Guide to Humanizing Schooling

What if education was a process of living, rather than preparation for future living?

Detroit Future Schools (DFS) is a digital media arts program committed to humanizing schooling in Detroit. DFS was inspired by philosopher and activist, Grace Lee Boggs, who challenged organizers to reimagine the role of education in building community life.

Between 2011 and 2014, DFS operated in 24 schools and worked with over 3,000 students across the metro Detroit area. DFS created a planning tool that adapted Brazilian educator and theorist, Paolo Freire’s, practices of engaging in continuous cycles of action and reflection for transformative learning. Additionally, DFS devised the “Rida Framework,” a metric for teaching evaluation, influenced by education scholar Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s work on urban pedagogy in South Los Angeles, and the term “rida” — which references the popular culture expression “ride or die.” 

This guide is a short history and collection of reflections, frameworks and tools that share the program’s experiments and conclusions.