Akilah Richards is an unschooling mother of two, Tedx speaker and host of the widely celebrated podcast, Fare of the Free Child which explores the intersections of parenting, personal leadership, and tools for liberation-centered people. She is the author of the forthcoming book, ‘Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work’ due to be published later this year.
This conversation was recorded before Corona and the onset of global homeschooling was even a thing! It is so poignant how much more ready for this conversation so many of us are now. If you have or one day will have a school aged child, are thinking about your choices in terms of education and especially if your child is Black or Brown, you need to listen to this conversation now!
Akilah keeps it all the way real.
I felt like every other sentence of this conversation is a mic drop moment. You cannot listen to this episode without deeply questioning the whole education system. We speak about what liberation means, the damage that the model of mainstream education can cause children and families and the ways we can begin to free ourselves and our children. This is such a powerful conversation and I learnt so much from Akilah. I hope you do too.
Key Themes:
- Our journey started when our daughters were going through the gifted and talented program at school and we though the faster the better until emotionally, we saw they were shrinking.
- How we transitioned and the financial implications of pivoting our own careers to become entrepeneurs.
- The history of schooling and why it was created, and the purpose of it.
- Generally the issue is not with schooling, the issue is that we don’t even question it with with all the problems that we know that it has, with all the ways that it amplifies white supremacy, and all these other forms of oppression and suppression.
- Understanding the difference between self directed education, homeschooling, unschooling etc.
- When you when you decide not to control a young person, whether you’re their parent or a family member or a facilitator, it also teaches you the language and practice of freedom because we realise how in how many ways we ourselves are oppressed.
- Did you feel prepared for the real world when you finished school?
- Unschoolers engage in the world. So the system doesn’t just reside in a classroom. It’s a subset. It’s a microcosm. So they’re dealing with things all the time everywhere.
- Performance doesn’t make us more safe. It gives us the illusion that we are more safe. But when we look at the reality of what’s actually happening, our our performance doesn’t save us the same way our silence doesn’t save us.
About Akilah:
- Watch Akilahs Ted talk
- Raising Free People Website
- Fare of the Free Child Podcast
- Follow Akilah on Instagram
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Thank you and Much Love,
Nehanda xx
“”The other side of liberation is responsibility. So in some instances It would be easier for me to say to my kid, “because I said so shut up, keep it moving.” You know, like that would be easier. But because we’re doing liberation work, I have to swallow that. If I want to raise a black woman who doesn’t internalise her own degradation, then I cannot say that I love her, and then equally control her because I’m the person in power. I got to do the harder work and say, why I’m upset and have a real conversation and develop a real relationship. That’s harder. 100% “
Akilah Richards