Therefore, we have based the Resource Directory on our values:

• Young People Are People
• Collective Liberation & Anti-Oppression
• Community

For SDE Communities, we include those where young people’s right to choose their education for themselves will be respected. This means that the school must hold a value of not enforcing or requiring a curriculum or other conventional requirements, even if a parent requests that the school require their child to do so.

This means that we may reject a submitted resource if we believe that it is not in alignment with these values; we recognize that this is a very subjective process and we don’t always get it right. Often we are left to rely solely on a resource’s website, which may include language that doesn’t wholly resonate with SDE (in an effort to appeal to people in between paradigms), but that might very much be operating as an SDE center if one were to visit it. This is one place the room for error exists.

The main reason we reject resources is if they don’t appear to protect youth autonomy, meaning there are certain non-negotiable things that are required. Practices in place to uphold community values, collective liberation, and the balance of freedom and responsibility, such as requirements to attend school meetings or involvement in a clean-up process, are not considered violations to the right to SDE as we define them at The Alliance.