Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work is a monograph that resists traditional academic classifications. Part memoir and part how-to book, unschooling parent, podcaster, and influencer Akilah Richards draws on her own lived experiences as a Black mother to write about her family’s journey into deschooling and unschooling, and to give practical advice relevant to people at various stages throughout that journey. Richards provides accessible vocabulary to theorize unschooling not merely as a practice of granting children autonomy, but also as a process of liberation and decolonization rooted in social justice. Released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, this text still provides much needed interventions into the culture of unschooling, tackling head on issues of race and gender that remain marginal in mainstream discourses on unschooling. The book is presented chronologically, addressing concerns at each stage of the deschooling process, and introducing relevant vocabulary that may be unknown to a popular audience.
This research, conducted in France, investigates the informal acquisition of literacy among unschooled children outside formal instruction. Grounded in Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, the research examines the interplay between familial, cultural, social, and digital influences on literacy development. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven unschooling families, encompassing 24 children and young adults aged 3 to 22 years. The findings reveal that literacy development occurs as a sociocultural process, shaped by the interactions within the child’s ecological environment, including parental attitudes, family dynamics, and community involvement. The results challenge the traditional notion of critical periods for literacy acquisition, highlighting that children develop literacy at diverse ages and through various pathways. Digital tools, particularly video games and interactive media, emerged as significant facilitators of literacy, providing immersive and context-rich environments that foster reading comprehension, writing skills, and vocabulary. This underscores technology’s evolving role in informal learning. While the study emphasizes the autonomy of children in unschooling contexts, it also highlights the essential role of parents in shaping environments conducive to learning. The findings underline the need for further longitudinal studies to explore the nuanced interactions between digital tools, informal learning and ecological factors across diverse cultural and family structures.
The first part of this exploratory research describes, through the eyes of mothers, the lives of unschooling families in France, before and after the separation of the parental couple. How do they cope with the effects of separation, once they become single-parent families, particularly in relation to education? What place is given to their voice and that of their children? Are they heard and listened to?
Through interviews with children, educators, and parents, this article provides a picture of a democratic school in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. A rare example in NYC, Pono’s philosophies, practices, and pedagogies provide a model of education that fosters child-centered empowered learning, supports community building and strong relationships, and counter-hegemonic strategies. Not without challenges, Pono, is not a panacea, but rather a case study in what is possible when we approach education from a truly child-honoring lens and a belief that education is a true means of transformation.
Home education is an alternate form of education that takes place outside formal schooling with children of school-going age. Parents take primary responsibility for their child’s education, using an approach that is framed by the family’s life philosophy. In this study, thirty parents from a home education network in a South African township provided insight and information on their context, experience and highlighted the importance of the network in their home education journey. The research, framed by the social capital theory, adopted a mixed methods approach to collate both qualitative and quantitative data via a questionnaire. A convergent design was used in the data analysis of the overall results. The results provide perspective and understanding of home education in this historically marginalised cohort. It demonstrates the social capital inherent in the group in terms of trust, reciprocity, shared norms and values and the importance of identity and community support in the group. The study recommends further research for a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the group as they provide a unique and valuable voice in the realm of home education both nationally and internationally.
