Zakiyya takes us on a journey exploring the intersections between learning, education and schooling and how they connect with society. She shows how schooling its current form is a tool of oppression and a violation of our right to education. And that how we live with and educate young people are a social justice concern. Finally she invites us to consider an Ubuntu Pedagogy and invites us to reimagine learning, education and community. For the last 25 years, Zakiyya has been experimenting with living and learning in freedom, also known as unschooling. She is an advocate for freedom in education and an advocate for children’s rights, specifically in resisting adultism.
Her three children have never been to school, living instead as if the idea of schooling doesn’t exist, and she has been tirelessly connecting with and building a community of practitioners walking similar paths, including families wounded by, and looking for sustainable alternatives outside of the school system. She curates the Living Unschooling anthology on her website, where young people are invited to write about their experience in living unschooling. She has been supporting and has been consistently sharing her reflections on the intersections of unschooling with decolonisation, social change and unschooling’s foundational role in social justice. . This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx