- Derrick Grace, from Florida, teaches daughter Derrica, six, how to use guns
- Father-of-four launched own curriculum after pulling son out of first grade
- He says he teaches children about guns as violence happens anywhere in the world
Six-year-old Derrica Grace has never been to school, but she can discuss Cryptocurrency, explain the history of the Blank Panther movement – and show you how to shoot an Uzi machine gun.
It’s all thanks to her father, Derrick Grace II – who has developed his own homeschooling curriculum after making the decision to pull his son out of first grade in 2016.
The father-of-four, from Tampa, Florida, says that he’s not a fan of the school system – and believes they ‘dilute the mental progression’ of children.
However, he has attracted controversy online after posting a series of videos online showing his daughter Derrica and son Derrick Grace III loading guns and reciting facts learned from their homeschool experience.
Describing his attitude towards homeschooling, Derrick, 28, said: ‘To me, school is a daycare. It’s a place where the adults take the babies while they worry about adult life.
‘I’m not a huge fan of the school system state-wide, or on a national level. I think they do a whole lot to dilute the mental progression of our children. So I think it’s absolutely That we take it into our hands.’
Both Derrick Jr, nine, and Derrica, six, are fully-versed in loading magazines into Glocks, Mac 11s, and even an Uzi, fully extending their arms, and pulling the triggers.
Although the children usually practice with empty magazines, they have accompanied their father to shooting ranges to experience the recoil that comes with actually firing rounds.
Since taking his children’s schooling into his own hands, Derrick has had an obvious effect on their development.
Derrica, who also enjoys gymnastics and has a ‘lucky bullet’ displayed in her room, said: ‘If somebody was trying to kill me or if somebody is trying to kill my father, or my mom, or my sisters, anybody that’s my family members, [I would] shoot them. If somebody broke into my house I’d shoot them.’
The siblings make use of their father’s small arsenal of five guns, which at one time comprised 12 firearms and now includes a Glock 30 nicknamed ‘Big Black’ and an AK47 affectionately known to its owner as ‘Brown Sugar’.
For Derrick, this is all an important part of his curriculum and bringing his children up in a way that shuns much of society’s traditions and customs, so as to gain what he says is a more individualistic perspective on life.
He now spreads a message of self-sufficiency and has built a business around his ‘Unlearn and Relearn’ curriculum, which is available for others to purchase, alongside a range of books containing guidance for adults.
‘It’s built on four elements: self-love, self-education, self-awareness, and self-reliance. I think those are key to live a mentally free and fruitful life,’ he explained.
It’s not just guns that are on the curriculum, however, as proved when asking Derrica to recite facts.
Questioned what intellectual property is, she responded confidently with: ‘They can take your possessions, but they can’t take your mind.’
Derrick is open about his troubled upbringing, where, despite coming from a family with a strong history in law enforcement, his day-to-day life involved breaking into houses and cars and generally rebelling against a school system he felt neglected his particular talents.
‘I was a terrible child,’ he explained. ‘At Christmas time we would cut Christmas lights just for the hell of it, to ruin people’s holiday. I know I broke into at least 20 cars as a child… we would just go in these guy’s houses and sit there and just go through their stuff.’
The entrepreneur – whose own father is a Secret Service retiree and whose grandfather worked as part of both a Sherriff’s office and the Tampa PD, would continue to get into trouble into his teens – before starting work as a 911 dispatcher in 2008.
Despite this seemingly respectable job, he still found himself getting into trouble in his personal life, at one point being involved in a fight at a children’s birthday party, where his assailants attempted to steal thousands of dollars worth of his jewellery.
Reflecting on the incident, Derrick recalled how he used the services available to him as a 911 dispatcher to track down the people from that day: ‘I used some of my resources to find addresses, locations, names of almost everybody in that family.
