Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Emily Race: Welcome to the Founding Mothers Podcast, where we're exploring new ways of living with one another and our planet. I'm your host, Emily Race. On today's episode, we'll be talking with Bria Bloom. Bria is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Self-Directed education. Along with her older brother, she grew up in an unschooling family and now is a parent of a self-directed young person and a passionate advocate for collective liberation, self-directed education, and young people's rights. 

[00:00:43] Bria Bloom: A lot of people have a hard time imagining any society without school period even though some of 'em still exist. So it really is the work of self directed education now is to show people we don't necessarily need school and then envision what society can look like now without school.

[00:00:58] Emily Race: The unschooling and [00:01:00] deschooling world was her gateway into a whole lot of questioning and realizing that the systems that try to define our lives and school us are not limited to just school. She also loves to engage and play as a self-directed education facilitator. Bria spends her time finding new ways to build and live in community, seeking disruption of harmful norms, reimagining the way our living can be, exploring questions and ideas with young people and adults, laughing often and marveling at all the passion and wonder that lives in self-directed communities every day.

Bria is also a marshal artist and a dancer, a happy Portland cyclist, a plant-based cooking enthusiast, a writer, and a semi aspiring YouTube video creator. 

Thank you for being here. 

[00:01:49] Bria Bloom: Thanks for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation today. 

[00:01:53] Emily Race: I'd love to start by just going over some of the basics. How would you define self-directed education? 

[00:02:00] Bria Bloom:  we have to define education because I think we tend to lump education with schooling, and for self-directed education, we're trying to detach it from the idea of a school system or schooling. For the Alliance, the definition on our site includes a definition of education, which I'll paraphrase because I don't have it memorized, but something 

like “education is everything that a person learns within their life in order to live a satisfying, meaningful, hopefully joyful life.” It's not just about the typical things you think about in schooling, it's about everything we do, cultural aspects of how we take care of ourselves and each other, how we live, how we relate,all of that is wrapped up in the term education. I also wanna address that term, “self-directed”, because I think a lot of people think self-directed means self taught or isolated to only “I'm the one doing the thing on my own.” But what it really means is that “the desire to do the thing comes from me.”

It comes from the person doing it. That can look like asking for a teacher or a mentor, or taking a class, or even doing worksheets for some people. Or it can look like playing, reading, whatever people want to do to pursue things  into. But it doesn't mean that you're doing it all in isolation, or you have to do it by yourself or you have to be self-taught.

It just means that the person themself is seeking it out. 

[00:03:33] Emily Race: Amazing. 

[00:03:34] Bria Bloom: So self-directed education for me is really just about living, because living is how we learn. And I think that our living should come from our own desires and ourselves as opposed to pressures other people are putting onto us.

[00:03:50] Emily Race: Wow. It really sounds like it's a philosophy or a way of viewing what life is and then education is a part of that, or one in the same. . 

[00:03:58] Bria Bloom: Yeah. 

[00:03:58] Emily Race: Tell me about theAlliance for Self-Directed Education. 

[00:04:03] Bria Bloom: The Alliance has a long history.

It started with people who were really frustrated with howconventional society buys into the school system automatically. A lot of the alternatives don't go far enough in trusting children. A lot of them still have a predetermined curriculum where the adults and teachers are at the top and they tell the kids what to do.

It might be more holistic, more arts based, but it's still the adults who are deciding for the kids. There are other organizations that will advocate for different types of education in general. But there was no organization that was trying to unite everyone who's doing a version of self-directed education where the kids are really in the lead themselves and you really do trust them.

There wasn't an organization that brought all the pieces of that puzzle together. You have unschoolers, which are homeschooling families, doing this. And then you have private schools that are ALC Sudbury schools, different communities doing this in a different way, but all with the baseline principle of self-directed education.

Binging all those people together to form one movement and support each other in their different ways of living this, but still having the same goal and vision, is why the Alliance was formed. 

[00:05:18] Emily Race: That's so interesting. So obviously this speaks to the power of community and bringing together a collective.

What was born out of bringing these disparate groups, or seemingly disparate groups together? 

[00:05:30] Bria Bloom: Not everyone wants to be brought together. A lot of people are really into it and want to learn from each other, and a deeper understanding is formed between unschoolers and people in SDE centers, and how that can work together; you can shift from one to the other. There is more understanding and learning from each other that grows. 

There's still people who are very much “I am an unschooler, I don't want anything to do with–”, and there are Center people who are very much a Center, “I don't want anything to do with unschoolers”, and that's their choice.They don't really [have interest in participating in the Alliance because we're trying to bring everyone together under this philosophy while respecting the different choices of how that lives. 

[00:06:09] Emily Race: Just knowing that this exists as a resource or as a body that's out there, I'm sure is comforting to some. 

Do you have any set goals as an Alliance that you set year over year? What guides the focus each cycle? 

[00:06:24] Bria Bloom: With grassroots movements, it's really hard to see the dial turn. You're like, “this amount of people are now not in school. This amount are now unschooling and that feels successful.”

But you really don't see and feel a huge change until there's a huge change. I'm sure anyone working in that kind of movement can tell you, we're just waiting for that huge change and doing everything we can to make it accessible and supportive to the people on the ground doing it and living it.

The strategy changes by the year, by the month, by the needs. Really as the pandemic hit, there was this need to support all these families who were suddenly schooling at home, but then wondering, “do we have to school at home? Can it actually look a different way?” So we shifted a lot of things just to focus on supporting and reaching those families.And that wouldn't have happened otherwise. We do try and have consistent projects and goals, but we also listen and respond and see what our members want and see what's happening in the greater overall picture of society. 

[00:07:28] Emily Race:I'm so glad you mentioned the pandemic, because it's one of those things that as it was unfolding –everyone had their own experience within it, but it was also clear that this was going to shift fundamentally what reality looks like for so many of us. How did that impact outreach to the Alliance or interest in self-directed education?

[00:07:51] Bria Bloom: \ There’s also suddenly a bunch of people online, so you can give online offerings and more people are coming just because that's what we  have. It made information spreading about this a lot more accessible, because meeting in person isn't viable for everyone all the time, but people wanna do it.

We tend to skip online things if we can because we really wanna meet in person. There were a bunch of offerings all at once and a bunch of interest, so that was a nice point. I would say it's changed a lot now; now there's a lot of families who have decided not to go back and they need support in “Where can I find in my community, where my kids can go or have other people to play with, or I can find other parents who are going to support and not judge my decisions.” 

People are looking for support in Deschooling, which is deprogramming our assumptions about learning and school and how we live and how we treat our kids, and “What does this look like for my family? Now that I've decided my kids aren't going back to school, there's a real logistical challenge of “I have to work”. Or, “How do I find care? How do I find the finances for this?” Those are the questions we're hearing and supporting a lot more right now. 

[00:09:01] Emily Race: There's so much richness to go into there. I wanna hear how you respond to that. But first, could  we zoom out a bit and start with the initial conception of self-directed education and where that began?

Where did that first idea come from? 

[00:09:18] Bria Bloom:  The term self-directed education is just a new label that we're using and we're putting on something to describe an age old practice of raising children.  I see it as going way back into how hunter gatherers and native people raised their children. If you look at those tribes and how they lived, a lot of what kids were doing, they were in mixed age groups. They were playing with older kids. They were hanging out with the adults; it was mixed age. They weren't segregated and they were playing to learn all day long. Because that's how humans learn.That's how mammals learn. So really this concept is as old as human learning is, and we've in a lot of ways rebranded it to capture the attention of people and say, “Hey, this exists”, but when you really wanna get down and talk about it with people, this is indigenous wisdom.

It's not this new thing that white academics created. This is indigenous wisdom, and we just wanna be able to spread and support that and revisit that. 

[00:10:16] Emily Race: Yeah. So powerful and true for many things beyond education even. 

[00:10:20] Bria Bloom: Absolutely. 

[00:10:21] Emily Race: There's almost a soundbite in that around play and education going hand in hand.

[00:10:28] Bria Bloom: Yeah. 

[00:10:29] Emily Race: SWhat was the process then, from that evolution of it being indigenous wisdom, the way things were in the hunter gathering time, to now where we are today? What can you speak to around the evolution of how it's grown?

[00:10:43] Bria Bloom: As we put a lot of kids into schooling systems so that people would be ready to work in factories or for various other reasons– there's so many reasons we can cite for why schooling systems emerged– we got away from that. We forgot it's even how we learn; those of us who were faced with that, or our ancestors who were faced with that.

There's this consciousness that people believe we need school in order to learn certain things. And now it's the undoing of all of that because it's been so ingrained in us for so long. A lot of people have a hard time imagining any society without school, period. Even though some of them still exist.  It really is the work of self-directed education to show people we don't necessarily need school, and then envision what society can look like now without school. 

Because we're not going back to how it was; we can't go back. We can use the wisdom and grow new things, but we can't go all the way back.I don't believe that's possible. But, first you have to help people understand that this is not how it's always been and it's not how it has to be, and what can we imagine together? 

[00:11:50] Emily Race: Yeah. On that point, it's so important to focus on a vision. Otherwise, we’re stuck repeating all we know.

If you could describe a vision of what the world could look like under the guise of self-directed education being the norm, what would that vision of the world be? 

[00:12:06] Bria Bloom: It's so funny because I'm working on another project right now where we're envisioning a world without school, and  we're approaching it from so many different artistic angles, but it's hard. It's hard when you just had school the whole time. I didn't go to school, but everyone around me went to school, so I'm still impacted by how society functions. 

People you ask are going to  have lots of the same ideas and lots of different ideas. That's important because I don't think one global vision is going to work for everyone because we, small communities, figure out together what works for them. Having a lot of different visions is important, but really when I'm thinking of the downfall of school or the school system, I envision community centers and spaces and multi-age spaces and less having the segregation between adults and children, where the adults go to their office workplaces, the kids go to their schools or their care centers. How can we integrate all of that so that it works for people? People do need space away from kids to do certain work;sometimes people need space away from each other to do work. That still needs to be honored. But how do we integrate all of society and community to not have that separation? That's really what I envision. A lot of community spaces, centers that all operate in different ways, depending on who's showing up and what they're asking for and what they're agreeing on with other people.

[00:13:35] Emily Race: Oh my gosh. I love that you said there's not a one size fits all solution. It goes back to the start of this conversation where you're saying, even within the Alliance, there are different points of view on how to show up within this space. 

[00:13:47] Bria Bloom: Yeah. 

[00:13:47] Emily Race: But it also speaks to this isn't about having one another new uniform way, like a policy of this is how it needs to be, but creating some freedom in different containers for people to explore. 

[00:14:00] It was so beautiful what you said about the community centers.What would be possible with that vision, for adults or older people or younger people, what would be possible for each of those age groups? 

[00:14:15] Bria Bloom: Adults in our “make money, survive, do the things that we're expected to do”, have gotten really far away from play and joy a lot of times. We definitely try to reclaim that in different ways, but it's hard; and kids, if they're not going to school or in the times when they aren't in school, they don't have the constraints of “make money to pay the rent and do all of those things”, they have this space to be themselves and be more joyful and play more and be more creative,than adults do. 

First of all, I'd hope that the constraints of trying to survive under capitalism would go away. But if we're not thinking about that, adults and kids in the same space have so much wisdom for each other, and I find that whenadults are able to let go of the daily constraints and let go of their preconceived notions and their schooling and really be with kids, so much comes out of that. There's so much joy, so much exchanging of ideas, so much creativity, so much imagining of worlds; I've seen it time and time again.

[00:15:21] Emily Race: I can't speak to how kids feel in the presence of adults, but I imagine there's things that are coming out of that for them as well. I'm sure there's a different experience for kids when they're in the presence of adults who are in their childlike playfulness versus in their survival mode of capitalism, like you mentioned.

[00:15:40] Bria Bloom: Yeah. 

[00:15:40] Emily Race: That's something that's inspired me personally, is thinking about what would be possible if children were actually involved in some of the conversations around shaping our society and solving for some of the challenges we are faced with now. Do you have any examples of what you've seen come out of self-directed education in play, whether it's through your own experience or people that you've worked with?

What does that actually look like in the day to day? 

[00:16:05] Bria Bloom: It looks a bunch of different ways. It's interesting because young people have so many ideas, but I think they are constrained by the fact that they know not everyone's going to take them seriously.

It's almost like there's so many ideas that brew here, but where do we go with them? How do we actually have power to share them with the world and make a difference? That becomes the hard block. A lot of times that shows up in communities where they have power in that SDE, self-directed education, space because it's a space that respects kids and trusts them.

So they have the power to influence that SDE community. And it might spread out to their parents or more locally, and they might find some cause to get involved in in a different way. But really a lot of it is done within the place they're in because the adults give them the trust and don't constrain them.They let them have control over that space they're in. It's hard to see how it ripples out. I know it does ripple out when you learn how to talk to each other and how to treat each other and how to navigate conflict; that's going to affect the whole world. If  we have people who grow up and act like this instead of acting in these controlled, constrained ways that many school people act, it's going to  affect the whole world. It is really hard to directly see the impact youth have because we aren't used to letting ourselves see it or letting it expand beyond a certain point.

[00:17:28] Emily Race: Yeah, that speaks to how we measure success having to shift. 

[00:17:34] Bria Bloom: Yeah. 

[00:17:35] Emily Race: As someone who, yourself, grew up within this philosophy, is that correct? You never went to school formally until college.

What was that experience like for you as a young person? 

[00:17:48] Bria Bloom: We were the only homeschoolers in our area, so it was lonely when I was young because I was waiting for friends to get home from school.  When I talk about self-directed education, unschooling,  I always say you have to find a community, and once you do, you're socializing. It  is much richer than it is in school because school puts all these pressures and constraints on young people.  But without a community, it doesn't feel like true self-directed education or unschooling to me.

It happened with my son when we moved here. We tried to unschool, but we weren't finding anyone, for a variety of reasons. I've written about this. But then we chose to go to an SDE center just so he could have that community, everything changed. 

So for me, it felt lonely until I found a homeschool center that I started going to and then, it's so hard to compare because I have no idea what it's like to go to school.I heard about it. But it just felt joyful and happy and exciting and adults were my peers. I felt like myself, the whole time I was growing up, and being with my friends I felt like myself. I didn't have any reason not to be myself or to constrain myself.

Even if there were adults in the room, I didn't care, I thought I was their equal. I decided I was their equal. That's the best way I could describe it. 

[00:19:07] Emily Race: As far as how that's impacted you now, clearly it's something that has stayed with you enough for you to want to carry out this mission, in a sense, with other people. How else could you say that it's impacted you today as an adult?

[00:19:20] Bria Bloom: I haven't thought about this in a long time, although I used to talk about it all the time. In the way I carry myself in the world and approach my work, approach what I want to  do in the world. 

I've always been ready to ask for what I wanted and if I get denied, I assume it's not a good partnership or situation for both sides. And that's how I'm going to find what's right for me. 

When I was younger, I wanted to do all these things. My dad would say, “just ask”. For example, I wanted to be a teacher's assistant in a Spanish class and the place I was taking class had never had that before.And I just asked for it. And they were like, “Great, we'll create that role for you.” So I had this sense that I could ask for any role, and the worst thing that can happen is someone's going to say, “no”. And if they say no, then you don't want to work with them anyway.

They don't appreciate you, it's not the right space, whatever. As I've gone on, I've taken that with me. I've always said, “This is what I'm interested in doing. I'd love to work with you, take it or leave it”. I don't think that’s the way a lot of people approach working in the world.

And also, I have no issues leaving when I'm not enjoying it anymore because I don't think that life should be forcing yourself to do things for success or approval in order to get ahead or whatever it is that I think schools train a lot of people to do. I think life should be about my fulfillment and what I'm doing for the world and what other people are getting out of it and what I'm getting out of it.

So I'm going to leave things when they're not serving me anymore and I don't have an issue with that. 

[00:20:56] Emily Race: As someone who had to unlearn so much of that conditioning, I often reflect with my husband how the grade system and getting a gold star has been so programmed into the way I show up, even in personal conversations at times.

There could be people listening to this who come from any part of the spectrum, but that idea that you can be self guided in your life and also find fulfillment is not something that you have to figure out later on. You can have that from the beginning. It’s so beautiful.

[00:21:25] Bria Bloom: Yeah. 

[00:21:25] Emily Race: What could be some tangible next steps that people could take who are listening to this? I'd love to look at that from two angles. One, for someone who is really fixed  on the idea of school, what would be an invitation you have for them or an inquiry to leave them with?

[00:21:42] Bria Bloom: Interesting. I would say, it depends on if it's an adult or a young person. 

[00:21:47] Emily Race: Let's talk to both of them.

[00:21:49] Bria Bloom: Okay. For an adult or a parent, I would really wonder, “What about school are you fixed on? What about school makes you feel secure? What about it excites you? What about it makes you feel worried if you would go without it? What things about school speak to you and where did that come from?” 

And then I would also say, “How does your young person feel in school? If you really think about it, what's happening for them when they come home from school? What are they telling you about school? Whether they're stressors? What do they like outside of school?Are there things that light them up that have nothing to do with school or are there not things anymore? Did those go away?” 

Asking those questions is what I would say to those people. 

And then for young people, the same thing, “What excites you? Is there a class at school that excites you?Are there none? Is there something else that excites you? Did you lose all of that and you can't find it again? What do you like about school? If there is something, and what fears do you have?” 

[00:22:44] Emily Race: Such great questions. Maybe we can include them as follow up notes for people to journal about it.I love a good journaling prompt. 

Okay. So then on the other end, for people who have opened up their minds and hearts to thinking about self-directed education or unschooling or just getting out of  that school system as it stands, what are some tangible next steps that you would have for them, whether that's an inquiry, a question or something that they could do?

[00:23:11] Bria Bloom: It depends on what they're looking for. Most people I've heard from are looking for, “How do I do this when I feel so alone, or no one else is doing it?” So I would check out unschooling groups, even homeschooling groups might have some connection there. Local self-directed education communities; and we have lists of those on SDE's website.

Checking out those places where you can find people, at least people online, to talk to you and support you through that transition. Because a lot of these people really do wanna support others through the transition too. They remember what it was like to feel worried and alone. And it's really hard to do it if you do feel completely alone or like other people are judging you and you have no one to go to who's affirming that decision.

So I would say find community, find those people. That's my first and main tip is find that, and everything kind of blossoms from there. 

[00:24:04] Emily Race: I have been having an image of the blossoming the community gives. It's so true. For  those who find themselves being judged by family members or their existing community; what advice would you have for those people? 

[00:24:19] Bria Bloom: The same thing I just said. It's really hard to sit there and be judged if you don't have anyone who's supporting you and affirming you for who you are and what you believe in. 

I would say look to your kids. I hear from so many people that every time they doubt themselves in this, they look at their kids and how their kids are feeling and how much joy they have and what they're playing with, and it affirms things for them. It's still hard. It doesn't make everything go away, but you're realizing you did this for your kids' freedom and for their rights and for their emotional and mental health.

And keep reminding yourself of that and keep watching them and seeing that change in them. 

[00:24:54] Emily Race: There's something to be said or explored potentially around the privilege that it is to have time and space to be with your kids and observe them in that way. Is  that something that has come up in this conversation?

[00:25:07] Bria Bloom: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. And it's an age-old problem. It is a privilege. And some families have resources to make those sacrifices, but don't think they do. And some families don't have any resources to make those sacrifices. And I think the best we can do is offer all these community spaces and support groups for free, for massive sliding scales.Subsidizing each other, doing mutual aid care swaps, imagining all these ways this can live outside of monetary commitment or even live for people who don't have the time commitment because they're working a bunch of jobs trying to make money. How can these things live in so many different ways that are accessible to a bunch of different people. It’s not there yet.People are envisioning this and working on it in so many different ways, but it's not there yet because money is always an issue in this society. [00:26:00] 

[00:26:00] Emily Race: It really is. To clarify, even for my own understanding, if I was a parent who, let's say both me and my partner had to work, go to a job, we don't have much time to be there with our child, would our child still have the opportunity to explore self-directed education through a community or a different group?

[00:26:19] Bria Bloom: I think so. It depends on where you are. And if you're not in a space where something's close by, you have to put some work into creating it or finding it. But there's people who have made this work in all different ways and they share about it a lot too, but, there's definitely ways to make this work if you do have enough resources to even think about trying, there's ways to make this work. 

[00:26:40] Emily Race: Yeah. Amazing. I'm left, both with the reality of where we are now, but also the vision that you've created for us and knowing that these things do take time to build, but hopefully conversations like this one give people new ideas and ways of even thinking and approaching this.

As a final question to close this, what would support look like? For us listening, how could we support The Alliance for Self-Directed Education and bringing this type of thinking to life even more? 

[00:27:06] Bria Bloom: Sharing about it; a lot of this support in this movement is people having conversations with other people.

Because it's hard to hear something and have your whole world be challenged.. And then not be able to get curious and ask questions of someone you trust. So if you have friends who are curious, be really empathetic and kind with them and share your experience and share why you're excited about it.And that's the best way to reach people, through that direct connection. 

Obviously as the Alliance has all these initiatives, we need money to make that work. If you're able to donate, please do. Everyone needs money to make things work. 

But in terms of what you can do on the ground for yourself and others, it is that one on one connection and understanding because I don't think most people know that school is really harmful for their kids. They want the best for their kids. It feels like this track you can't get out of. So having someone be there for them and listen and show them another way as possible is really big. 

[00:28:04] Emily Race: Amazing. Is there anything else you wanna share or us with before we wrap up?

[00:28:09] Bria Bloom: Not right now. I could list hundreds of resources. I’ll send a list afterwards of resources that might be helpful for people. [00:28:23] Emily Race: We will definitely connect about that afterwards.

[00:28:27] Bria Bloom:Thanks so much. This is a great conversation and I really appreciate what you're doing. 

[00:28:33] Emily Race: I appreciate what you're doing. Thank you. I've learned so much myself, I'm excited to have these conversations with people in my life and share this recording. 

[00:28:39] Bria Bloom: Yeah. Cool. 

[00:28:41] Emily Race: Thank you. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Founding Mothers podcast.This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Emily Race. And edited by Eric Weisberg. If you wanna support the show, please leave us a rating or share this episode with the important people in your life. We'd also love to hear from you. If [00:29:00] you or someone you know would be a great guest to share about their vision for the world, you could email emily@founding-mothers.com or visit www founding-mothers.com/podcast.