(Un)School of Rebels

Today I did something called Dragon Speaking. I was with a team of individuals co-creating a resilient listening space in which it was safe enough to unleash the resource of conscious Anger. Each of us spoke what we needed to say. Some of us took a stand for what we said. My heart and soul got to say what I am angry about and what I care about. The result of that empowering process is this letter to you.

(clique aqui para a versão em Português)

I am here and I take a stand for healing the schooling wounds in me, for unlearning the thoughtware of current globalised capitalistic patriarchal empire.

I take a stand for creating another gameworld where a different kind of learning happens, where children and adults are not programmed to be adaptive to whatever is being sold by modern culture.

I take a stand for creating learning spaces where learners don’t comply to a right/wrong paradigm or a good/evil worldview and instead empower each other’s qualities of Being to unfold. The intention is to be clear and present, to discover each ones Bright Principles, Archetypal Lineage, and Hidden Purposes. Each person in this gameworld is empowered to be at Source to create their own gameworlds and their own interactions, their own relationships, their own villages, their own path in life… a life that reaches far beyond patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism.

It pisses me off that the current mainstream educational system is one of the first weapons of the patriarchal colonial machine. It takes children and adults’ inexhaustible sources of inspiration, creativity, and non-linearity, and crushes them with the cruel ruthlessness of the thoughtware of imperial domination. Each child is kept isolated from life and told they are preparing for life by going to school. Children and adults are tricked into giving away their centre (their power, agency, authority, their voice) to the figures of authority to be adaptive to control, rules and order. Students are seen as blank slates to be filled with memorized information to comply and enforce the current societal paradigm, and then to compete with fellow students to be better programmed for the ‘job world’, creating and perpetuating the thoughtware that we live in a world of scarcity. Current mainstream good-ol’ public school is a weapon of the status quo of the current western cultures, telling us to believe that we need society to stay as it is, and above all, to value knowing what is already known above all else.

Besides creating army or a prison conditions for children and youth — rigid times for input, breaks, eating, play, possibly even a required school uniform — schools teach children and adults to become numb consumers, devoid of brilliance.

I shout in outrage that the Intellectual body is only one of at least 5 bodies being in use in traditional schooling! Despite students’ other talents in learning, they are all evaluated by their ability to intellectually articulate their knowing in very few specific ways.

The Emotional body is completely disregarded, leaving emotionally stunted children in adult bodies to face the realities of life, without tools or the necessary emotional competence to create a responsible and free adult life with vitally refreshing relationships.

The Energetic body gets missed entirely, and so much of the competence of presence and energy imprint of each person, and their experiential state of being centered in their own natural authority is missed out on, leaving adults that are enmeshed with others and cannot sense their own selves. The Archetypal body which is totally off the radar in school, even though most people are starving to find out what is their calling and service in the world. And the world needs the people to find their calling, not more consumers and followers that keep to their entertainment while the destruction of the living planet and its inhabitability is unfolding.

I take a stand for the Star Wars possibility, where people cheer for the rebels, the ones who go non-linear, the ones who refuse to be dominated by the First Order of the Empire. The rebels stand for freedom rather than sitting as a stormtrooper blindly following orders that empower the Emperor. I cheer for the Jedi, for the Skywalkers, for the Rebellion. But after the film ends most viewers step outside and buy soda from the First Order, turn on their smart phones and follow social media of the Empire and give part of their salaries to the elite. Keep calm and carry on.

I will not keep calm and carry on! I take a stand to build an Unschool of Rebels, an Unschool of Pirates who reclaim their true power and agency, who sense that another world is possible besides being zombies having the newest numbing gadgets and addictions delivered to their doorstep at a click of a button while there is no clean water around.

My Unschool is made of people who question their own status quo. We invent our own forms of employment serving Gaia and human dignity, sourcing new levels of intimacy in our lives, celebrating how much possibility we see around us.

My Unschool is for people who commit to an extraordinary life doing what is wanted and needed that fulfills their Being.

If you could be a Rebel Unschool spaceholder or trainer able to set up radical learning spaces where participants can upgrade their thoughtware, go through healing and transformation as authentic adulthood initiations, and empower others to get on course with fulfilling their true destiny, my name is Vera Luísa Franco and I am waiting for your call: WhatsApp +44 7748 934374. The Rebel Unschool is already in session!