Learning Is Innate: Ancestral Childhood, Unschooling, and Healing - Akilah S. Richards

If the phrase “school wounds” stirs something inside of you, or the words “crisis schooling” describe your current reality as a parent or caregiver, or you’ve just always intuited that there’s something not quite right about modern compulsory schooling, this episode is for you.

TOPICS:

• The reimagining of schooling as we’ve known it
• Akilah's story of schooling and unschooling
• Unschooling is not just school at home- it’s a whole new paradigm of learning, power, and belonging
• School wounds
• The radical presence it takes to raise up kids in this way
• How leaving school can free up a family’s life in myriad unanticipated ways
• Schoolishness and the American Dream, in which so much of the actual human gets lost
• The slow normalization of dehumanizing systems and institutions
• Being constantly in curiosity about how our children (and ourselves!) actually learn
• Reframing consent in the parent/child relationship
• The liberation of being allowed bodily autonomy (especially for black folk)
• Akilah’s response to the common assertions that only stay at home parents/rich people/white people can school at home
• Actionizing love & recognizing that it’s all portal work

RESOURCES:

• RaisingFreePeople.com
• Fare of the Free Child Podcast
• Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work by Akilah S. Richards
• Akilah's Patreon
• Akilah on Instagram
• Medicine Stories Patreon (podcast bonuses!)
• Psychology Today article
• John Tayloe Gatto’s many astute writings on modern schooling
• My website MythicMedicine.love
• Take our fun quiz Which Healing Herb Matches Your Energy?
• Medicine Stories Facebook group
• Mythic Medicine on Instagram
• Music by Mariee Siou (from her beautiful song Wild Eyes)