I'm not going to talk about the economic reasons why I think unschooling is more accessible to the middle and upper classes as these are pretty self-evident. Instead, I'll talk about one of my own personal problems with homeschooling, which is that I often feel as if I've turned my back on the rest of the youth in our country...It was a long post, and I didn't want to really reproduce it here, I wanted to just give a sense of what the poster was trying to get across. I think she has some very excellent and valid things to say, things I can relate to, things, I also struggle with. I'm just a bit shy about posting anything on that list - I don't even home school my kids yet, let alone unschool them. I feel I cannot speak from an informed position on that list, and I feel that is required :)
...People, parents especially, have been led to believe that they lack the knowledge to do something--anything-- without an expert (or institution) leading the way. School has been touted as the great equalizer; if you "stay in school" you can be anything you want to be. It is hard to turn your back on the hope schooling offers when you're surrounded by people living "hopeless" existences...
...I used to talk about homeschooling with the woman who cleaned my office. She is from Mexico and went to school until she was twelve. The most important thing to her, was making sure her granddaughter finished school. This woman is one of the wisest women I've ever met. Yet she would never believe herself capable of facilitating a decent education for her granddaughter...
...It isn't a *lack* of an education that makes unschooling impossible, it is the fear that goes along with the lack. It is my suspicion that this fear is built directly into the educational system--the system that gets citizens ready for the hierarchies they'll need to deal with for the rest of their lives.
However, I wanted to point out that the idea of middle class privilege is similar to male privilege, a feminist concept. We owe the idea of looking at privilege from second wave (1960's-ish) feminism, I think. Built on top of that are concepts like white privilege in anti-racist theory. I've also seen conversations about ablest privilege, and I've discussed "colonial privilege" although I've never seen that as a term. Power and privilege is something that my social work education discusses a lot. I'm taking a class on anti-racist practice right now, and we spent some time looking at our own 'identity' and 'social location'. I am white. Thus, I swim in a sea of privilege which I don't really even see. Things are just easy for me, and I take that as normal.
Similarly, I also see ideas related to colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonizing - if we consider public education to be an institution of colonial oppression. It sure was for Aboriginal peoples in Canada who did not have the right to decide how their children were educated, who could have been fined or gone to jail for trying to refuse to let the Indian agent take their kids away from them. (In my mind, that alone is evil. What right does anyone have to take a perfectly happy, healthy child away from his/her loving parents? I'm not even going to go into the atrocities perpetuated upon those children once they reached the schools.)
I can't remember where, but when I was first learning about unschooling, spending hours combing the 'net for information, I came across a posting by an Aboriginal teen who had recently chosen unschooling for herself. Her family didn't like it because of the history of oppression of Aboriginal peoples in Canada through the Indian Act - for many years, Aboriginal people were not allowed to pursue education beyond 8th grade. This teen's family were reacting to that.
Also, I see ideas about the 'expert' and the person who is deemed 'deficient'. We talk about this in the context of our future social work practice a lot at school. A social worker has a dual role in society - as a social change agent, committed to justice and activism, but also as a social control agent. The social control agent part is hard for a lot of us students - if we wanted to control people, we figure, we would've become cops!! Still we need to maintain our professional values inside of being a social control agent: autonomy, self-determination, starting where the client is. We are BSW candidates because we have a passion for social justice, because we want to stand up for the rights of people who have been trodden upon to the point where they cannot stand up for themselves.
I recently read an article about social work practice in my anti-racist class written by a Metis professor at UVic. She talked about the 'colonial container' that helping professions often come from (she meant doctors, social workers, priests. I will add in teachers) - the pathologizing tendency called the 'colonial code of relations' which is based on the following assumptions:
- You are deficient (i.e. heathen, savage, falsely conscious, submissive, passive, internally oppressed, helpless, cognitively distorted and/or afraid).
- I am proficient (i.e. critically conscious, expert, professional, closer to god and/or empowered by the state).
- Therefore I have the right (duty, sacred obligation and/or authority) to perform certain operations upon you (prescribing, advising, educating, assessing, praying, counselling, legislating and/or apprehending children) for your own good.
I especially love the last sentence/paragraph I've copied, about the fear that goes along with the lack of education. It's an interesting line of thought, and makes me think of Paolo Friere and his classic book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Friere argues that only the oppressed can free themselves (and interestingly their oppressors) from the dehumanization of oppression.
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