Unschooling Ourselves - People, not Products.

For many years now I have been looking deeper within myself and my social conditioning, yet somehow the public education system kind of escaped me, despite it being a major factor in early development and introduction to the world. I made some friends recently that experienced a different education such as homeschooling or alternative schooling, so chatting with them revealed to me a lot of unconscious sh*t that needed attending to.

Even in the mainstream, it is becoming more obvious how our education systems are deeply flawed. None of this was news to me - but through some of the conversations I shared with those friends, I was able to tune into more of the specifics which left me wide-eyed staring blankly into the void, acknowledging many of the patterns living within me that could use deconditioning. Unlearning.

There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle I’ll be getting into, but to give the big picture - our education system has been educating us as products - not as human beings.

We have been institutionalized.

Institutionalized to fit into a mold of the roles we’re expected to take on in the Big Wheel. “The system” as its often referred to.

We get herded like sheep:

1-physically (ex: high school to university, university to an office space)

2-mentally (Telling you what is what; no questioning/openness to different ways of seeing things)

3-spiritually (repression of the heart's true calling & raw expression)

There is no room to imagine the world and our role in it in a completely new and different way.

The world we inhabit is constantly changing, as we all surely can feel. However here I'm talking about the loss of the child’s capacity to see the world for its limitless possibilities. When we put a child in school, we narrow her perception of the world to a fraction of what she would be able to perceive and imagine. I know this because I was a child once, and I’m slowly finding my way back to that childlike state of actually Seeing the world.

In most schools, spending time imagining and ‘dreaming’ is deemed a distraction, something to overcome. Children are sometimes even given drugs to overcome this very natural experience that is happening for a reason. It is in fact the most powerful tool of creation.

That’s right - the most powerful tool of creation is imagination. It’s so easy to dismiss this. I feel as I write it, that for many it is not something yet comprehended, because it has been stolen from us. Like a invasive bug in our behaviour, it has been squashed.

The purest form of intelligence has been wiped from most of society, and our education system is the cause. Children are so much more perceptive and intelligent than we give them credit for. They are treated like second class citizens with no personal authority or credibility, which is in my opinion one of our biggest blind spots in our current culture.

We push these new, freshly arrived, connected-to-higher-intelligence beings into centuries old established ways of viewing and perceiving the world and our role in it. That is something many may have a hard time understanding. Children, before they get traumatized by all of society, are pure love. They believe in magic, they don’t see the limitations that we see.

I specifically remember being highly intuitive and understanding many deeper layers of interactions between people and then feeling like I had to play a certain “role” of being an oblivious child just to fit the expectation of the adults. I am sure many people share this experience. Never once was I told that I had something to teach adults or given the opportunity to have an equal voice.

This hierarchy established between kids and adults, one-directional relationships, is very unbalanced and damaging to children’s sense of self-worth. Kids view adults and teachers as authority figures holding all of the power.

This piece of the puzzle was a hard one to swallow for me, because still, to this day, I often feel disempowered in relation to older adults, to ‘authority figures’. I feel I must play a passive role where my ideas and needs are not as valued. I become afraid to take too much space. I see this social conditioning pattern show up in my behaviour often. Now that I have more awareness of it, I observe it and shift out of it when I feel safe to do so. However it is very deeply ingrained.

Hierarchy is often harming more than helping anyone. Yet it is still very apparent in our education systems and in our overall culture in the workplace and even in family dynamics.

Taken one step further, not only do kids learn of a separation between themselves and adults, but they are also rarely given any opportunity to connect with kids from different age groups. They spend their entire education with a sense of separation from other age groups.

I had no friends in different age groups, other than friends I had on my street. Still today, I seem to be preventing myself subconsciously from developing connections and friendships to people in different stages of life. Almost like there is a wide gap separating us. Why though?

The wisdom and exchange to be given and received between children and elderly folks is incredibly valuable, yet for the majority of my life, when I would meet people in those age ranges, I would practically dismiss them completely other than polite interaction. I rarely felt capable of connecting with them on equal grounds. I’m grateful this is slowly changing now.

Kids must be empowered, not controlled.

Kids innately want to learn things, yet our education system seems to completely kill that curious fire. Not everyone necessarily, but a large percentage of kids don’t react well to being forced to learn.

Being empowered and encouraged to learn what they are interested in, is a different story. When people are being told what to do, with no sense of autonomy or sovereignty, our instinct becomes to defy. Curiosity flourishes on its own terms, not by someone force feeding you knowledge.

Utilizing Primal Fears to Control

As children, we are by design dependent on our caretakers. The biggest primal fear for a child then is abandonment. Abandonment for a child is essentially death. So how do you make a child do something? By subconsciously utilizing the fear of abandonment/fear of rejection.

Children are taught very young what is acceptable behavior and what is not. The understanding then is that they must comply in order to be “a good boy/girl” - to be accepted. Gold stars, grades, stickers, are all emblems of this acceptance/rejection conditioning. If you don’t get these acceptance emblems, shame and guilt is internalized. Your fear of not being good enough is activated.

Lots of kids still reject the school systems and misbehave, and this is often due to an inner understanding that they are being coerced into something which is out of alignment with their truest expression of self.

No mainstream teacher would ever actually listen to a child expressing this truth, rather they would tell the parents (the adult) that the child has a disorder of some kind. This child will begin to lose confidence in their intuitive sense and think they have a problem.

Repressed Inner Authority

In public schooling systems, kids get their inner authority completely ripped away from them. You must raise your hand to speak or to go to the bathroom, you are given a schedule you must obey. To do anything, you must ask for permission.

You have no sense of sovereignty. You must “do as you are told”.

What this teaches kids, is that if they are to listen to their inner authority, in the event it contradicts “what they are told”, then they must defy.

If you ask me, the kids who defy are the ones who remain in integrity with themselves. Kids who remain sovereign.

If I may say so myself, it should be applauded. This definitely makes my own rebellious inner child happy - so yes I am definitely biased muahahah

Our education system doesn’t have the goal of helping kids discover the world with fresh eyes and pursue their highest gifts and talents, it has the goal of preparing students to be part of a the socially engineered system that has been created already, and teach kids the rules of that world.

Our collective evolution suffers greatly due to this reality. Imagination suppressed, the status quo is perpetuated continuously. History rewrites itself. Wars go on. We don’t seem to learn.

So... what the f*ck can we do about this?

If you’ve already been through the school system, begin to unschool yourself. Observe yourself and notice any unconscious school-created habits and thought patterns you carry with you still today.

- Are you striving to be society’s version of “a good boy/girl”?

- Do you need validation from authority figures to confirm your “acceptance” into society?

- Do you feel you must ask permission/raise your hand/comply?

- Do you ever question what you are being told to do?

- Are you afraid of being rejected from your core group if you don’t fit within the frame of what your group considers “acceptable”?

- Do you feel you can only connect with people your own age group?

It is a LOT of sh*t to recognize - hence my “wide-eyed” starring into the abyss when I first came across this realization.

Don’t overwhelm yourself. Just begin to bring awareness to it, and observe.

Another thing you can do, is if you have children… remind them: They. Are. Sovereign.

They don’t “have” to do anything someone tells them to do. Yes, this means releasing the absolute control over your child you believe you are entitled to - that's not an easy one, though transforming our society isn't going to be easy.

Empower them to speak their minds. Empower them to feel as though they can contribute to adult conversations. Make sure they interact with different age groups so they gain valuable insight from these stages of life. Plant the idea of mentorship, in both directions. Actually listen to them, as if they bring wisdom from higher intelligence world, because they do. Educate them outside of school - have them interact with different kinds of people, different cultures. Don’t expect school to give them everything they need. Remind them they don’t need to “fit the mold”.

I myself have not yet had the immense privilege and responsibility of having a child, so of course, this is coming from my experience as an ex-child. ;)

If you’ve made it this far, thanks so much for reading, I truly appreciate it with all my heart. Please share with anyone you think would get something out of this. I love you!

written by Daniela Marquis

Published several months since writing due to:

-not feeling like it was good enough yet

-forgetting that it had been written

-"it wasn't the right time..."

- ~any random additional excuse~

Additional note:

I recognize the devoted and well-intending hearts and souls of teachers, educators, assistants and all who show up every day for kids and have a very challenging yet rewarding job. There are many occasions where they impact children's lives in beautiful ways. My critique of the education system is not directed to hard working individuals, but more of an observation towards my experience and how it has impacted myself and many others as adults.

I also recognize my privilege growing up in a country with access to education which provided me with opportunities that many people around the world do not have access to. Thank you for all this education system has given me - I am grateful for it all!