Raising Free People

"What are you going to be when you grow up?"

It's a question adults asked me as a boy and one I still hear adults asking children. From quite a young age I knew that questions required answers to it so I always had one ready. "I'm going to be a cowboy." "I'm going to be an astronaut." "I'm going to be a baseball player." "I'm going to be an engineer like my dad."

My answers varied, often week to week, but I always had one at the ready. Adults expected it. None of them ever thought to ask about my current interests, my plans for the day, or about who I was right then. It was as if I, as a child, wasn't really a complete human being yet. That my real life wouldn't start until I'd become something else, and as a white boy in America becoming was naturally attached to one's profession. 

Of course, I realize that for most adults it was simply a convention to ask this question of children, a way of making conversation with the smaller humans, but it seems as if I've always known there were limits to which answers were acceptable. It wouldn't have crossed my mind to have replied, "When I grow up I'm going to be a daddy." Even worse, I knew without having ever been told, would have been to answer, "I'm going to be a mommy." I knew that I couldn't aspire to grow up to be a homemaker or seamstress or even, for that matter, teacher. If I had said I was going to grow up to be dancer or hair stylist, I imagine there would have been some talk of my needing to see a therapist.

I'm not blaming any individual adult for this. They didn't know any better because they too had been children. There were simply some aspirations that I ought not even consider and being a "good boy" I didn't.

And I had all the advantages: a white, middle class, American boy born into a society designed around elevating me simply because of those traits. Nevertheless, even as a preschool aged boy I knew that there were some things I would never be allowed to be, even if those things were actually who I was. Even I, with all my privledge, was oppressed.

"We cannot keep using the tools of oppression and expect to raise free people." ~Akilah Richards

I'm not comparing my situation to anyone else's, but rather pointing out we are all impacted by this pervading idea that adults always know best when it comes to children. There was a process, long and often painful, that I had to go through to overcome those limitations, to feel good about my choice to be a stay-at-home father, for instance, or a preschool teacher. Even now, even after I've been able to embrace who I am, I receive regular random accusations of being a "pervert" and worse from those who feel threatened by me. As founder and lead producer of the Raising Free People Network, author, podcaster, and radical unschool parent Akilah Richards tells us at Teacher Tom's Play Summit, she had to overcome her own colonialism, even as a Jamaican immigrant to this country, in order to set her own children free.

Akilah strives to overcome her own oppressive habits through her commitment to "love in action." She is an example of how important it is that each of us, especially when and where we have power, such as the power adults automatically have over children, to deeply examine how we use, or even abuse, our power by imposing our will and expectations upon others. If we aspire to raise free people, we must seek out, acknowledge, and strive to overcome our own colonizing impulses. None of us is truly free of this impulse to assume our backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives are the "one true" way of viewing the world. 

"We're all raising each other," Akilah says and as such it is our responsibility to raise one another to be free. And that begins with love.

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To hear my entire interview with Akilah Richards, please join us at Teacher Tom's Play Summit. What if the whole world understood the power of trusting children with the freedom to play, to explore their world, to ask and answer their own questions? What if everyone respected their right to learn in their own way, on their own time? What if we remembered that children must have their childhoods and that means playing, and lots of it? Teacher Tom's Play Summit  is a free, online conference that takes place June 20-25. Click here to get your free pass to all 24 of our incredible sessions with early childhood and parenting experts and thought leaders from around the world. Every one of these people are professionals who have placed children first. You will walk away from this event transformed, informed, challenged, and inspired to create a world that respects children and sets them free to learn and grow. Together we can, as presenter Raffi sings, "Turn this world around!"

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