No one is immune to the byproducts of compulsory schooling and
standardized testing. And while reform may be a worthy cause for
some, it is not enough for countless others still trying to navigate
the tyranny of what schooling has always been. Raising Free People
argues that we need to build and work within systems truly designed
for any human to learn, grow, socialize, and thrive, regardless of
age, ability, background, or access to money.
Families and
conscious organizations across the world are healing generations of
school wounds by pivoting into self-directed, intentional
community-building, and Raising Free People shows you exactly
how unschooling can help facilitate this process.
Individual
experiences influence our approach to parenting and education, so we
need more than the rules, tools, and "bad adult" guilt
trips found in so many parenting and education books. We need to
reach behind our behaviors to seek and find our triggers; to examine
and interrupt the ways that social issues such as colonization still
wreak havoc on our ability to trust ourselves, let alone children.
Raising Free People explores examples of the transition from
school or homeschooling to unschooling, how single parents and people
facing financial challenges unschool successfully, and the ways
unschooling allows us to address generational trauma and unlearn the
habits we mindlessly pass on to children.
In these detailed
and unabashed stories and insights, Richards examines the ways that
her relationships to blackness, decolonization, and healing work all
combine to form relationships and enable community-healing strategies
rooted in an unschooling practice. This is how millions of families
center human connection, practice clear and honest communication, and
raise children who do not grow up to feel that they narrowly survived
their childhoods.