Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work

by Akilah S. Richards, Bayo Akomolafe (Foreword)

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.

Genres: Parenting, Education, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Politics, Audiobook, Childrens

176 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2020

About the author

Through her work at TheLifeDesignAgency.com, Akilah S. Richards helps women address and resolve emotionally unsustainable lifestyle habits and mindsets. The lifestyle coach, educator, and international speaker has authored several books on spiritual entrepreneurship, free-range learning, and radical self-expression. Akilah blogs about unschooling, location independence, her big, fat, emotional marriage, and other life design topics over at radicalselfie.com.

Reviews

[zara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone embarking on an unschooling/deschooling journey or considering it. I expected a roadmap, and instead the author emphasizes that our unschooling journeys are deeply personal and have to adapt to the unique needs, interests and personalities of the children in our care. Richards shares many insights from her own experiences and from folks she’s connected with in her work. I loooved her writing style and her humility and openness about mistakes and challenges she’s faced along the way, as well as a lot of really helpful guiding questions to ask ourselves. My favorite part of this book is the reading list and ideas for responding to the people who absolutely don’t understand this parenting style — the “you’re her mother not her friend” people. Adding those books to my own reading list!!

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great read for radical black mamas considering how to ditch the hierarchical colonial ways we were taught meant we were "parenting right".

That said, I already listen to Akilah's podcast so a lot of this felt like rehash to me. While it is nice to have in book form as a reference, it would have benefitted greatly (as would her podcast) from better editing and organization. I think she should create a course or study guide for this that better organizes the ideas for a deschooling study group approach. You know what? Maybe I'll just do it 🤔

[Antonio · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much I bought another 30 copies to share with the families at Abrome and with prospective families. What a great book for families who are entering into the world of unschooling and Self-Directed Education, or at least considering it. It's also a great book for progressive educators who think that they are liberating kids, but are not.

[Linnae Chau · Rating 5 out of 5]

a really important introductory meditation on unschooling-- and what that means as a de-colonial and healing practice. Akilah S. Richards introduces us to her and her family's personal journey with deschooling, emphasizing its importance in raising free people, as well as the fact that deschooling is a process that is unique to each family or group undertaking it. deschooling is something that transforms everyone that takes part.

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

My review disappeared! I need to get off this corporate platform 😩

Much like her podcast, this book could have benefitted from a good editor. There are a lot of great ideas here but it is very unstructured. I'm thinking on making a study guide for it. 🤔

The intro by Bayo Okomolafe was beautiful and I look forward to reading more of his work!

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn't necessarily written for me. I have no kids, I don't plan on having kids, and I'm not around kids very often. Still, I do like to judge parents who's kids are annoying. This book will help me on that path.

[Olivia Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Another of my most valuable deschooling lessons is the knowledge that I am bilingual in that I speak oppression by training and I speak liberation by choice.”
Wowowowwowwow!! What a powerful and transformative book. I am blown away. I thought this would be solely focused on how to unschool in terms of alternative ways of living and learning outside of school, but the focus is how to unschool and decolonize your mind, life, relationships with children in the pursuit of freedom. And how to trust children (and make them feel trustworthy) and build equitable partnerships with them. I am overwhelmed at even attempting to summarize this book. I have to read it again.

[Mollie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the Bridge Academy June book club book.
I loved this. Watching a parent choose unschooling, and watching how it transformed her and her children was so helpful to me. And my favorite part was her perspective - that unschooling is about the relationship you have with your children, that's the priority. This has been our focus all along, and it was empowering to hear it shared in this book. Highly recommend, even if you're not considering this methodology of learning - it's more about parenting than anything else 🤍

[Kayla Boss · Rating 5 out of 5]

my whole world view has kind of changed after reading this book. traditional K-12 education = colonialism reign. can’t we just spend time exploring and learning about the things we are actually interested in instead of being forced to study specific things in a specific way according to…white man’s ideas? really opened up so many questions for me. especially helpful read for any parents looking for deschooling options and educators who want to actually create a liberating educational space

Akilah is extremely open, honest, and vulnerable and her writing style is absolutely amazing - my 2 favorite examples include: “trigger, trigger, chicken dinner” & “shittery, shit, shit, shittt.”

[Cherie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really love the idea of unschooling, and I think it's important for educators to understand it and parents. (And hey, let's be honest, I kind of want to unschool Lil.) But this book I found in need of editing, a bit too disorganized. It's part memoir, part information, but I didn't find it particularly helpful for my purpose.

[Derek Minno-Bloom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me a better parent! One of the best books on parenting and school i ever read! All power to the kiddos!

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an unschooler contemplating unschooling, both reflectively and as an option for the present/future, this was really exciting and thought provoking and reassuring and also sometimes exhausting to read. Ultimately I think this book is a depiction of unschooling that is not necessarily accessible or well suited to everyone but I think the philosophy with which Richards approaches unschooling as a means of collective liberation and active decolonization is incredibly inspiring. Also no matter how you choose to “educate” your children I think the parenting practices laid out in this book are truly truly exceptional, especially the idea of parenting not as something that is done to children but rather in partnership with children.

[merry]

"We don't always feel that we can do something about big, bad oppression in the world, but we do sometimes feel capable of changing our own behaviors. Yet we can't change what we won't examine; we can't break free if we still taint our freedom waters with coercive relationships among the people we live with and influence most. This is why raising free people work is revolutionary. It's both pushback and buildup; it is protest but also pivoting. It's getting mad and frustrated, and deciding exactly what to do to feel better and to live better, to not just fight against oppression and injustice but to facilitate freedom and prioritize joy." (136)

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unschooling is an educational approach I’m fascinated by. I really appreciated this author’s personal stories and her perspective on parenting, education, and communication.

Jury’s out if unschooling is for our family but I enthusiastically agree that respecting and trusting my child as a human, as well as liberation from supremacy or hustle culture, whiteness, capitalism, etc. is important and should shape the method of education we practice.

[Michael Sasson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book... Please.

[Lindsy Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think I could respect or adore Akilah more but this book made that possible. Using stories from her own life, she clearly and lovingly makes the case for unschooling as liberation and healing work, giving readers a window into the mad question askin' process in her own life, making the process accessible and inviting for us all.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars is not enough stars for this book it needs millions of stars. This book is real a raw it makes you stop and really think , not in a way that makes you feel bad but in a way that guides you. This book is like a roadmap it gives you the directions to go but it up to you to take the road and enjoy all that happens on this road and comes along with it . If you have the opportunity read this book you won’t be disappointed it has something for everyone and one I will come back to many times when I need that roadmap along my journey.

[Jenna Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a beauty. Such a relief to read. I admire the space Richards makes for herself and her kids. Trust is central to almost every discussion about unschooling, and yet... it’s just a surface level concern in the white echo-chamber of most unschooling resources. Most eventually devolve into seeking validation and approval from the outside world.

We’re missing the point of teaching from a place of trust if we leave colonization, white supremacy, and the patriarchy out of the conversation. We can’t talk about “freedom to learn” without talking about power and control. It’s not okay to cling to elitist “my child is gifted and special” superiority, and ignore the ways our own wounds and insecurities can become things our children carry. Richards doesn’t avoid that shit, and I think every person ought to read this and go to those places with her. She safe and she’s brave, an excellent guide through these deep and dark fears that (I think) every parent carries.

(An aside just the for my little circle of friends: there is a story in the book where Richards discovers that bras are, for the purposes of science and health, completely useless. You guys! We’ve been saying! Honestly, this books gets five stars just for that!)

[Brittany Capizzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the book, I got a lot of great ideas, suggestions and motivators from it. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars was, at times I felt confused and overwhelmed by language. I felt like I was reading words and not truly comprehending because it was just so much packed into each sentence. It was a little disorganized. But overall the ideas, lifestyle, message and inspiration were fantastic.

[Brooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this perspective on unschooling because I realized so much of my privilege in it. It echoes so many of my own fears and worries about unschooling and parenting but explored them from a view of racial differences I will never have to face. It makes me aware of how much less so many of my pressures and worries truly are but also just great to see parents fighting for their kids to have what they see as the best.

[Catherine Streeter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 This is a really great read about decolonizing parenting and unschooling. I’m not a full blown unschooler but the messages here about parent-child relationships and questioning education and parenting norms are extremely important to me. Definitely recommend to anyone interested in child-led learning.

[Tamyka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Need to sit with this a minute

[Tibby]

My family has been unschooling for years now and it was a practice that I came to through a variety of channels. I was late to finding Akilah Richards and her podcast Fare of the Free Child, but when I did it resonated strongly with what we were doing with our children.

I had mixed feelings about the book. Overall, I thought it was really good, but I was a little unclear about the audience. As someone who has been both deschooling myself and unschooling my kids, the book at most points felt like a hug reassuring me that we are doing the right thing and that there is both community out there doing the same and theory and a track record showing that this is a viable path for raising people. It was so refreshing and helpful to hear the things we believe about education be advocated for and affirmed. At various points there were questions and nuggets of wisdom that I think will be helpful to ruminate on for me personally.

On the other hand this felt more like it was aimed at people who were just starting the process of considering deschooling and unschooling. I have already grappled with a lot of the things she talked about and, while it was nice to know that others have gone through that process, it felt like an end of chapter review rather than fresh material. That's not a criticism of the book, just to point out that if you are already unschooling, the information here may not always be new or feel necessary to cover again.

My other thought was that this process Akilah describes is very middle and upper class centric. I appreciate that she is speaking to BIPOC families who might have fears around raising children in this way, but the option to unschool is not viable for a lot of families that don't have remote jobs. She spends a lot of time talking about becoming digital nomads and traveling to places that had cheaper costs of living outside the U.S. But to even get to that point a lot of families would need supports in place that just simply aren't there. Richards and her husband had already bought a house and sold it, they had passports and the ability to leave and come back to the U.S., they even already had jobs that allowed them to work remotely.

She does not say everyone has to sell their house and live for years traveling outside the U.S. to unschool successfully. But she also doesn't really offer much for people who don't have well-paid jobs, family support, benefits, and access. Her one solution for parents who aren't home all day is to send kids to a co-op. But plenty of places where unschoolers live don't have school co-ops that can take a child all day. So if you work a traditional office job that requires you to be in an office all day, or worse yet, a service job, this book isn't going to help you find ways to figure that out. It assumes a basic level of flexibility that is really only available to middle and upper class people. Yes, unschooling will require you to re-examining how you are living and possibly your relationship to money, but not buying coffee everyday isn't going to suddenly make this affordable or feasible to most families. While I think this is an incredibly liberatory practice, I would like to hear more voices of people from other marginalized identities doing it. I think it might offer places for those of us with the current ability and ease of unschooling to offer support and advocacy, as well as deeper dives into what this practice can look like to liberate not just middle and upper class families, but those living without legal status, without money, with food insecurity, with incarcerated family, queer families, etc.

[are we there yet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know why I read this book actually, since I don't have any kids or even work with kids (anymore, anyway). I do find myself feeling irritated when someone in the family is passing down the parentong method that resulted in the young adult version of me, and so I've accumulated a LOT of thoughts over the years about how not to parent, and those largely align with the author's position.

One very useful phrase I'd never heard before is the "adult gaze," which now gives me a name for something that I'd known exist but couldn't describe succinctly, and already I can see it reshifting how I'll argue about other subjects too (I have a lot of chips on my shoulders).

My only note is the ability to homeschool your kids is definitely a privilege (not only does that mean one parent can afford not to have a day job, but both parents will have to be relatively educated and self-aware, which I'm not getting the sense of from most people I know), and that fact wasn't mentioned by the author at all.

[Krissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a person who strives to find information around decolonising education I was thrilled to find this book added to the options available. This was an intensely personal exploration of how one mother embraces learning and parenting from a position of not-owning her children. So many people who speak about education and parenting have a bone deep feeling that adults own children and it is wonderful to see more support for shifting that conversation. There were excellent resources and processes explained throughout.

4 stars because I have an unshakeable position that every parenting book needs to have a "Looking back 20 years later" version that explains where the parent was *still* not getting things right in the original book.

There were moments of intensity that provoked serious crying and parts where it felt like the editing could be a little tighter. Overall the book feels like an important voice in the ongoing conversation around decolonising bodies and education. Definitely worth buying a full price copy.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...you can't raise any child without the input of that child. You can't be the best teacher or guide for that young learner if you're deciding for them instead of with them. You and I must see partnering with young people as personal leadership work, social justice work, not just educational activism. This is bigger than that. This is about power. About reimagining it but taking it out of the context of over and applying it to our deliberate efforts to raise and be people who know how to share our power and how not to stand in the way of someone else's power. To deschool and decolonize our way past the tools of oppression forced into our hands through standardization and forced schooling. If we can accept any form of oppression, we are susceptible to all forms of oppression."

This book was a helpful introduction to unschooling. I gained a deeper understanding of non-coercive parenting approaches and child-led learning philosophies.

[Shaan Amin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nuanced, interesting description by a practitioner and brand evangelist of "unschooling": essentially a homeschooling movement differentiated with a few core philosophical tenets, including a dialogue partnership between parent-child; inclusion of both parent and child as "learner" (education constituting a dirty word throughout the book); learning is (could be?) happening always. For that reason, and because readers are assumed to be parents interested in deschooling their own children, the book functions as more of a parenting guide than a learning guide, educational or otherwise.

Richards has an acute anthropological eye for how parents make decisions. This is the book's greatest strength. In particular, her observation of how parents often railroad children in seemingly-innocuous ways into participation in seemingly-salutary activities in ways that do not yield any benefits for the child is dead-on. Also, she critiques brilliantly the performance of apology to other adults for children engaging in antisocial/uncomfortable behavior.

There's major style issues here, though. Many other reviewers note that Richards's prose leaves a lot to be desired. This would have benefited from several more editorial rounds. The book is extremely repetitive. As she writes at length about patois, I think her variation in authorial voice is intentional: still, the switches between moralizing, formal tone and slang-y informality feels far more forced than organic. I again think this is primarily an issue of needing more of an editorial hand... from watching a few of her interviews and podcasts, Richards is a dynamic and compelling speaker.

I'm left wondering about the extent to which children's autonomy runs up against parental experience. Richards is notably far more nuanced in her application of these principles (in-book) than she sometimes comes across in the meta-commentary, and the notion that children sometimes benefit from adult pressure is the bugbear between the binding.

[Maggie Panning · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for anyone who is asking questions about schooling, unschooling and deschooling, homeschooling, conscious parenting, race, autonomy, power dynamics, and on and on. I first found Akilah S. Richards' podcast Fare of the Free Child and I have learned a lot from her wise words and her willingness to ask questions where she desires more wisdom and the wisdom and experiences of her family and her guests and when I heard this book was available for pre-order I ordered it right away. I am a white woman living in a white part of the world, and there is a lot here for me, both as a parent and as a person living in this (USA) country and in this world. This book is another tool for me to use in my growth as a parent and as a member of society. I highly recommend it to anyone willing to ask themselves hard questions and take a serious look at their relationships with young people and people in general.

[Ashby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raising Free People is an important text for any Black person who is in community with young people and wants to see them thrive in a world without oppression. I read this book to learn more about the liberatory framework for unschooling and understand the day-to-day of an unschooling practice. Although I am not yet a parent, Raising Free People provided multiple examples of ways we can start this practice on our own as adults.
As someone who considers hirself an abolitionist and therefore a worldbuilder, I find compulsory schooling and the white supremacist values embedded in public schooling to be among the greatest threats to collective liberation. Through unschooling, Akilah shows us a world where we can grow freedom in our own homes.

[Marta · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to learn about unschooling and why it was a great choice, but didn't feel like this book really taught me that. It seemed more like a personal memoir. I got tired of hearing the author talk about how gifted her girls were and how much they all got to travel and live in Jamaica. Maybe if I was more familiar with unschooling I would have enjoyed it more, but it just seemed all over the place. One chapter didn't really lead into the next. I had high expectations bc of all the hype around this book and was disappointed. I might pick it up again once I'm further into my unschooling journey. Not a good choice for a beginning unschooler who's trying to understand what it's all about.