Unschooling: learn about the education model that prioritizes everyday experiences – not school life

The researcher Ana Thomaz created a mission for itself: to break society’s educational paradigms. As she asks herself, if you didn’t need to earn money, what would you do with your life? It is with this questioning that she adopted the notion of deschooling. It is a movement – ​​with many followers in Europe and the United States – contrary to the concept that acquiring knowledge at school is the only way to reach professional success. Such an education model has been an option for parents who want to prioritize everyday experiences and already has a significant number of supporters in Brazil.

A professional dancer and dance teacher, Ana realized that the conventional school did not prepare her for the reality of life, for true relationships and the development of each person’s personal mission. Therefore, she decided to change her own creation, using her relationships and even motherhood to get in touch with herself, with her intuition, and to know the best path for her experience, without using any external influence.

Ana had her biggest challenge when her first child, then aged 14, asked to leave school because she didn’t see an environment conducive to her personal development there. She proved that the school environment was created around the threat, the use of power, and accepted taking the boy out of school, with a plan: a three-year project that would have as its objective the deschooling of the son, including in his day to day practices that he liked a lot and that inspired him in some way. With that, and without any present distraction – television, computers and video games were abolished from the house – he discovered his vocation, magic, and currently travels the world working in the area, participates in congresses and even gives courses.

The researcher, who maintains a blog named Vida Ativa, now develops a project named amalaya, which intends to convey this notion and these ideals for a paradigm-free reconstruction of society. The project has workshops and experience meetings, with values ​​that are reverted to the construction of the headquarters, in Piracaia, São Paulo🇧🇷

Vote for the candidates for the 2015 CLAUDIA Award