Sifaan Zivahir

I am Dehegemonizing Education.

This is a little difficult to explain, because while people do recognise that education is used to maintain various hegemonies, it isn't commonly recognized that education as we know it is itself a hegemony.

My work includes Decolonizing and Commoning education (because Education as we know it has been Enclosed), but it requires more than that. I am still figuring out this emerging discipline, but it certainly requires recognising that the beneficiaries of education, especially children and other marginalised groups, are the Subject of Rights: not chattel, not objects of charity, not human capital.

My work is in promoting Rights-Centric Education (because "Student-Centric" is simply not good enough - it still lies within the hegemony of education, and does not respect children as complete human beings). I do this at Kinder Republic, the Democratic School I co-founded with my wife, and by helping other schools become more Rights-Centric in their approach.