to stop that from happening. Because if we had done our job to create an inclusive space and that wouldn’t be needed. Is it, this is not our thing to own? And so I’ve heard that happened. So just want to make that point. And then I guess, following up from what you’re saying about creating spaces for people to not be under the White gaze, as it were, what do you do when you’re the only one? Like, there I have parents in the group, like that, the only people in my self-directed learning group are White. 

Akilah Richards  52:00

Yeah, and I do not have that experience myself. I don’t have that experience. And I try not to because of the level of exhaustion and violence. But again, so just the education, if you’re interviewing a space treated as such, treated like that. I have White friends who didn’t join SDE spaces, because the space was so White, and they didn’t want their kids to be in that type of environment. They wanted it to reflect the actual world, you know, that we live in. So the other thing that you can do, look at allyship, right? This is why it’s important that White people and people in power, do speak up. If you have someone else in that space, who’s willing to listen, let them say it for you. Let them say it for you. Oftentimes, that’s what it takes up for other White people to listen for some White person to say at first. So sometimes you have to do that if you make the decision to stay in the place because it is a decision. You have to look at that. You also, I would also implore non-White people who are in exclusively White spaces to look at whether or not that is the safest thing for your kid. I have so many friends who grew up as the only non-White kid in a space and, oh my God, they’re well intentioned parent who was like, they’re, they’ve had they have all these resources. They got fresh strawberries. They got all this fine cuase we got food deserts going on. Right? They have all the good stuff. All the good stuff, Wi-Fi all the time. However, what are the other things that your child is experiencing in that space? That’s what I would say to you, figure out whether it’s worth it or whether it’s more of the same stuff we’ve bought into, like the same reason we tend to do our hair a certain way and whatever, because it’s like, proximity to Whiteness feel safe. Is it, though? That’s my other question for us. Is it though? Yeah.

Jen  53:48

Okay, thanks for that, and they’re impossible tasks in the minute that’s left. I know. You’re incredibly busy, but a White member than us, she’s always appreciated your acknowledgement of White unschooling and how different it can be from Black indigenous people of color who were unschooling for liberation. And, and so she’s basically asking, Well, what can we do until hopefully most of us are working on recognising our own repression within the system? Yes, we are often in positions of power, but we’re also repressed within, within the system of White supremacy. How can we White people who are also participating in self-directed learning make sure that we’re not causing more harm within the system that we’re working on just monthly?

Akilah Richards  54:32

Love it, love it, love it, and it actually can be answered real simply, you need to be in the community with Black women, specifically Black women, because of the hierarchy. And the level of, I say all the time, there’s a certain level of alchemy that Black women have had to be in practice with to just be and then to just be safe at times. So when you are in community with Black women, what happens is there’s the psychology of accounting. ability, right? There are all these ways that you can get really clear about what’s happening, because we also tend to show things in our bodies, right? Like, that shows up. It’s like, you know, Whiteness says, you know, which kind of

Jen  55:13

Is there a problem here?

Akilah Richards  55:15

Right, are like, Oh my God, you know, you will get learned, okay, you will get all kinds of lessons from just being in community with Black women. That’s the first thing. So invite us into the spaces. There’s some of us sometimes who have the capacity. There’s also some of us who are already in community, with White women in real friendships, where we can feel safer to come in in a way that others cannot and should not write because the work has not been done. So that’s what you need to do. You need to find where there are Black women who are willing, and you need to figure out how to bring them in, stop reading the books by all the dead Black people making that your own. The only thing y’all do, right? What about the ones that are alive right now, who can hold you accountable? Who can call you in? You know who you can see yourself in? Who you can learn from just by observing who’s willing to talk with you, human to human? You got to do that. You can learn it from the books. You got a few with us on our terms. 

Jen  56:15

Yes, because this is not about saving Black women, this about being in community in relationship together. 

Akilah Richards  56:23

And it’s possible. It is possible. But you have to unlearn that domineering. Super while I’m researching, I just want to know and I’m just so excited or I’m so you got to learn how to let that work through your body without pushing it out onto other people. And you learn that by being around the ones of us who are learning how to be, you know, safe out loud.

Jen  56:47

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. This has been an incredible conversation you’ve left us 

Akilah Richards  56:52

You’re so welcome. 

Jen  56:55

So you can find information on all of the resources that we’ve discussed on the show today, including the raising free people podcast as well as the Akilah’s book, raising free people. The resource that she recommended called developing a disruptor’s ear that she’s put together, all of that’s available at yourparentingmojo.com/freepeople. And you can learn more about supporting your child’s learning membership and sign up for it as well at yourparentingmojo.com/learningmembership. 

Jen  57:22

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Your Parenting Mojo. Don’t forget to subscribe to the show at yourparentingmojo.com to receive new episode notifications and the free guide to seven parenting myths that we can leave behind. And join the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group for more respectful, research-based ideas to help kids thrive and make parenting easier for you. I’ll see you next time on Your Parenting Mojo