Dr. Sundiata

"It just made sense...when I learned about unschooling, I'm like, you mean to tell me that theres a way that people can learn that doesn't put them in boxes of... success and failure? F student, A student? It doesn't... stratify... it doesn't steer them, coerce them, to say this is what smart looks like? It says no - you're smart as you are... what you wanna learn is valid, not what other people are telling you you have to learn? ...All those concepts began to make all the sense in the world."

Highlights

On his K-12 schooling experience:

05:48 “My life… intersected a lot of different socio-economic dynamics…We lived in a neighborhood called Winfield, and we travelled to Martha Washington… Winfield was more of a working-class middle-class neighborhood with trees and grass, and Martha Washington… was in the middle of a concrete jungle, the middle of high-rise projects in West Philly… all the typical, stereotypical trappings of inner-city poverty were there… I grew up playing in a school yard littered with broken glass, crack vials, and drug needles - intravenous needles that the crackheads would use the night prior…we had to navigate those things as we played in the school yard every day… so seeing the violence that came with that… all of the stereotypical things that you can imagine with poverty… I experienced that… through those first nine years of my schooling…”

10:42 “…The only reason I made it was because of my parents I'm sure, because they got me tutors and I was fortunate... my peers didn't have parents that... possibly were that savvy or had the resources to do that, but my parents were able to get me tutors and, y'know, help me kinda step it up.”

14:33 “…Conventional schooling was a game, and I just had to learn how to play it…"

On his inspiration for getting involved with education:

23:55 "There was a program called the Freedom School Program... They sent us to the University of Tennessee for a week to learn how to be teachers... it was like a cultural experience as well... it was a very grounding experience... It was amazing because also it was like an afrocentric, y'know, vibe to the things that we learnt. It was amazing, it was an amazing experience... I went back to Philly, taught the program. When I taught in the program and I had those kids, I fell in love. I fell in love with how they looked up to me. I fell in love with the idea that I was like a role model for these kids and I was like a picture of stability or a rock in their lives, in some way, and I couldn't shake it, right? And that was my entry-point into education. Up until that point, you could have never told me I was gonna be in education 'cause my whole family were educators and I'm like, 'I don't wanna do that.' I heard all the stories that my mom would tell, and she would complain about what was going on at school... I saw her paychecks and I'm like 'I'm not doing that.' I'm gonna be a business man; I'm gonna make a lot of money, right? But after that summer, it was over. I was like 'I'm in love...' I went back to school that summer, and before my junior year I changed my major to elementary education."

Read about the original Freedom School movement of 1964 here.

On moving to Atlanta:

51:15 "We came here in 2006 and I was like *gasps* oh my goodness look at all these successful African American people that live in all these beautiful homes and drive all these nice cars, like, I had never seen a place where that was so concentrated. You saw it in like spots in the North, but you didn't see it concentrated like *whole communities* with hundreds of homes middle-class and up or wealthy, y'know, mansion-type homes that were all African American people. I didn't see that anywhere. And I'm like, I wanna be there, like, that seems like a really cool place to be."

On teaching in Clayton and Fulton Counties:

55:13 "Immediately, when I got into teaching, my business mind kicked in. I wanted to solve problems, I wanted to iterate, I wanted to be creative, I wanted to... innovate, and I was told: 'Play. By. The. Script... Stay in the box. Follow the script.'"

58:10 "Just being upset… I couldn't take it, what I was experiencing. I couldn't take seeing that so many kids were failing, so many kids were struggling, and it just didn't seem like the school system was… meeting the children where they were. It was like, 'This is what it is. Meet that, or you're a failure.’ And I hated that...I didn't have the language for it at that time, I just knew it wasn't right. So the next year I started to work on my doctorate degree, and I also decided I was gonna start a nonprofit after school program."

On systems thinking and his transition out of the conventional school system:

1:04:53 "In 2012, I decided to walk away from teaching because... I felt out of integrity being in that setting... Once I understood systems [thinking], I felt like the conventional public school, private school education system it was set up for social stratification. I didn't feel it - it was in our freakin' education history textbook that we had in one of our classes! It was like, conventional schooling is fairly new, y'know, and people have learned for many years before conventional, compulsory schooling was a thing. And when it became a thing, it became a thing out of the industrial revolution to serve industry, it became a thing to serve growth and capitalism and all the negatives that come with that. So my understanding of that and realizing that the whole idea of A, B, C, D, F students... fed the conveyor belt of… rich, middle-class, working-class, and poor… I didn't wanna be a part of that model anymore, because I understood, as a systems thinker, I understood that these were social constructs that humans created. I now was empowered to understand that humans can create *new* models that weren't rooted in those things.

So, with that type of knowledge, it made it really hard for me to go into that school every day, and think that I'm doing what's best for these children *knowing* that the way the system is designed, some of those kids are gonna fail. And it had nothing to do with whether or not those kids were talented or gifted, because some of them were, they were just talented and gifted in ways that didn't fit within that system... I couldn't do it... so I walked away in 2012."

Influential video in his journey learning about unschooling:

On the reality of the American Dream:

1:27:52 "I started to look around, like, we live in this big house, we got these nice cars... but that don't mean anything... the world is still fucked up, y'know? I'm still seeing people hurting out here, and this doesn't make me feel good... I wanted to run from it all, I wanted to run from... all that I had built... People would look at our pictures and, like, 'Aw, y'all are, like, such a good family, the perfect family, and you have your doctorate degree, and you're so educated and smart, and you have businesses...' and all this illusions of happiness and success... that didn't make me feel happy and successful."

On the current Self-Directed Education model he is sharing:

1:49:20 "Thats where I'm at in the SDE education space. I'm going around teaching my experiences, teaching people how they can organize outside of capitalism, because they're already organizing outside of schooling, so why not deconstruct capitalism as well... let's go further..."

2:03:15 "I hope that more people will think about unschooling, and that this model that I created will be an inspiration for how they can do it in a very risk-free way."

On the future and his definition of success:

2:08:45 "The future that I see is one where we can deconstruct all of these... facades around how humans are supposed to be in the world and just get back to just being… trusting our nature, and letting nature guide us, and trusting that we are enough... This idea that you have to quote unquote 'work' just to be received and accepted and 'earn your keep.' Our birthright is our keep... If I'm successful, there will be able to be… spaces, communities where people can live in relationship with each other and nature in the ways I'm talking about..."

How to Connect

Dr. Sundiata's website - www.igotogrow.com

Here you can find countless resources on Self-Directed Education, systems thinking, and the sharing economy, as well as information on the services he provides and the content he creates through his organization, GROW. I also highly recommend checking out

his podcast - Theory of Indivisibility

his Instagram - @igotogrow

and his Patreon - Live Indivisible