"Chasing Freedom in Different Directions": Schooling for Marronage and Abolition in Education

• In Event: Petals of Blood, Fruits of Freedom: Sustaining Educational Lifeways for Abolition

Abstract

OBJECTIVES

Petals of Blood: Using an auto-ethnographic approach, I analyze my perspectives on abolition as a ‘child of the revolution’ born to politically radical parents during Grenada’s anti-colonial socialist revolution, and focus on my experiences with punitive and harmful schooling practices as a student, teacher, school leader, education consultant, and researcher in the United States.

Fruits of Freedom: Drawing from ethnographic work conducted on a school that was conceived as a counter-hegemonic project by its founders and deliberately designed to support healing and transformation in community, I reflect on the limits and possibilities of marronage and what they mean for educators and organizers who prioritize abolition.

FRAMEWORK

This paper applies Neil Roberts’ (2015) concept of “Freedom as Marronage” to a schooling and educational context and forwards a conceptual framework of Schooling as Marronage. Through examination of a case of “Schooling as Marronage” I consider the implications and lessons marronage can provide those engaged in abolitionist struggle, particularly in the field of education ​​(Agid, 2014; Cole et al., 2021).

METHODS & DATA

Taking an auto-ethnographic approach to build toward “critical cultural analysis” (Camangian, 2010, p. 179), I reflect on my upbringing and political activation, my experiences as an educator and researcher, and my interest and involvement in the community-driven education project that became the focus of my dissertation research. I then draw from ethnographic data gathered through a 6-year critical participatory ethnographic case study of the Roses in Concrete Community School (RiC) in East Oakland, California, which was conducted from the school’s design stage in 2014 until its fifth year of operation in 2020. Data gathering took place through semi-structured interviews, observations, and artifact/document analysis.

FINDINGS

Petals of Blood: More than a rejection of mainstream schooling and an alternative model for schools, RiC was an attempt to repurpose the traditional school into a center of health and well-being, a case of Schooling as Marronage, and a practice of self-determination.

Fruits of Freedom: Traditional settler colonial schools in the United States, microcosms of an anti-Black, carceral society, are themselves structured by carcerality and dehumanizing conditions. Although escape from mainstream schools and the intentional creation of new learning spaces carry the potential to buffer the harms experienced in traditional settler colonial schools, an anti-hegemonic stance by individuals or collectives does not alleviate the traditional demands of schools or completely disentangle the individuals or larger community from carceral ideologies and practices. Moreover, unhealthy circumstances outside of and within newly formed communities can enable the reproduction of hegemonic forces, including carceral ideologies and practices, and recreate the very harms that community members hope to escape.

SIGNIFICANCE

Both abolition and marronage are responses to the terrors of slavery that created pathways to freedom. Both call for the creation of new systems and ways of being. This paper considers the implications that a case of marronage carries for abolitionist educators and organizers.

Author

• Joaquin Noguera, Loyola Marymount Universtiy
  Presenting Author