#deschooling

First order since I got back home from my trip. This person wanted mostly Youth Liberation & Education zines, with two Palestine ones.

The contents of the No! zines.

Issue 2:

1. Youth Liberation and Deschooling: An Interview with Carla Bergman

2. You Did Not Turn Out Fine by James C. Talbot

3. Stop Caging Kids by Nathan Goodman

4. Dear Students: An Apology

Issue 8:

1. The Sound of Our Movement Growing by Victoria Law

2. Religion and Trauma by Marlene Winell

3. Ageism is an LGBT Issue by Kathleen Nicole O'Neal

Issue 17:

1. There Is a Better Way by Vicki Larson

2. Schooling as Genocide

3. Little Suns by Asadah Kirkland

4. Psychiatry and Resistance by Bruce Levine.

Issue 20:

1. Condemned and Hated by Isis Nelson

2. Saying No Is Enough by Akilah S. Richards

3. As a Trans Boy

Wrote this in a radical unschooling forum. For context, deschooling is the process where a kid who has previously been raised under an authoritarian paradigm gets used to being able to follow their own impulses around how to spend their time. It's often a process where they indulge in extremes of those things they were previously not allowed to do, though this is temporary. (The older the kid the longer this process takes; so as I started my inner process as an adult, it has been a difficult one).

--

My development with self-deschooling continues...

I feel like I've made deep progress in the last couple months, something that I feel is connected to my participation in this community (perhaps not just that the community has helped, though it has, perhaps also I've gravitated here because of the shift in me).

Let's go back fifteen years. I'm about 20, still full of rage, and I've heard of unschooling and deschooling. I decide to deschool myself. And because I'm now expected to transition from enslavement in school to enslavement in a "normal" job, I decide to call this unjobbing.

I quite successfully manage to avoid having a job with a boss for all but 5 months of these fifteen years, which is -- coincidentally or not (not) -- the amount of time I needed a job to qualify for German state benefits. It's been exactly what I needed, relatively speaking, but it hasn't been *objectively* healthy. My life has been EXTREMELY avoidant. If I am one day to teach people how to deschool / dejob themselves, I don't think I'll be exactly a role model like this, at least not for anyone but the most radical.

Deschooling myself has been a thread in my personal development ever since the concept came up for me, but sometimes it's been more in the foreground and sometimes more in the background. I've always been terrified of what I saw as a vicious cycle of getting a "normal" job and letting the obedience conditioning get stronger in me. 

Two things seem relevant now: my study of Nonviolent Communication, which I've mentioned here before, in many ways the antidote to authoritarianism; and my practice of Alchemy (following Catherine Maccoun's writings). Alchemy I would sum up as a deep trust in the processes of a human soul, and a dedication to working with, and not against those processes. 

If I had wanted to have a very functional life, I might have overridden my desire to avoid any trace of social obedience training. It'd have felt like I was killing myself, though, so I did the alchemy approach; I surrendered to this impulse, and trusted. The soul is wise, often wiser than we think when we look at something and label it "lazy" or even "insane".

A year and a half ago I was rewarded with an awakening experience, of a sort -- not like full on enlightenment or whatever, but enough spiritual energy injected into my life that I now feel I could argue with Eckhart Tolle from a place of authority... and anyway, I transformed a LOT, grew a LOT in my manifesting ability, intuition, spiritual attunement, etc. I identify this moment as the moment I became, in general, happy, as opposed to living a story of strife and suffering.

A lot of the time since then has been a process of integration and embodiment of what I've learnt. This year I've been noticing the spring in nature like never before; and inwardly, I feel like I'm in the spring of my life. Or, if I'm in the morning of my life, to use another metaphor, let's say I'm stretching and getting my morning coffee. I'm slowly, slowly getting in gear. (Whoops, yet another metaphor. Hope you can keep up).

In this process, deschooling is becoming an important thread again. I will never live a life of harsh "discipline" -- that much is clear. So how to live a life of inspired action, gentle action, action that does not come from inner "shoulds", inner threats of punishment?

It seems really important to take the perspective of reparenting my inner child, or inner children. Let's take the example of food. I am trying hard to lose weight (30 kilos/60ish pounds down, ten kilos to go) and I'm not satisfied with the approach of completely letting go and eating *whatever*.

But what I've been realising recently, which seems to have been a big "aha" moment for me, is that completely letting go isn't really parenting myself -- peacefully or otherwise. In terms of what I'm doing with my inner child, it looks more like neglect.

And that's the big mistake people keep making with peaceful parenting, right? They assume that if they are to skip authoritarianism, they need to just kind of check out from parenting altogether, right? (How could I be making this basic mistake, I ask myself? In my defense, I have the thought that it's essentially the *only* mistake, the one deeply rooted mistake all others come from). 

So with the topic of eating, I'm tentatively seeing it this way. My inner child who loves to eat (or who is scared of being controlled around eating, and so eats fast and wild) needs my PRESENCE. 

Sometimes, I might see a certain action as dangerous (for example eating so much I get sick), and will use a certain amount of force to restrain myself -- not punish, without any thoughts of punishment, only gentle loving restraint. 

If my inner parent is panicking about how I eat, I'd like to take a moment to consider when such restraint is healthy and necessary, and then once I have a clear idea of that, I can step back with my inner helicopter parenting. 

Then I need to give my inner child PRESENCE. Be lovingly with the part of me that is scared of not getting the food that feels nourishing. Or with the part of me that eats to feel emotionally safe. Or that just wants to enjoy things with abandon and feel alive. 

Be present while I eat. Even if I'm eating like a pig (so long as I've decided that the situation doesn't call for actual restraining). *Especially* then. My inner child needs love all the time, and doesn't need to be judged with words like "eating like a pig" (whoops -- I did it to myself. Sorry, beloved me). 

I believe that with enough love and presence, my tense, defensive inner child parts can gradually relax. In that relaxation will come the opening to genuinely, enthusiastically consider things like... like salad, for instance :) 

Then it won't feel like self discipline.

Then it will feel like joy and self love.

Then I'll be the role model of freedom and healthy self-relationship I dream of being.

This is worth it.

When homeschooling gets tough and it seems like your kids don't want to learn. . . . #homeschool101 #homeschool #learning #reluctantlearners #randomnestfamily #parenting #convention #education

It’s not even the end of a very long day and already you hear the dreaded, “I’m sick of homeschool! Why can’t I go to public school?” “Where did this come from?” You think, we’ve been homeschooling for years now. Or maybe, you just started homeschooling. You haven’t yet figured out your “groove,” and already the complaints come rolling in, “I hate homeschool!” Or “Why do we have to homeschool…