How to live as if school doesn't exist

PART TWO: On Individualism

If you missed Part 1, it’s worth checking out before you read more.

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We are home for some time with my family at the moment, and the other day I walked into my childhood bedroom and found my daughter looking through my old school work.

“What are these red ticks after every few sentences?” She pointed at the check marks my history teacher had put after I had written something she approved of. It was a peak unschooled young person moment - wondering why anyone needed to mark an essay with red pen, and mark every thing paragraph, when it was perfectly okay without.

I can’t deny I felt a lot of different things at once: relief my children don’t have to be assessed on every sentence they write or don’t write, gratitude we get to just exist without regularly seeking validation, and also a nagging feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, they missed out on.. schoolwork?!

I only say this because I loved schoolwork, even while I didn’t particularly love school. And I’m also nostalgic about school, even though I don’t actually know why.

Then I quickly reminded myself that neither of my children wants to write essays or do workbooks. That the option is there for them, and they have hardly ever taken it.

And so we carry on living as if school doesn’t really exist, or at the very least as if it does exist (my kids have schooled friends, after all, and they are wonderful and exist!) but is irrelevant to us right now.

P and L are now 13 and 11, and they, as well as our unschooling life, are always shifting and changing. In Part 2 of this series, I’m going to talk about another essential element (in my opnion) to living an unschooled, untarnished-by-schoolishness, life.¹

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

PART TWO: Be an anti-indivualist

If you think about it, the way school is structured very intentionally elevates and promotes individualism. The focus is on individual achievement, grades, prizes. No matter how much schools say they are all about collaboration and teamwork, at the end of the day you are not collaborating on your final exams or coursework - whether you make it to the next grade is an individual endeavour, and children are actively competing against one another throughout.

This is so normalised that most people take it for granted that it is the way we must live - survival of the fittest and all. Except that.. all of these ideas are constructs that have emerged from colonialism, patriarchy, Euro-centric Enlightenment ideas and a society whose survival is rooted in hierarchy and domination.

Think collectively

I have learned that the more we can think collectively, the more we can work on relying on each other and forming close, respectful, interdependent relationships, the more supported we will feel in parenting and life.

I am ALWAYS reminding my children of what Mariam Kaba wrote, that all things worth doing are done with other people.

We do very little by ourselves, even when it might seem like we are alone a lot.

I planted a garden this year for the first time, and I could go around saying I did it by myself. After all, I spent a ton of time alone, in my garden, doing the work. The truth is I did much of it alone, AND I didn’t do it by myself.

Because the two things are different. Aloneness can be a fact of life. We can be alone in the sense nobody else is around, but we hardly ever do things entirely by ourselves. Whenever we say “I did it all by myself” we are creating a narrative, not simply telling the truth. We are following a well-worn path of claiming to be independent and self-sufficient. It is almost always not actually the case.

It’s okay to be interdependent

Before I even started putting out my boxes and fence, one of my dearest friends came over and helped me make a plan for my garden. We had tea and gossiped a bit and she told me what I needed and we discussed what sorts of things I would grow, and when, and how.

A week later, we were both at a local seed swap where I got most of my seeds for the season. Our local gardening club puts this event on every year, and everything is free - local shops donate seeds, local gardeners give seeds from the plants they have been tending year after year.

My raised bed soil came from my local shop and they delivered it for no extra charge because they are fabulous like that. When I needed more, I called and they were there the next day. The soil itself was made by someone I don’t know.

I had the resources to pay for someone to come build a fence, and those resources did not just appear out of thin air. My children helped me carry those heavy soil bags down to the garden, and fill the beds. They have planted and watered and harvested. The logs, leaves and twigs at the base of my beds were once growing on the land we live on. They too, were once alive and they too, contributed. While I’m away, several of my neighbours are popping in to check on my garden.

I won’t go on but you get the jist. The way we use words to describe what we are doing is revealing, and I am choosing to check myself often and use words that describe the ways we are all connected, the ways I have done nothing entirely on my own.

In some cultures it might feel somehow.. shameful? to admit you had help with something. In school we were told to focus on our own work, not to help the person next to us. “Eyes on your own paper!” I remember hearing a lot.

I choose to let my eyes wander now. I choose to let others help me. I don’t want to do things on my own anymore. I don’t ever want to be like, “Look! I did this single-handedly! Look what I’ve achieved all on my own!” because whatever it is, it would be a blatant lie.

Photo by Mehdi Sepehri on Unsplash

Some ways I weave anti-individualism, togetherness and collectivism into our daily lives:

• We do not glorify independence: there is not rush for children to be able to do things independently, and it is always okay to need help or support. You do not win any special prizes for struggling alone.

• I emphasise that housework is not anyone’s job in particular: there is work to be done, and anyone can do it. I support my children in noticing when something needs to get done, and doing it.

• I do not pay my children to help at home because we are a community and everyone should help out to the extent they are able to.

• I never pit my children against one other eg. let’s see who can brush their teeth first, and I try my best never to compare them to each other or to others. We are worthy because we exist, not because we are somehow better than someone else.

• Competition exists in the world, and my kids love competitive games. That’s fine, AND I have always tried to play games where we work together rather than against one another.

• I never grade or assess my children’s work or anything they make or produce, unless they want me to (so far, they have not). I give feedback only if they ask, and I support them in learning what they wish to learn, but I want them to form their own sense of what success looks like, what worthwhile work looks like.

• Since the very beginning we’ve had a culture of not blaming. When someone makes a mistake, it just happened, it’s not anybody’s fault. We all help to fix it.

• We offer to help others, and we accept help when we need it.

• I often talk about the work that goes behind everyday things such as our clothes, and the food we eat.

• I put a lot of emphasis on being part of groups and communities - either organising them, or joining existing ones. To me this is much more important than over-focusing on individual achievements.

• Early on in my parenting life, I noticed how prevalent children’s books about ‘successful’ individuals are - these are usually stories of people who beat all the odds to succeed in their chosen discipline, or who achieved great things. Something that is always missing from these books is the idea (and truth) and nobody achieves much entirely on their own; paired with the elevation of the individual, these books always made me a little uncomfortable. I try to always counter the narrative that success needs to look like one individual, achieving things that are deemed big, bold and important by society.

• I have boundaries (this hasn’t always been the case): I say no when I’m not able to extend myself, and I support my children in knowing and stating their personal boundaries too.

We are not doing this perfectly. I have so much that I’m still learning and that I catch myself doing almost as a reflex. The societal conditioning is strong!

What would you add to this list?

Unschooling is often accused of being self-interested and individualistic, and I think it absolutely can be if we let it. And so we need to be intentional about living an unschooled life that centres togetherness, belonging and a definition of freedom that involves us all.

For the sake of making brief posts, I’m going to make several How to live as if school doesn’t exist posts. Look out for Part 3, coming up next month!

If you have thoughts or would like to collaborate, reach out! I’d love to hear how others live as if school and schooling are not a thing.

Sending you all lots of love,

Fran

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1. It’s my firm belief that you do not need to be unschooling in order to push back on schoolishness, as defined by Akilah S. Richards, although it helps to divest from as many hierarchical systems and power dynamics as possible. And of course, it’s pretty hard to live as if school doesn’t exist if you’re having to go there every day!