Why we need this
Our current educational institutions are NOT a place where we are free.
“As a cultural and political educator in higher education for over 9 years, an immigrant/international graduate student for 14 years, and a mentor to transitional age youth in my community for over 17 years, I have seen and personally experienced exactly how our current educational institutions are NOT a free and safe place to learn.” - Maio Buenafe, Founder and Visionary for the Unlearning Community School
The top reasons most students dropout of high school are because they were “pushed out” and “pulled out” for not abiding by school rules, like missing too many classes and getting poor grades. Other main causes of students dropping out is due to the school environment not being enjoyable nor safe, so many students opt for homeschooling to receive a GED because they believe it would be easier than attending school (Doll, Eslami, & Walters, 2013).
A root cause for this problem is how schools were used as a tool of assimilation during colonization; such as Indian boarding schools which operated from 1869 to 1996. Indian boarding schools were built to eliminate traditional Native American ways of life and “replace them with mainstream American culture.” Our current school systems and education institutions conflate equality with uniformity (Emdin, 2021), and uniformity breeds forced assimilation. We see this in how schools continue to be more concerned about abiding to approved curriculum & graduation rates to get funding, rather than building healthy relationships among teachers & students; as well as teaching material which is culturally relevant and addresses issues students are currently navigating.
So many of us yearn for a space where we are safe and can be our full selves as we learn, simply because we love learning. And since we did not experience this in educational institutions, we decided to build a community school which would.
“We Want Education for Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role in the Present-Day Society. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world then he has little chance to relate to anything else.”
The vision:
a 3rd space
The vision for a Community School which focuses on Liberatory Cultural and Political Education is inspired by revolutionary community schools such as the Black Panther Party’s Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI), Freedom Schools of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), tribal colleges and universities like Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud [Sicangu Lakota] Reservation, and Schools of Living Traditions (SLTs) run by various Indigenous communities in the Philippines - to name just a few.
These community schools were built by grassroots organizations and intergenerational leaders who wanted to serve the people in their community with culturally relevant education, and assert their right to education through self-determination and sovereignty. These schools were built with a “by us, for us” model to provide another option and resource for learning in their communities - a 3rd space for learning.
Education should enable children to possess their own lives instead of living at the mercy of others.
— Charles Cobb Jr. (journalist, professor, and former activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) (source)
my own educational journey involved recognizing how much my own learning process requires an unlearning journey.
— Maio Buenafe, visionary for the unlearning community school
As a cultural and political educator, scholar, and intergenerational mentor since 2007, so many of my students, mentees, and community members throughout the decades have expressed to me that they are ready to unlearn this societal conditioning of self-abandonment and assimilation, and aspire to learn for the sake of loving to learn. The Unlearning Community School was built to be a liberatory space of learning and unlearning together to cultivate radical transformation in ourselves and the world.
who we serve: unlearn with us
Image: Participants of “Majik for Revolutionary Transformation” workshop led by Maio Buenafe (green dress in middle of front row) with Community Empowerment Activists Class at the University of San Francisco (Spring 2022)
The Unlearning Community School serves all types of learners with a particular emphasis on serving transitional age youth or TAY (ages 13-24 years old), because it is often in this age range of transitioning into adulthood that high impact life challenges arise and extra support is needed, such as:
Leaving foster care or juvenile detention
Running away from home
Dropping out of school
Having disabilities
Substance abuse disorders
Homelessness or risk of homelessness
Experiencing their first episode of major mental illness
Many of the TAY community we work with face intersectional challenges of marginalization in educational institutions due to also being from immigrant, undocumented, or refugee communities, often the first generation in their family to pursue college, come from low income working class communities, have disabilities, and also identify as LGBTQIA+. Not only do we work with TAY, we also serve BIPOC frontline community service providers (educators, organizers, therapists, social workers, mentors, guardians, etc.) who work directly with TAY.