Future of unschooling with Che Vanni

Disclaimer: This transcript has been processed and cleaned using AI language models to improve readability from the original raw audio recording. While efforts have been made to preserve accuracy and intent, the content may contain errors, omissions, or misinterpretations from the automated transcription process, and has not been reviewed by the original speakers. For critical use or citation purposes, please refer to the original audio recording.

Shreyas: How do you describe yourself and your journey? Could you give us an introduction to your past self?

Che Vanni: It’s quite interconnected. I’ve begun to see connections between experiences that led me to the questions I’m asking now, which are part of the work I do.

I’m Che Vanni from Johannesburg, South Africa. I was born in a town area, not rural. My parents were both educators. My father had to learn many jobs because he would jump from job to job and get fired quite often. So I grew up in this environment where we spent a lot of time with our mom in classrooms—either in school ourselves or staying after school for activities.

Shreyas: It’s nice having parents as educators—you’re learning at school and at home. There’s always a learning environment.

Che Vanni: Very much so. A lot of reading and counting—none of that I actually learned in school. All of that I learned at home. My mom did educational experiments on us as children.

One incident happened when I was very young—I got taken out of preschool due to a racial incident. From what I remember, there was something said to me that I can make sense of now. I was put in a new kindergarten, but then I went with my dad to work for a good part of my early life. I entered school after grade two, so I skipped kindergarten and grade one.

Shreyas: So you learned from your father’s work environment?

Che Vanni: During this time, my dad fixed TVs and electronics. There was a lot of apprenticeship—learning by seeing your father do things. There’s tacit knowledge that you can’t really explain in class or ask a teacher to write on the board.

Shreyas: Those are things you learn from your father while he’s repairing electronics that would be really profound.

Che Vanni: The biggest learning wasn’t technical—it was social. I spent time not only with my dad but with people in the same spaces, shops around that area, ladies who cooked in different kitchens. Being a young individual in this adult space, a lot of attention was given to me. While other kids were in school, there was this boy running around these offices and shops. I got to meet many people and get told interesting things.

I can account for this developing my social skills and sensitivity to learning. I grew up in a family navigating economics in this capitalistic world. When I eventually went to the school system, I never resonated with what was going on, especially the disconnect between what happened at school and what happened at home.

My mom was studying other things to create additional income apart from teaching. I started doing this thing where my act of going to school wasn’t just acquiring knowledge, but became a space to economically bring income into the household and navigate the school system.

Shreyas: Apart from education, you were also contributing economically by hustling?

Che Vanni: Yes. At age 12 or 13, I found myself experiencing discomfort—not knowing, seeing stress and my parents fighting due to lack of money. I saw anxiety that created. My parents would promise us things but never had the ability to fulfill them because my dad would get fired. There were economic barriers preventing my parents from showing up the way they thought they needed to.

I found there were real things happening in my life, not in school, but in my life. Here could be an opportunity. The courage to actually do what I needed to support my family was very interesting.

Shreyas: At that age, you had the maturity to realize you could add value to your family, not just focus on yourself and your education, but your family and community. Your experiences working with your dad—apart from electronics—the social skills you learned by talking to people seem interesting because not everyone has that opportunity at that age.

Che Vanni: Very much so. When you meet a child, you don’t always meet an angry face—you meet a child with a smile, a sense of happiness. If you create an environment requiring the community to be happy, it creates an ecological rhythm that changes things. Young people being separated from people who make them happy tends to have different effects on life and future relationships.

Shreyas: I’ve seen that children in mixed age groups—not restricted to their own age group but introduced to various ages—understand a more holistic sense of their identity and how they relate to others when they interact.

Che Vanni: That’s absolutely correct. In spaces that are densely populated and informal, you tend to find gatherings where, due to circumstances and love, young people are never alone. You yourself probably had experiences where your friends weren’t necessarily your age—friends older and younger.

It’s weird because we have that as children, then go through individual separation in the school system, then get older and try to see everyone as equal again. The difference isn’t in our lives—it’s in the institutions. We can begin to inquire into these institutions and look at them critically.

Shreyas: Before discussing institutions critically, could you explain South Africa through your lens? We have some connection through Mahatma Gandhi, who was initially from South Africa and came to India with a different perspective. Could you explain the social, economic, or racial conditions you’ve experienced?

Che Vanni: The space where our community works is actually on a farm where Mahatma Gandhi apparently stayed when he was in South Africa. We have pepper corn trees on this property that aren’t indigenous to South Africa. There are rumors that when Gandhi returned from India, he brought seeds, and the trees we find here are those he brought.

Shreyas: So he’s left his footprint for ages to come.

Che Vanni: How this ties into our social climate—there are two sides. One says nothing has really changed. The struggles that Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King spoke about regarding liberation and freedom—that sensation of sovereignty promised to us or that’s part of our humanity—has been greatly disrupted, and the disruption continues.

More conversations about education outside institutions are met with resistance because educators and academics in the Global South speak about what we regard as the masses. The Global South consciousness is still undergoing a great process of healing and transformation.

Shreyas: When you say healing, do you mean racial segregation and discrimination, or healing in general?

Che Vanni: Healing economically first—trying to navigate and understand economics and our role in it. On the surface level, there’s still racial discrimination, systematic violence, and systematic oppression. There’s been a lack of reparations or sensitivity towards indigenous people, groups, or forms of knowledge in South Africa.

Everything is still very much from colonial books brought here. Currently in our schools, not one indigenous language is taught as a first language. Our first languages are English and Afrikaans.

Shreyas: Afrikaans might sound native to Indians, but it’s not exactly, right?

Che Vanni: It’s Dutch—very close to Flemish. Once again, a colonial language we’ve adopted as communication.

Shreyas: Are there other languages apart from English and Afrikaans?

Che Vanni: We have over 200 languages spoken. The ancient one is the language of the San people—currently about 100 to 300 individuals, though it’s much more than that—we’re talking about nations. This spreads throughout northern parts of southern Africa, closer to Namibia.

Internally in South Africa, there’s corruption, nepotism, manipulation, and confusion. I can’t say South Africa is any better than India—it’s parallel. Same with America, Australia. It’s sad when they wipe out entire communities and their knowledge accumulated over thousands of years, just bringing in something completely foreign.

A conversation like this can be seen as privileged because many people are so deep in suffering, poverty, and confusion that the time, patience, and privilege to even question isn’t afforded to them. The mindfulness and peace of mind for healing becomes difficult.

I say healing is taking place because opportunities for this conversation exist. This conversation is based in the work I do, located in Johannesburg. Many people throughout Africa come to Johannesburg because it’s the New York of Africa.

The area is called Troyeville—the first founding city in the Gold Rush. This is where first mine owners stayed. Many houses here were high-end but have become low-income areas due to poverty. Foreign nationals have moved here in hope for the dream. With that, we have issues of drugs, housing, poverty, and crime.

We’re not different—it’s the same recipe, just different ingredients. That’s the context of our work in South Africa.

Shreyas: With current discussions about race and profiling—the George Floyd case and similar instances of systemic violence in India—at least we’re having conversations, which is good. You mentioned indigenous knowledge not being part of the education system. Could you explain what we’re missing? What’s the importance of indigenous knowledge, and why should it be part of general education or learning?

Che Vanni: Before I engage, I need to clarify what “indigenous” means. I don’t refer to indigenous as a locative space in time—not ancient, old, or previous—I’m speaking about essence. When I say essence, I mean human essence, our simple human essence.

When I refer to indigenous practices, pedagogy, or knowledge, I’m talking about something similar to what I’m doing as a human on the simple basis of being human. It’s not ancient lost knowledge—it’s humanness.

We’re connecting as humans. When I say indigenous, I speak about human interactions. We need to differentiate the human to understand other things we could be practicing that are non-human.

To be human is anything that provides a sensation of thriving, not surviving—abundance. The same promise given to one seed put in the ground—that fruit will bear so many seeds we become too lazy to count them. It’s abundance.

When I say humanness, I’m talking about this nature that exists within Earth that we have the ability to function through. Another example is breathing. In its natural sense, we know there are systems that allow us to breathe. Breathing isn’t even ours—it’s something external we share. We don’t keep our breath; we’re in conversation with breath. There’s no ownership or power regarding breathing.

Shreyas: I’ve never thought of breath as not personal. It’s interesting to look at it as sharing with each other.

Che Vanni: Think about your heart beating. How many times have you thought about your heart beating today? It’s happening for you to thrive. It’s not doing it by chance—there’s a reason beyond us.

Shreyas: So why are you an activist and practitioner for this energy that wants to restore humanness or indigenous practices? Why is it important for learning, education, and teaching?

Che Vanni: I believe teaching and learning is a natural process. It’s something practiced before, brought us here, and happens even when our eyes are closed—like dreaming. Dreaming is another form of teaching; lessons can be drawn from it.

We have to look at life not just for loving, but for learning. That changes our navigation and projection of the experience.

Shreyas: So life is not just about loving, but also about learning?

Che Vanni: More of life is about learning than actual loving. It’s all about learning—that’s my current opinion. Everything from learning to walk, talk, then learning to learn. We wake up and go to sleep doing one thing: learning.

Let’s look at systems involved in daily life. There’s this activity we take part in to get economic resources—work. The way work shows up currently is due to industrialization and politics. For most people, it’s waking up, getting to work by eight or nine, coming home by five. The same process every day.

There’s monotony, but there are unknowns—traveling to work, meeting different people, social interactions. You might do the same thing every day, but the human essence is unique every day.

Shreyas: You’re a unique individual, and your interactions create unique moments with everybody else.

Che Vanni: This process we go to every day can be strict—sometimes you’re not allowed to talk, have to focus, do specific tasks. Your benefit might be monetary or percentage-based. You bring 100% to work and get 10% back.

The same for women—due to how society shows up, there’s not much value put on looking after households or young people. This creates emotional poverty leading to financial poverty, creating power relations between men and women that trickle down to young people.

Young people wake up, go to school sometimes without consent, not having voice to say “I want to” or “I don’t want to.” Even when there is voice, it’s met with resistance.

Shreyas: On one side, you have learning and education happening even without school. On the other, you have work for economic survival. Then emotional poverty trickles down to individuals forced to make certain decisions.

Che Vanni: There’s an act of resistance and disruption with males having to work at monotonous things for income that’s not enough due to politics and economics. You see chaos and resistance internally and systematically.

How women are treated in society is also resistance. When women have voice or stand up, it’s seen as dishonoring families—very patriarchal.

Shreyas: Previously they said women’s role should only be in the kitchen—that was ingrained at that time, which was bad.

Che Vanni: In essence, we can’t say it’s over. It still exists, just taking different shapes with different names. If you look at economics, women might get lower wages. We don’t have a society that honors women or young people.

Think about leadership. We want young people and communities to have leadership, but our first moment of leadership is over our own body. An example is using the bathroom when you need to. In school, I raise my hand: “Sir, can I use the bathroom?” My body never asked me—it said, “You need to pee right now.” But here’s a moment where you have authority over my nature, my body.

I’m offering my nature to your authority—not humanness, but power. You will either lead to oppression or freedom, but it needs to come from you. I’m not given leadership over my own body.

Shreyas: This is something happening to all young people—in schools, universities, offices, homes. We’ve been disempowered from our sense of leadership and autonomy over our own body.

Che Vanni: If we can’t lead our own bodies, how can we form leadership of our learning, loving, or food? This simple gesture is one form of oppression within a system that doesn’t see us as human but as powerless.

I’m familiar with punch-down theory—power and oppression always get pushed one level down to the slightly inferior. You have a family of father, mother, two children, and a pet. The father has negative experience at work, comes home angry, takes it out on his wife. The wife takes that anger out on the kids. The kids take it out on their animals. You’ve got this abusive loop cycle because violence is punched down to the next inferior.

Shreyas: I’ve seen that in domestic violence cases, children tend to bully a lot—taking out oppression on younger children in school.

Che Vanni: I want to comment on architecture of oppression, specifically looking at kids in spaces. In South Africa, all the plugs are below my waist. We can’t say this is done out of ignorance—if you go to supermarkets, all chocolates and sweets are put below waist level because the target group is children.

We have a system sensitive to how children work for capital gain—putting sweets below waist level for children to grab. But if we think of homes young kids would occupy, why put electrical sockets below waist level? Could it be that children aren’t considered when buildings are built? Are children seen as subhuman species not yet allowed?

Shreyas: Most of the time it should be more accessible, like a meter up from ground, out of reach for younger people because it’s dangerous. We know young people are curious—they’re learning. They’d be curious to put hands in holes they see in walls.

Che Vanni: Why wouldn’t a child do it? They’d do it out of curiosity, not ignorance. We have to think about sensitivity to people we share this earth with when we build homes and occupy spaces.

Shreyas: Before getting deeper, you mentioned schools acting as forms of oppression. I’m a product of conventional education—I’m trying to understand what effect it’s had on me. If you’re reflecting on your education, what are these finer points? Does it really have bigger impact on individuals?

Che Vanni: Schools are not essentially bad. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let’s critically look at strengths, opportunities, and threats in how schooling currently shows up.

If we look at schooling’s root word—the etymology of “school”—in ancient Greek, school was actually leisure time. What you did outside work, as relaxation. It was fun, not something you’re forced to sit and memorize.

We have to look at what happened from that point to now—industrialization and politics brought us to how school shows up now.

Let me start with pros of schools for you and me, having gone through primary, secondary, and tertiary education. We’ve had ability to form relationships—all humane, indigenous things. We’ve had ability to meet teachers who inspired us, meet friends who took us into their homes, see different spaces, learn different languages. There’s extreme social value.

Schools do take students to places to show new things. It’s undeniably a site of learning and education.

The resistance I’m sensing is in how these engagements—these social human engagements—are tainted to serve capitalistic, dehumanizing ends that bring suffering, discomfort, and scarcity.

First, our relationship with each other through competition. For those who’ve entered the economic world, the sensation of competition exists. Money is scarce, and we’re fighting to be the one with the most because that’s what we were taught from school—you always need to be better than anyone else. We weren’t celebrated for differences but for being better, not different, compared to peers.

There was competitiveness not based on human standards but systematic standards—metrics like income, better cars, better houses. We’ve been embedded in this capitalistic society that affects our relationships.

Shreyas: From a young age, you’re ingrained to get more marks, better grades, be better than peers. That reflects fundamentally for children.

Che Vanni: School showed us being individual is more powerful than being part of anything. There’s dangerous element to using the word “unique”—it might split us from each other, saying we’re too different.

Shreyas: The system is making you become one ideal person—more similar variety of individuals coming out. Whereas if we could think on our own and form opinions, we’d probably be more diversified.

Che Vanni: Exactly. We all have different tastes. If all our tastes and skills were valued, there’d be no competition because we wouldn’t compete for one position. We’d value different things. Competition comes when we’re all chasing one thing—homogenous thinking that takes us away from diversity.

Looking at nature, indigenous humanism, or indigenous learning—diversity strengthens, empowers, liberates. If you have a system not willing to embrace diversity of our human essence and learning, you meet resistance.

Unfortunately, children who don’t follow principles get labeled—medical labels like ADHD, ADD.

Shreyas: Diversity becomes a headache for government. They want to create monoculture of similar mindset people so it’s easier to control. If we’re all different and individual, it becomes difficult for higher power structures to manage us.

Che Vanni: Because it’s too many diverse opinions. We’re not saying these won’t create disruption, but talking about resilience allowing better conversation with disruptions. Systematic thinking rejects differences and challenges, saying challenges are bad, abnormal, failure.

Before I continue, I want to highlight one word: failure. There’s a young person I met before they came to the reimagined learning center. This person really enjoyed storytelling and would always be with adults, telling jokes. When I met them, they were seven.

One reason we met was because this young person was diagnosed with dyslexia. Parents were trying to find alternative school—something still a school but different version.

Despite diagnosis, this person would eagerly join me in morning meditation, which is writing. I would write about dreams, and they asked why. I said because I can really love my dreams—sometimes I write things down and they happen. They magically started joining me in writing.

Their writing was all in hieroglyphs—very different. But there was wanting to write. For someone diagnosed with dyslexia, here they were naturally writing. Eventually, they started recognizing certain words and building vocabulary.

One weird moment happened months later when I was reading a book and they were next to me. I said, “Why don’t you take the book and read?” They looked at me and said, “I’m a failure.”

They went on to tell me they failed grade one. The teacher said they failed because they apparently had dyslexia. They refused to read because they believed they were a failure.

Shreyas: So they refused to read because they felt they were a failure based on what their teacher expressed.

Che Vanni: The teacher used those exact words. When you get your report card, it says “failed,” not “passed.” This person was curious to engage with all people, and this report card was dealt. They wanted to know what was said. A teacher’s word is like closer to God than what a parent says.

Shreyas: In India, we say the teacher’s position is as close to God as possible—higher even than parents.

Che Vanni: Imagine a young person looking at this adult for inspiration, enjoying time with this adult, just to know this adult has named and diagnosed you as failure. What does this do at seven years old? At 14? At 21? At 35 or 55?

The ability to assimilate and embody this word given by the guru, the person closer to God. What does this do for a young person who was confident and eager? As soon as we prompted them to read, it was met with resistance rooted in extreme trauma.

The story isn’t unique. I myself failed grade nine. We had to lie—my family said we weren’t going to tell other family members I failed. We’d just say I was switching schools.

Shreyas: It’s traumatizing when you’re asked to hide your failure like it’s some disease.

Che Vanni: It’s important to look at this from two perspectives. If I have a business and there’s a defect in my product, I’ll be economically affected and jump on fixing it, getting it diagnosed quickly. It’s similar for how some systems view differences in people.

But there are many methods to make tacit knowledge explicit. Breaking down the humanness, the indigenousness, the nativeness, the nature—that’s a wonderful threshold to explore different forms of learning that happened in the past.

I think it’s a beautiful point where we can see parallels to learning as life choice. The relationship to failure is something we practice at the center. We have one rule: before becoming a member of the reimagined learning center, you first have to make one hundred mistakes. You have to go through failing one hundred times.

We do this because many young people come from environments where mistakes are traumatizing and reflect human value. We need to disrupt that by actually inviting mistakes, inviting moments of not knowing everything, inviting insecurity so we can repair, heal, and tap into it as a source.

Shreyas: Now that you understand the problem and system, tell us about your organization—the reimagined learning center. What goes on there, what activities, what do children do?

Che Vanni: I was studying education in third year. Two instances happened. I needed a textbook for educational psychology—psychopathology. The textbook cost about 2000 rand, close to minimum wage in South Africa—maybe two-thirds of monthly minimum wage.

That’s the level of income needed to buy this book, and it wasn’t my household’s income level. I needed to make a plan. I went to pirate torrent sites where I was downloading movies and Xbox games to get income. I taught myself how to hack Xbox, download flash files, put them on disks, and sell them illegally.

I also realized these sites had textbooks and resource materials. I downloaded a psychopathology textbook and realized the content was exactly the same as required textbooks—might be different chapters or chronologically arranged differently, but same content.

I downloaded this bootleg textbook and studied it myself. I couldn’t use the lecturer because they lectured according to their specific textbook. This required more energy to understand concepts, but I wrote that exam and passed with 98% using a free online textbook.

I realized there’s no need to pay all that money or for my mom to go into debt. I can teach myself anything. Currently in university, they say you need this textbook, but you don’t really need that specific textbook—you can get any closely related one.

Shreyas: They want you to buy specific books, but you find you only use chapters, maybe six out of twenty-four chapters.

Che Vanni: I began questioning why that specific textbook and price. I began seeing there’s a money trail—these authors are from the university, it’s a way for income and capital to circulate among certain authors with history in colonial rule. The content wasn’t founded in indigenous practices.

They never talked about shamanism or healing with medicinal herbs—they talked about diagnosis and rehabilitation. There was no rehabilitation from my understanding.

I was doing investigation into my own lineage, family, being. This content and moment when I realized there’s a money trail to textbook business—it’s capitalism, nothing to do with skills, free education, democratic education, or liberative practices.

I was supposed to become a teacher, but they said someone with indigenous hair like mine would be required to cut it. That was another reinforcement to walk out of the institution and take responsibility for my learning.

Shreyas: Every aspect—books, processes, approaches—should be a certain standard, or it’s completely ostracized. Even hairstyle that your ancestors had for ages suddenly isn’t acceptable.

Che Vanni: It’s not deemed professional, academic, valued, or respectable. It means you’re savage, barbaric, uncivilized. This isn’t even just hairstyle—my intention and motivation to grow my hair like this is rooted in spirituality.

I had questions about myself, this institution, and my parents because they said if I go and get the certificate, I’ll be a better person. I found the direct opposite—I was being stripped of my person.

Shreyas: Your own identity, your authentic self.

Che Vanni: I found myself being terminated by attending lectures. I never went to all my lectures—I’d jump into friends’ lectures, go to anthropology, math, biology. I would explore. I saw diversity as opportunity to learn.

The university probably wouldn’t have valued my disruption going from faculty to faculty. They would have wanted me to stay in one faculty, knowing one thing with one group of people.

I walked out of university with six months to go. I told my parents I wanted to go to Israel. I had arguments with my parents—they couldn’t understand. You probably had the same resistance. Imagine—I had six months to get that certificate, walk on stage, get that degree. I got a job opportunity but needed to cut my hair.

At that dramatic moment, I told my parents I wasn’t going to do it. They thought I lost my mind, needed prayer or rehabilitation. Eventually, after arguments, my parents gave blessing if I could find a job.

I wanted to go to Israel to a community called Kibbutz—basically living together, working half the day, the other half exploring and learning while getting income.

Shreyas: Quite interesting.

Che Vanni: This was my first idea of community learning space. It sounded real, enticing, human, not authoritative, and required work. I needed to find a job to fund this.

I found a job in classifieds: “Superhero needed to teach five kids in Observatory.” I met four mothers whose children came from private and public school sectors. They said their children were ostracized, put in cages for behavior and trauma. They knew their children weren’t stupid or idiots—these are words they used.

They wanted to create homeschooling in one family’s home where all five kids would come together daily with some sort of learning happening. What does learning look like? No one knew. There was talk of eventual curriculum parents would review and introduce.

I told them where I am in life and shared honestly what I’m thinking about learning. There was resonance and desperation—school year was about to begin and they needed someone.

Shreyas: They were against the system and wanted homeschooling experience?

Che Vanni: They weren’t fully against—there were things within the system they were against. It wasn’t complete rejection, just discomfort.

We started this thing where I’d come daily and utilize one room. We’d spend time with these five individuals. The youngest was six, oldest was ten. Every day I’d spend time because I didn’t know what to do with them. I was never a proper teacher and wasn’t going to be that teacher.

I started getting to know them through relationship building. We’d cook together, play games together. In playing with them, I could account for their learning. For instance, curriculum said grade one students need ability to tell story in chronological order—you woke up, brushed teeth, had breakfast, came to school.

The six-year-old introduced this concept in soccer—when you miss goals, you get minus points. I missed many goals, ending up with minus five. Naturally through games and play, they were utilizing concepts beyond their age when put against standardized curriculum.

I started realizing there was magical learning beyond curriculum taking place.

Shreyas: Not just standard teaching, but much more learning by doing that gave them right concepts at right age.

Che Vanni: And confidence in those concepts. When they played games well, there was celebration. When you missed, there was support and advice—“try this, try it like this.” There was innate sense of support and learning happening every day.

On the other side, parents were losing their minds because they struggled to see the same learning I was seeing. I struggled to have language to justify the learning. It was said I wouldn’t understand because I don’t have children of my own.

Shreyas: You found learning happening and could see it, but couldn’t show these examples to parents and say “this is what happened, you could see them doing this”—that was something they weren’t happy with.

Che Vanni: This created resistance between children, myself, and parents. For instance, one child never read at home with their mother because the mother was authoritative and business-driven. They’d be prompted to read when mother found time—it wasn’t consultative. This created extreme resistance to reading in prompted moments.

That was later diagnosed as dyslexia because of this forcefulness applied to something happening naturally. As soon as there was force, promptedness, or authority saying “read now,” it was met with resistance.

There was lack of knowledge and sensitivity about how learning naturally happens. This messed up parents’ perception and lenses to see learning when it was happening.

I can put myself in parents’ shoes because I had the same assumptions. Reading on trucks, canned beans, tires, toys isn’t deemed valid reading. Reading can only be validated if it happens with a book. That was my bias for a long time.

This is where a lot of learning was happening for young people. However, it never matched expectations of parents, creating resistance. Eventually, many young people were taken out due to fighting between me and parents.

I was trying to justify beauty, love, and loving. I found it very difficult. This made me sensitive to how young people feel in society, trying to be an ally and activist for what was naturally happening.

This related to how young people’s natural learning was deemed unvalued, delegitimized, and ostracized by systems. It messed things up but also created emergence for what was to come.

I started doing writing with the two parents who stayed. We continued experimenting. A lot of success started happening, and word of mouth spread. More people who shared sentiment of natural learning began inquiring, and community started coming into play.

We moved away from relationship where I worked for them—they paid me salary—to more community where we all take care of specific needs, all invest in these needs, all do our part. Open communication when different resources are needed or opportunities avail themselves.

We essentially became a learning community where learning isn’t unique to specific center but spreads. Some parents have opened their work, skills to come in for skill exchanges or learning together. It’s not just young people anymore—young people and families come together at certain times to learn together.

Where the movement has moved is that it’s a community learning center specifically recognizing young people as people, not recognizing them as children because the word “children” has been utilized as violent tool among adults.

If you go to any adult and say “I’ll teach you like a child” or “you’re being childish,” it’s meant as insult. “You’re just a kid, you wouldn’t understand.” In cultural use of these words, we’re not seen as human, not seen as people.

We first started recognizing children as people, and the rest was history. As soon as we realize them as people, we begin to mutate our relationship with them. We start realizing they’re knowledgeable, forgiving, patient. It reflects on us as people we need to be for each other.

If I’m easily forgiven by a child, I can forgive myself, be less harsh on myself, learn like a child. Every day provides opportunity to learn—I can be patient, curious, even ignorant, be a failure, and it’s okay. That’s where healing has been taking place with parents, myself, and other facilitators in this space.

There are two other facilitators who join me—young individuals who’ve also shifted from institutional ideas of education and started utilizing the center as space for their own self-discovery and self-learning. We say in the center there are no facilitators—we’re all learners. I’m just the oldest one.

Shreyas: I realize this in my journey as educator—when I start treating them as peers, the moment there’s hierarchy, there’s difference and power structure. But if each of us are peers and I’m not sitting on pedestal giving information but learning together and asking each other’s opinions, it helps us grow as individuals and for children as well.

Che Vanni: The relationship children have with one another—the patience, time, love they have for loving and learning