#96 Rebecca Jean-Charles | Edugenic Harm: The Hidden Abuse of the School System

In this episode, Cecilie & Jesper Conrad sit down with Rebecca Jean-Charles to explore the concept of Edugenic Harm—how traditional education systems inadvertently harm children by normalizing control, disconnection, and compliance. Through personal stories and reflections, we unpacks our journeys from the conventional school system to homeschooling and unschooling.

Edugenic Harm refers to the subtle, systemic ways in which traditional schooling undermines children's autonomy, emotional well-being, and connection to their natural instincts, conditioning them to accept control and compliance as normal.

Key Points Discussed:

1. Lack of Consent in Education
   • The mandatory nature of schooling removes children's choice, creating a system where autonomy is disregarded from an early age.
2. Disconnection from Basic Needs
   • Schools often restrict children's ability to listen to their bodies, whether it’s moving, resting, eating, or expressing emotions, leading to a disconnection from natural instincts.
3. Normalization of Control
   • Drawing parallels between school and abusive relationships, showing how constant oversight, judgment, and invalidation of feelings can lead to internalized submission and fear of mistakes.
4. Gaslighting of Emotional Experiences
   • How children’s emotions are dismissed ("It’s not that bad" or "You’ll understand later"), teaching them to mistrust their own feelings.
5. The Long-Term Impact of Edugenic Harm
   • How this conditioning in childhood can lead to accepting unhealthy patterns in adult life, including abusive relationships or toxic workplaces.
6. The Alternative: Unschooling and Freedom
   • Rebecca shares her personal transformation and how unschooling her children became a journey of healing, freedom, and connection.

🗓️ Recorded November 18th, 2024. 📍 Krakow, Poland

Follow Rebecca Jean-Charles:

• https://www.facebook.com/RebeccaJeanCharles
• https://www.instagram.com/ittakesavillage.se
• https://ittakesavillage.se/

Chapters

• 0:00 Unschooling and Homeschooling
• 11:42 Edugenic Harm: The Impact of Schooling on Students
• 25:12 Socialization and Schooling Consequences
• 42:02 Connecting Through Courageous Conversations

Transcript

00:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Today we are together with Rebecca Jean Charles. Good to see you, and for us it's the second time. The first recording we had a lot of tech problems, so good to see you again. 

00:14 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
Yeah, the same, the same. 

00:18 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
So, rebecca, I have heard part of that story when we recorded first time, but if you would be so kind to share with us why and how you started homeschooling and unschooling? 

00:33 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
absolutely, um. So I think the most powerful portal for me was or maybe there were two and the one led into the other, maybe. So when before I got pregnant, I um, I was working as a pilates teacher. I decided to do a pre and postnatal Pilates teacher training and the teacher she told me about like the work as a doula and that that was so eye-opening for her to really understand the needs of moms and the bodies of moms and all of that and then I had never heard about that, so but it caught really caught my interest. 

01:24
So I ended up doing a doula training. During that doula training I fell pregnant and I came into the training thinking that if I should ever get pregnant, I would have a C-section, probably because my mom had all of her children with a C-section. And I got out of the training and thought like, of course I'm gonna have a home birth and a free birth, like, of course I can do this. And I totally understood what went wrong with my mom and all the things. And that was really that training. Not only was it that I decided to free birth, but also that something clicked inside of me because in the doula training we talked so much about like the you know that mothers are and babies also newborns or unborns are worthy and that they have the right to make decisions and the possibility to make decisions and all the things. And it was like it was really eye-opening for me. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, even I as a woman have, like, the right to express my, my needs and I have the right to be heard and all the things. And the same goes for children. Actually, for me it was easier to see it with the children. You know it's I think many of us parents recognize that that sometimes, like we have more tolerance, or at least moms. 

03:07
I don't know how it is for dads actually, but for for moms, I think we often have more tolerance to receive like unrespectful, disrespectful behavior or something like that, and we don't really dare to stand up for ourselves or we think like, ah well, you know, wasn't that nice, but you know I'll just bite my tongue with something. But when it comes to our children, then there's like somehow it's something different. And then this lion mom comes out, um, and then I had this um, had my first home birth, free birth, and then I realized through all these experiences with how much abuse I was living in that particular time. I was living in an abusive relationship, but also I realized how, how, like, how I even got there in the first place and that I had already been exposed to so much abuse of for so long, um, a lot of this through the system. And you know, I um a while, a few months ago, I posted a reel on um on Instagram and I described my situation and I didn't say that I was talking about school and most people thought I was talking about that I was part of a cult or that I was imprisoned or something. 

04:38
And then when I, at the end, like revealed that I was talking about school, like everybody was like what? Like, um, that that video actually went viral, um, because I think it spoke to so many people, and that was like once I realized that I thought like no, I absolutely don't want that for my children, because what we are exposed to, especially as children, that becomes our normal right, and that's also in abusive relationships or domestic violence. You talk about normalized violence. We talk about normalized violence, um, so that you know after some time you don't even notice anymore what's happening and that it's happening and that it doesn't, that it's not right, and therefore you get used to it more and more and more, and like the threshold for what you're willing to accept also increases because you are, or decreases like you're, like you're more okay with more things because you get so used to it right, like rebecca, I would love to ask you to unpack it more. 

06:05 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Just for me to see the connection where you're talking about the school system as abusive um, because for some people that word would be like I wasn't abused in school, no, but I, I think I maybe know what you mean. But if we can talk a little amount or unpack what you mean about how the system leads you to accept abuse, where is it the controlling? Where, what is it, the aspect you're pointing at? 

06:38 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
totally. That's such a good, good point, such a good question. Um, so, for example, that, like in the first place, just like now, I, I grew up in a country where school is mandatory, so you, there's no consent in the whole picture, like nobody asks you do you want to go there? Do you want to go there? Do you want to be there? Is that something you like? You just have to go and it's sold to you as a privilege, but there's no room to negotiate or no room to just say no or no, thank you, just say no or no, thank you. 

07:33
Um, so consent is a big thing. Like being forced to be somewhere and do something, um, without your will, without even being asked. Um in, in this case, being in a place, in a building with people that, like you, don't have a choice, as when you go to school, maybe in some schools. Of course, like when I talk about school, I know there's also many, many different kinds of schools and some schools are different, but, like my experience and I went to mainstream school, but a school with a good reputation, or several schools with good reputations in a western european country, um, so, yeah, the like, the, the consent piece as the like the overall, in the overall picture, I think is is a very big one then, for example, that you are forced to kind of disconnect from your body. You don't have the right to tend to your basic physical needs. Um, when you need to like, you cannot move your body, or you're not allowed to move your body when you want to move your body. Again, there are certain schools that you know there's free schools or whatever where things are slightly different, but that was not my experience and I know that is also not the experience of the majority of kids at school today in the whole world probably. I wasn't allowed to move my body when I needed to move my body. I wasn't allowed to drink water when I needed to drink water, I wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom without permission and there was somebody else who could deny me permission to go to the bathroom. Yeah, like all these kinds of basic needs, they are not allowed in many times at school, which creates that we get so disconnected from our bodies which can. Or eating, of course, also you're not allowed to eat when you want to eat and you're like. There's also at schools, for example, where food is served. I know also that is a big problem for a lot of kids because they don't like the food, for example, where food is served. I know also that is a big problem for a lot of kids because they don't like the food, for example, or sometimes they're even allergic to the food, or the parents don't agree with the food that's served, or something. 

10:18
But there's also often not the possibility to choose Rest or sleep. Like you cannot like at school, you cannot say hey, you know, I'm so exhausted. I don't know, my parents were fighting the whole night. That didn't happen for me, but I bet it happens for many. My parents were fighting the whole night, see, and I couldn't sleep. It was so loud or I was so scared or so worried. I just need to rest. I can't concentrate or I feel so much pain in my soul. I just need to talk to somebody. I can't you, you know, concentrate on learning grammar when I feel my, my inner world is breaking apart. Um, and I feel like it's not only like hippie people who who think this, it's like it's mainstream big science that knows how important and how essential emotional well-being is. Um, for all humans, and also, um, yeah, also in order to actually be being able to learn things and having the capacity to receive things, but that is another thing that is not related to them, um, to the abuse that I'm talking about. Um, yeah, I think these are something. 

11:57 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I think in the context of what you're saying, I've just been thinking about how the curriculum and the whole base idea of the schooling that someone else knows what you need to become because what you are is not enough and what you think you want to become is not right. So the things you're passionate about can be considered your hobbies and things you do in your free time, whereas in the school context you have to go into learning these things that someone else says you need to learn to become good enough, and they will even rate how close to good enough you are with the whole rating system. And then I was thinking about I mean you, you and I know that I'm probably most of the listeners have that installed. But what I was thinking about was all these, um, basic human needs that are taken away from us, not no, like the right to rest, the right to contemplate, the right to look out the window and think about something else. 

12:59
The possibility of talking to an adult in peace and quiet goes in the bathroom. When you need to eat food that you find is right for your body. When you find it right for your body, drink water, um, move your body. These privileges can be obtained by obeying to the other system. If you're a good student, you will be the one who's always allowed to the bathroom. If you're a good compliant student and you have high grades and and you like your handwriting is really neat and you know things um. 

13:34
You will have that moment with the teacher after class, if you need to yeah, yeah and, and they will not stop you from moving around on the chair or maybe reading a book under the table or, you know, attend to your own needs because you're complying with the system, and that's, yeah, yeah, actually a huge form of violence, because you need to accept that you are not good enough and the way to become good enough is to walk the exact path someone else passed out, exactly exactly and think about, yeah, totally, and and all this like manipulation and gaslighting, like, for example I don't know if everybody's familiar with the expression gaslighting. 

14:26 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
I I didn't. 

14:29 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Well, no, because we don't know either who's going to listen to the podcast Exactly. That's why I'm just Gaslighting. 

14:37 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
It comes from some movie, I believe, but it doesn't really matter. What gaslighting means is that somebody else tries to tell you that your own experience, your own feelings, are wrong and what they are thinking is the right thing, and that is, for example, it's very common that that already happens with small kids. So when a child, you know, cries, for example, then adults often go to the child and say, oh, but it's, you know, stop crying, this is not bad, it doesn't hurt, it doesn't bleed or whatever, and it's not bad, like there's no reason to cry. But who am I to tell somebody else that you don't have a reason to cry? I don't know what it feels like in your body and I don't know if it's bad or not bad. And like, obviously, if you're crying, you have a reason to cry. And that just happened so many times, like when I mean I actually like going to school and I had it. 

15:42
I came from a very academic family. My parents could support me easily. I feel like I got that was the breast milk, the whole academic stuff, and so it was like I got that with the breast milk, the whole academic stuff, and so it was like I didn't have big struggle. I know a lot of unschooling families or unschooling parents. They came to this path because they themselves had a really hard time at school. That wasn't my case. 

16:09
But still, like if you, if you're a student who says like, hey, I don't, you know, I don't want to go there because I feel horrible, I, I get bullied, or, um, I just hate being there, I really don't have any interest in this and I would love to do something else instead, or whatever the case may be, or, you know, I just get. It's just overwhelming for me. That is, for example, one thing for me that I learned from my kids. My kids are super sensitive, and I'm actually today I'm not sure if maybe many more people are also actually super sensitive but we have just been conditioned to get out of our sensitivity. Um, that we numb ourselves so much even though I've been working with myself and trying to unnump myself for so long, like I still have, I'm so disconnected many times and that again is part of this, the abuse that's happening. Like you have to numb yourself so much so that you can make it Otherwise, like that's like your shield, otherwise you would break down. 

17:34 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah right yeah and Rebecca, that's one of the things I would still stand clearly for me from the first time we tried to record when the the tech problems you had was you actually made a connection between the numbing of believing in your own body or the having to write to your own body and control over this to you ending up in an abusive relationship, that you accepted this? That you, if I remember correctly, you say that school has been part of making you accept that is that okay understood yeah, yeah, totally. 

18:18 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
And I feel like so many of these patterns that, for example, again the gas lighting that somebody else tells like I feel, maybe I, I remember clearly, actually, even though I, like I said I had a good time at school and so on. Maybe I remember clearly actually, even though I, like I said I had a good time at school and so on, but I remember clearly, um, when I was little, I was thinking like, okay, I'm going to school and all those things, but really, if somebody would drop me somewhere in the forest, um, and I would be by myself, I hadn't, would have no clue what to do and how to live, because, um, you know none of this. I'm learning, like, I have all these great grades at school, but you know, for the real things in life, I'm actually not equipped at all. And that is what I actually just wanted to say with this gaslighting, like if somebody says like, hey, I don't like this, I hate being here, and then the adults tell the student or the kid but it's really good for you, you have to do this and you know, you might not know it, you might not like it, but I know this is good for you, this is so important for you and son, that is like gaslighting when, like telling the other person no, but you're wrong and your opinion, your thoughts, your feelings don't matter, like now when I think about it. 

19:47
I mean, I know kids who are like for, for example, who live in Sweden I work with a lot of Swedish parents and in Sweden school is mandatory and I know kids who are like just barely surviving, literally just barely surviving, and the authorities don't care, like the most important thing for them is that the body of that human is in that particular building. And I'm thinking, and you know, like these children, it has nothing to do with them, their academic competence or something, not at all. They, some of them, are super amazing, brilliant, but they just have terrific experiences. They maybe have been exposed to a lot of bullying maybe there are. They are still so connected to their sensitivity that they get super overwhelmed by being in a room with other 30 people. I mean, today I would go crazy. 

20:57
Somebody would tell me you have to spend like eight hours or 10 hours of your day surrounded by 30 other people and you don't have a choice if you want to be there or not, and you don't have a choice to choose who those 30 people are. You just want to be there or not, and you don't have a choice to choose, like, who those 30 people are, you just have to be there. And that that, for me, is just so um out of proportion and it doesn't make sense to me because, again, like, our basic physical and emotional well-being is, like, is essential for everything else. I mean, what does it, what does it bring to us at the end, when we, you know, have been spending all these years in that building but then I mean today, like teenagers already, or young adults, are burnt out or you know, already on like retirement, like early retirement, because they are incapable to work. That, like I feel something should make us think here, like, is this actually working, what we are trying to do? 

22:14 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I'm thinking about. So we are right now in krakow for a world school pop-up and it just ended two days ago, the big event. A lot of families are still in the city and we're also before, so it's not just the week, but the week obviously is more intense and we've been around 30, 50 something people and I was just thinking and this is voluntary and out and about in the free, moving around- the world but still it's overwhelming for all of us. 

22:51
We're with five teenagers right now, three of our own and two friends, and I just noticed it's always like that, but of course, with this huge social event that's just happened, we spend so many hours a day talking about the social experiences we've had. What's going on, who's who, what did I feel? Was that common, okay or not? How can we understand what happened there? What do you think is going on with that? 

23:27
all of these things, and it's just such a contrast between how you're structured in the school system to sit down and when you can speak and when you cannot speak, and what you can talk about and who you can talk to, and you're only with your same age group, so you have no one who's more experienced and no one who's less experienced. 

23:48
You can you get because there's a lot of actually a lot of comfort in getting to hold someone else's space and that experience is completely taken away from. I mean all of the talk I've heard the teenagers have this week and the role I've had the honor of, of playing in it as kind of a mirror, someone more experienced someone who was there to see what happened yeah yeah, was able to, just to have my perspective on it. 

24:19
All of that is taken away from the children in the school system. Yet one of the most frequent questions and critiques we get as world homeschoolers and world school is is how will they ever learn to socialize? Yeah, exactly it's. It's lame and it's so hard to explain to people in the mainstream world how you're ruining their ability to grow social humans by putting them in this, yeah, artificial, weird kind of prison cell social life. And that must be so. 

25:00 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah, I can't even remember I think the skill you learned the most is how to actively ignore other people, and that was one of the things I came out with that I'm quite good at. If I go into a room with a lot of people, I can zone them out and that is to protect just my own being being there with so many people, so many relationships and interactions that could take place. And I want to bridge a little into the name of your homepage. It takes a villagese which because have the village grown too big? If it was people I knew close, all these people, then it would maybe be easier to walk into a room with 30 people, but it is. It is forced and non-chosen and you I mean just going. 

26:05
Now I'm luckily live this free life where we travel. I don't need to be in a workplace. I remember one day in the spring I had to be at a place for six hours and it was crazy. I felt robbed of my freedom. I felt that there were so many people that I some of them. It's a place I've worked, so it was good to see them again and have a little chat with them, but that took two or three hours to get around and say hi to everybody and feel where they were, and I'm like you, you cannot do that every day with so many people. 

26:41 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
It's, it's crazy yeah, and I also wanted to to go back to a little bit this, like the abuse of nature. There was one more thing that I think is very big um and very destructive is the fact to be constantly observed and constantly judged um, and that is something that I then um re-experienced in my adult life and, again, because I was so used to it, I didn't recognize it, it didn't hop into my face, because it was so normal for me that I mean, that's what you do at school, right, there's constantly somebody else telling you no, not like that. No, don't do this, not right now. No, sit down. No, go there, don't talk now. There's like, constantly, they're like so managed the, the humans, and I experienced that again as an adult, that somebody else took over my life and thought it was okay to tell me what I could do, who I could talk to, when I could talk. Um, not, don't laugh so loud, don't do this, don't do that. 

27:58
Um, you know it and you know it's solved to us as, like we do this um because we, we care so much for you and we know better what's best for you, and so on, and the same with the judgment and that that, like, you're not free to explore and free to do that, somebody who's always sitting there kind of waiting for you to make a mistake, and that installs so much fear and it also normalizes this fear of like, oh, you know, I, I might do something wrong, I might make a mistake, whatever, and I think that, for example, impacts us extremely much this fear of making mistake, on our mistakes, in our relationship to our relationship with mistakes. If now mistakes even exist, you know, I think you know mistakes we could also see them as like oh, this is like, this is one way how it could unfold, um, or how you could see it, but you could also do it in a different way. 

29:20 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
What gave you the strength to break free? Was it becoming a mother? A big part of it Was starting to question the school systems. A part of it. What was part of it? How did you do it? 

29:37 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
no, I think that's what I mentioned before when I suddenly felt like, somehow, when it was about myself, I wasn't able to see it. I guess, yeah, it was so normal to me and it was so much in my face that I couldn't see it. But when I had a little bit of distance and children were involved my children were involved then it became suddenly so obvious for me and then, as I was tending to my own healing from and you know like before I could tend to my own healing I first needed to recognize what, what was it actually? What had been going on, because I I wasn't able to see it because, like I said, we're so normalized to it and um. But once again, when I go to back to this video that I, um, that I created we didn't tell people from the beginning that I was talking about school. Everybody thought I was talking about abuse or an abusive relationship or something. Um. So we are like that made me so blind to what was happening, and I think that also makes a lot of other people today blind, what is happening on so many levels in their lives, not only in their private relationships but also, you know, on the systematic level and so on and for me, like when I then started, like looking at what is it actually what happened, and I traced it back and so on, and then, um, yeah, then I came more and more in, in contact, you know, I found to attachment, parenting and natural parenting and gender parenting and all the things you know, and and through that um, I like I had just one realization after the other. 

31:44
And then suddenly, like, for me it's like a one-way road, like once you know these things, once you've learned and seen the things, you cannot unknow or unlearn or unsee. So it's like you can just only continue either you decide to just not look at the things and not not open the book and and understand the things. But once you do like, then you also have to like walk the path, because it's so big and otherwise it would go so much against what I believe and what I know. So the path was just poets. And you know, my kids were born in Sweden where, um, where homeschooling is strictly illegal, like I mentioned before. Um, but it was not a like that didn't stop me like I'm, it was such a, it had become so obvious to me that that is, um, that is such an important puzzle piece when we are raising our children that I felt like okay, then I'm, I just need to find another way and another country. 

33:03 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I just saw a number in Denmark. It's 17 to 20 percent have been bullied like harshly inside the last year in fourth grade, and I'm just like so that that's a lot of children exactly, and that is like that is the bullying, like probably between the kids. 

33:23 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
But what about the kids that, for example, are just totally overwhelmed by having to be in this building or by, for example, having to be there at a certain time, like early-ish in the morning? You know, for some people it just doesn't work, um, or there's so many other things that are. You know, um, once, like after I've left my abusive relationship, I met a wise woman and she said you know, abuse can be so many different things and it can happen on so many different levels. And there's like emotional abuse and verbal abuse and financial abuse and so many forms of abuse. And she said those don't leave bruises, visible bruises on your skin, but they leave bruises on your inside and nobody can see them and they often also take much longer to heal. 

34:29
And I'm thinking of all these kids at school who who are covered with bruises inside on their souls. Um, because of all the different things, just, you know this constantly being judged. Or you know if, for example, they have, they've gone through a lot of trauma or something is really something really hard is happening in their families, um, you know, maybe a parent is very sick or something and they carry just a lot of baggage with them when they come into this building and they are just constantly judged and pressured and there's no room for them to be and you know, the system just adds on so much Like often so much trauma, unfortunately. 

35:23 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I mean, I have four children, and, and I'm one, well, we are two, but I, I imagine having 30 and only, and it's not your own. So you, you don't tuck them in at night, you don't. You don't save them from their nightmares, you don't, you know, uh, talk with them while you're making the stir fry. It's all the little things that get you close and give them moments to say mom, I need to talk to you about something. 

35:53
Yeah, of course they don't know the school teachers. Of course they don't. How can they know? And with that top down curriculum bullshit, pushing the teachers to teach specific things at specific times, not feeling their crowd? What do they need? What would make them happy? 

36:10 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
no, I have to do this I think also, you know it is so much connected to the whole way of living that we have, because we're I mean, maybe not you and I, but most people are just rushing through their days and their life, so there is no room to actually like really cultivate connections, neither to like neighbors nor to their own children, really. 

36:36
And I believe if we would slow down, if we would cut out all the like endless paperwork, admin stuff, whatever that we have come up with um and and just simplified life so much more and we're more present with ourselves and with each other and um like took out all the stuff I mean like for me, for example, when I think about it now, this kind of idea of you'll have to work nine to five, like somebody has once come up with this idea that this is the amount of hours that you should work and then you get paid because you've been again, you've been in that building from nine to five and then you get paid, no matter. 

37:30
I mean most of the times you have like requirements, but also it's also a lot about just spending the time there, and I bet there's like millions of people who spend most of their time at work with, you know, scrolling social media or something. 

37:56
Scrolling social media or something, oh yeah, and so I just feel, um, if we would change like our whole lifestyle, then we would already have so much more connection with with ourselves, with our families, with the people around us and like create these kinds of villages where we like, where we really can see each other and and where we really um, feel each other and and support each other. And that is also, I feel, can we maybe cultivate another way of communicating with each other where we are both more courageous and more compassionate and really learn how we can create really good relationships? And that goes back to the beginning of our conversation with the socialization like no, most people have not learned how to create and maintain healthy relationships where we can have I call it courageous conversations when we talk about the things that feel uncomfortable and, at the same time, are still really compassionate and really respectful. I think that would already change so much. 

39:15 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And I think actually that's another conversation we should take. I think it could be interesting to take another dialogue with you, also talking about what ideals is it that we put on people through a school system versus if they had been at home? There is, like this brain drain going on from smaller villages. There's been when they we came and gave the schools to needed people who needed the schools, who didn't have them, and you can just see how that removed the loss from people to actually be working in the local community because they got these new ideas and all that. But this is only a teaser because I would love to hear your thoughts about that, but, but in another episode because we are trying to keep them kind of short. So, rebecca, it was a big pleasure. I suggest people find you if you just briefly mention your Facebook and social media handle so people can go check you out and we will also put it in the show notes absolutely. 

40:33
It takes a villagese, so thatse is probably the most um complicated part yeah, perfect, and and um, it was really a wonderful conversation with you, thank you, thank you I also really enjoyed it. 

40:57 - Rebecca Jean-Charles (Guest)
Thank you so much thank you. Thank you for for doing this really, really important work. Thank you having courageous conversations absolutely.