Unschooling as a Gateway
While I’ve always been counter cultural and questioned authority, my role as an unschooling parent has undoubtedly fueled my current point of view about how the world works. The last two years have been a pretty intense dive into personal and political beliefs. I wanted to document this ongoing step-by-step process and I come to form new beliefs. It’s gone something like this:
1. As an unschooling parent, I believe in the autonomy and inherent rights of my children as fully formed humans who know what’s best for them.
2. If I believe in the rights of my children, it follows that I should believe in the rights and autonomy of all people.
3. Current systems of oppression including racism, sexism, childism, homophobia, and transphobia find their roots in colonial ways of thinking. They are intersectional. If I believe in the rights and autonomy of all people, I need to decolonize the way I live.
4. Capitalism is a product of colonialism and a system which continues to uphold colonial power.
“Capitalism has established an unswerving dichotomy of relations between a certain center, which is the heart of the capitalist exploitation system, and the periphery which consists of dominated countries and populations of people.” – Samir Amin (quoted from David Harvey) on colonialism as the fuel for capitalism.
If I am trying to decolonize the way I live, I must also choose a stance of anti-capitalism.
5. In exploring other options to capitalism, communalism is a natural alternative, but communism led by state forces is just another brand of authoritarianism which prevents people from acting autonomously. Communialism, then, must be paired with decentralized political structures and self-governance as is found with anarchism.
6. Anarcho-communism makes sense if we view humanity in a vacuum without being part of the intricate web of life or ignoring climate catastrophe. We must also stop excessive resource extraction and pollution. Anarcho-communism must be green.
7. The likelihood of a global green-anarcho-communist revolution is unlikely. What’s more likely is a path on our current trajectory that will lead to collapse (stay with me…) and as such, rather than “saving the planet”, we would be more prudent to focus our individual and collective energies on how to live in a post-collapse world. Solarpunk technologies, mutual aid networks, rewilding, grassroots action, collectivism, permaculture/indigenous agriculture practices: these approaches must be intersectional and not siloed in order to be effective. If not, oppression will continue to grow.
This is where I am now. I love to write about unschooling as an anti-oppressive tool but it cannot exist in a silo. We have to talk about decolonization of our social structures, our economy, our work, our play. I don’t have all the solutions and I am learning more everyday so my views perspectives will continue to shift as I continue to learn. But I feel like this is a good place to start from and a good place from which to engage with the world around me.
