Ep. 0: Welcome and Why This Show

This fall, I’m launching a podcast for Black and Brown parents who practice alternative parenting options to the traditional education model that is school. Options like unschooling, worldschooling, roadschooling, slowschooling, eclectic homeschooling, and the myriad other ways that we and our children embrace curiosity-driven, lifelong learning.

 

The podcast is called Fare of the Free Child, and its purpose is to help me amplify the underrepresented voices and unique concerns of people of color looking for real viable options to the oppressive systems that our children are expected to live and learn within.

 

I want to use this space to create community for adults engaged in unconventional black and brown parenting and caregiving to be heard, and to find and support each other.  And since I’m an unschooling, location independent, non-christian, Caribbean, intersectional feminist, mermaid identifying, radical self-expression practicing, blackity-black woman and mother, raising two superdope black girls with my Kingman—I am just the one to invite you into this conversation.

 

And to be clear, I have an agenda. I want us to start treating our children with more dignity and giving them more autonomy over their own futures. And I want us to shift out of the thinking that this work of freeing children from oppressive structures, is a white thing, as many black folks keep telling me about unschooling in particular. 

 

The format of the podcast is simple: we start with a fear (f-e-a-r), and then we explore the fare (f-a-r-e the cost). So, twice a month, I—sometimes accompanied by a special guest co-host—will talk about the layers of unconventional black parenthood, and how we can use that mindset as a way to get free. We’re aiming to solve things together, not just talk about them.

 

Fare of the Free Child will not just be for folks already immersed in self-directed education, it will also be accessible and relatable to newbie unschoolers, undecided but curious parents, and eventual parents who want to start exploring ways to live and learn with their children now.  Sign up for updates and the first few episodes at akilahsrichards.com/podcast. And while you’re doing that, tell a few friend