... and the white boys said, "No thanks, I'm good."

Emile kindly started this blog by articulating his understanding my mental model around choice and I responded with my understanding of his. A concise summary of these two perspectives might be:

Liberal argument against choice: While all parents have the right to select a schooling option that works best for their child, the decisions made by white parents make things harder for other people's children. 

The unschooling argument for choice: any one-size-fits-all design for formal education will inevitably be harmful to a percentage of children, even if practiced optimally.

So where we go from here is the actual stuff that makes up what students learn. I was struck by a brief exchange during episode 31 of the podcast Fare of the Free Child in which Julia Cordero from the Heartwood ALC describes how they're working to offer the site's predominately white students opportunities to engage with texts and learning experiences related to people of color. I'm paraphrasing but Julia explains that because students always have the freedom to refuse to participate in an opportunity, they were well within their rights in the community to walk away. And walk away they did. In effect, the white boys said, "No thanks, I'm good." After sharing this, Julia pauses and shares that she and the other learning facilitator are wrestling with that and trying to figure out how to address that. The entire episode, and podcast, is worth a listen as it speaks to the power of unschooling and self-directed learning for children of color. 

It's worth restating - as often as possible - public education has historically not done right by children of color. Alas, at least in the short term, there do not appear to be people in positions of power who are going to address that in any meaningful way. That said, parents' right to determine unschooling, homeschooling, alt schooling, religious or private ed is best for their child is protected by the Constitution and not what's up for discussion here. Carol once restating her understanding of my position as me wanting everyone to be "in the box" and unschoolers wanting to be outside the box. In truth, I want every child to be in whatever box, basket, or handbag works for them. At the same time, when white parents chose to step out the box for their child*, that decision has consequences, especially when it comes to the larger picture of American society. 

Julia, Emile, Carol and other unschooling advocates stress the importance of agency and consent when it comes to learning. One of the theories offered is if children find their way to content, it will make the content easier to learn and understand and will stick around longer. A great example of this theory is the kitchen scene in Captain Fantastic. The boys who were forced to learn about the Bill of Rights, can't remember anything about it. The girl who was free to discover it as a part of daily living with her father not only knows it but can restate it and defend her rights. 

And yet, we need better white people. Trump's election has made that painfully clear. In other words, we can't wait for white kids to "find" their way to recognizing people of color's humanity. Those white parents made it possible for their son to opt out of learning about people of color and as result, they put their child's agency over white Americans critical need to empathize with and better understand communities of color. Again, the parents have that right - and it's entirely likely or possible those boys will come to appreciate the humanity and lived experiences of people of color in different ways and at different times. I've not come across any long-term studies on the race or gender views held by unschooled/altschooled children. 

But on the other hand, Julia spoke to how word about the school spreads via word of mouth - middle and upper-class white parents telling their white friends about the school which means those boys have limited exposure to people of color. (Which is not unlike many suburban school districts - due to the parenting decisions made by white parents.) I would argue that white parents can better support their child and other people's children by staying in public school and advocating for their child's teacher, school, or district to adopt anti-racist, social justice curriculum. 

A required curriculum of study, the so called liberal arts - mathematics, literature, history, Science, music, art, and physical education - stretches back to Socrates. Anna Julia Cooper, a Black educator in DC in the 1800's wrote at length about the power of disciplined approach to academics, and when the NEA committee was looking to establish a shared understanding of a quality education, they proposed the basic outlines of courses we see high schoolers following today. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, even stuff they may never use again, gives a student a sense of the world and perhaps an idea of what they would like to pursue in the next phase of their life. 

The look of that liberal arts education has steadily evolved since Cooper's time. Greek is no longer a mainstay and girls can stay in Science class instead of leaving for homemaking. Meanwhile, the canon of English class has expanded beyond dead white men and math teachers are re-framing what it means to be good at math. An anti-racist curriculum is the next evolution. 

Social justice curriculum is a means to ensure all children get exposure to diverse names, faces, voices, and stories. And again, all schools aren't there yet. But there are systems in place to move there. For example, national organizations provide guidelines on populating shelves and curriculum with diverse texts. National English, Science, history, and math teacher conferences regularly included sessions on incorporating social justice in the curriculum. States are increasingly incorporating social justice into teacher training and finally, teachers who adopt anti-racist and anti-sexist approaches actively share their thinking on social media, generating conversations and discourse. Even teachers in predominately white schools are adopting the principles and practices. 

There will never be resolution around the ideal nature of what students should learn in school. It's a common refrain to point to how much adults have forgotten since their days in school as if its evidence that the things we learn in school are meaningless. I'd offer it's more that some of the things we learn become so essential to who we are, we forget where we learned them and we forget the things we don't regularly use. So, yes before the election, only 25% of Americans knew there were three branches of the government. It will be interesting to see if that percent changes after the recent election. And again, that statistic isn't evidence of what we should or shouldn't teach in schools as adult's ability to answer content questions absent application is a questionable proxy for what should happen in schools.

For me, one of the most compelling arguments for a mandatory liberal arts education that explicitly attends to social justice and anti-racism, anti-sexism teaching is sex ed. The states that rejected abstinence-only sex ed funding and instead provide mandatory sexual education that speak to the diversity and complexity of relationships between genders, protection and prevention, and allow for on-going discussion have lower pregnancy rates than those who don't. That, to me, offers some very compelling precedence around the power of mandating knowledge. 

Finally, I'd offer the following brief timeline of decisions made by white parents:

• When Catholic parents (mostly white at the time), felt Protestant teachers went too far, they created their own system of religious schools
• White parents created "segregation academies" or closed entire school districts to avoid desegregation orders
• When the space between the city and the country began to fill, white parents with the means flocked to communities that limited public housing options, ensuring that their school districts would remain segregated
• As city public schools became more diverse, districts began to offer "selective enrollment" or specialized schools which consistently reflect demographic patterns very different from the district at large

History and current realities show us that as long as white parents of means have ways to create an alternate structure for their children, they will. And as we head into the era of vouchers, it's going to make things increasingly challenging for children of color. I remain curious if white parents see themselves as continuing that pattern, breaking that pattern, or attempting to exist outside it. And to be perfectly clear this in no way suggests I'm saying those parents are racists or actively contributing to systemic racism. Rather, it's offering that often times the things we do for the sake of others, especially children, have unintended consequences. 

Meanwhile, there are other issues related to school - age-grouping, grades, pedagogy, race and gender in the classroom, and the propensity for schools to become places where things happen to children, rather than with and for that need to be talked through individually. That is, we have to separate out the nature of the curriculum from how it's presented to children and those are different topics. 

*By children, I'm thinking about neuro-typical, children without disabilities. That is, finding the best fit for a child with special needs is a lot more complex than this conversation.