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Kerry McDonald on Unschooling and Homeschooling — Transcript

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0:00hi everyone and welcome to the podcast
0:03today i'm talking with carrie mcdonald
0:05kerry mcdonald is an adjunct scholar at
0:08the cato institute center for
0:10educational freedom and a senior
0:11education fellow at the foundation for
0:14economic education she's the author of
0:17unschooled raising curious well-educated
0:19children outside of the conventional cat
0:22classroom carrie thanks for joining me
0:24on the call i'm glad to be with you erin
0:26thanks for having me
0:29yeah carrie i've i wanted to get you on
0:31the call because i've been listening to
0:33your book on audible this week and it
0:34was so fascinating so much of the
0:36history of
0:38schooling in our country and compulsory
0:40school schooling and alternatives to
0:42traditional schooling there's so many
0:44options out there that people
0:46oftentimes don't even know about
0:48um but i'm curious what got you
0:50interested in this thing called
0:52unschooling in the first place or
0:54actually education
0:56the whole idea of pedagogy yeah so i was
1:00an economics major as an undergraduate
1:02in the late 1990s but through the lens
1:05of economics became interested in
1:07education and education policy
1:09in particular
1:11seeing sort of the lack of choices in
1:14the education sector compared to other
1:16markets and
1:17realizing that that was primarily due to
1:20the government schooling monopoly in
1:22education for the most part with
1:24families sort of being assigned to
1:26compulsory district schools
1:28and most families not having another
1:30option beyond that so i began to take
1:33more education classes as an
1:34undergraduate and my senior year i was
1:38doing an independent research project on
1:40homeschooling
1:42where i had the opportunity to shadow a
1:44homeschooling family that lived nearby
1:46to my campus and it was just completely
1:51you know captivating for me that i was
1:53able to see an entirely different way
1:56of learning i had gone through k to 12
1:59public schools
2:00that was sort of what i expected
2:02education to look like and then seeing
2:04this homeschooling family really
2:07allowing their children's interests to
2:09drive learning and seeing the kind of
2:12authentic socialization in their
2:15community
2:16as opposed to sort of the age segregated
2:18socialization that we find in in schools
2:21all of that
2:22i just found completely mesmerizing and
2:25really got me increasingly interested
2:28in alternative education
2:31more interested in education choice
2:33this was the late 1990s so homeschooling
2:36had just become legally recognized in
2:39the u.s a few years prior by the
2:41mid-1990s and was still really kind of a
2:44tiny
2:45marginal
2:46education option the u.s department of
2:49education first began tracking
2:50homeschoolers in the late 1990s and they
2:52counted 850 000 at the time of course
2:56now we're at more than 5 million
2:58accelerated by the pandemic response so
3:01it was really kind of a new um
3:04new in terms of its mainstream appeal in
3:07the late 1990s of course the modern
3:09homeschooling movement began in the late
3:1060s and early 1970s but over the past
3:13couple of decades it's really exploded
3:15and so
3:17from that time
3:18shadowing that homeschooling family in
3:20college and also that same time
3:23doing some student teaching practicum
3:25work in a local public elementary school
3:27and really for the first time being able
3:28to see the contrast in these different
3:30types of learning environments up close
3:33got me much more interested in education
3:35so i went to graduate school in
3:36education policy at harvard
3:38became much more involved in the school
3:40choice movement
3:42and looking at ways to encourage the
3:44expansion of education options for
3:46families um including through policy and
3:49legislation but also through education
3:51entrepreneurship and family empowerment
3:53and so then you know a decade later when
3:55i had my own children and and was and
3:57they were young and i was thinking about
3:59education options for them
4:01you know homeschooling just made sense
4:03for my husband and i and we just
4:05realized that we were you know here we
4:07live in cambridge massachusetts and have
4:10so many resources available to the kids
4:11around us in terms of museums and
4:13libraries and extracurricular events and
4:15historic sites
4:17that really to send them to school would
4:19sort of narrow their learning and we
4:21wanted to continue to provide that kind
4:23of expansive immersive learning
4:25environment for them
4:28oh yeah there's so much to unpack there
4:30and there's
4:31i i love everything that you said about
4:33that in that last part about creating a
4:35more expansive environment you know my
4:38my daughter wanted to go to
4:40uh public school and we were really
4:42pushing home home school but we thought
4:44well
4:45she really wants to do this but i just
4:46felt so sad because i knew that her
4:49the way that uh
4:51schooling it is set up that her
4:53everything that she was learning would
4:55be such a constrained vision
4:58of what a broader education could be if
5:00she
5:01decided to stay homeschooled and
5:03fortunately after the first week she
5:04decided i think i'll come home and be
5:06homeschooled
5:08but
5:09but uh at least she tested the waters
5:11there so
5:13yeah
5:14given that given her a little bit of an
5:15option
5:17but
5:18you you mentioned there
5:20that you had this opportunity to
5:22do a
5:24i guess an intensive study of a
5:25homeschooling family that seems very
5:27unusual how did that come about in your
5:29program
5:31yeah i was doing an independent research
5:33project in an education seminar
5:36we could pick any topic we wanted and i
5:38was curious in this thing called
5:39homeschooling and uh you know what was
5:42it what did it look like and i happened
5:44to have a classmate
5:45who had family members who live nearby
5:47to campus and so she was able to connect
5:49me with them and and that led to being
5:51able to um you know spend
5:54that semester kind of shadowing them and
5:56learning about how their children learn
5:59outside of school and then again seeing
6:01the contrast between that way of
6:02learning uh and the conventionally
6:04school children in the local district
6:06school
6:08okay and then you said that you went on
6:10to harvard now i know i've read thomas
6:12soule's
6:13autobiography and he says a lot of
6:15negative things about harvard what was
6:17that like being at one of the top elite
6:19schools in the world
6:22well you know at the time school choice
6:24was really just coming on the scene
6:27this was i graduated from graduate
6:29school in 2001
6:31and so at the time if you were
6:32interested in awe at all in
6:35kind of alternative education or
6:36educational freedom or different models
6:39then uh charter schools were kind of
6:41where you were focusing because that was
6:44really
6:45the only um
6:47kind of
6:48mainstream option that was gaining
6:50popularity uh in terms of providing more
6:54choices for families so i began working
6:56with some think tanks and looking at the
6:58emerging charter school movement and
7:00then it's been wonderful to see over the
7:02past couple of decades just the
7:03expansion of school choice uh much
7:05beyond charter schools although there's
7:07still a lot of room for improvement
7:09there in terms of lifting charter school
7:10caps and very various states and um you
7:13know providing families that want that
7:15option to choose a
7:18publicly funded but privately run school
7:21that's not tied to their zip code i
7:22think a lot of families you know really
7:24gravitating towards that we're seeing
7:26even increased interest in charter
7:27schools over the past couple of years
7:28with the pandemic response so it just
7:30shows that families really
7:33want and demand education choice um just
7:37like they demand and want choice in all
7:39other areas of their lives and of course
7:41we have so much more choice and so much
7:43more abundance
7:44so uh so many more options related to
7:46our preferences in every other area of
7:48our lives and yet education continues to
7:51be for the most part kind of this
7:52one-size-fits-all
7:54heavily government-dominated model so
7:56the more we can kind of break that down
7:58and provide more choices for families
7:59the better
8:02yeah yeah
8:03i was i was curious though about your
8:05experience at harvard what was that like
8:06going to harvard at one of the most
8:08elite schools in the world
8:11well i would say that it's also um the
8:14place where i sort of began um
8:17my exposure to libertarianism
8:19so
8:20you know sort of a political as uh you
8:23know growing up and even an undergrad
8:25you know didn't give much thought to
8:28to politics or political theory of
8:29course as an economist or trained as an
8:31economist as an undergrad you know i
8:33began to certainly value free markets
8:36and realize the unintended consequences
8:38of
8:39government involvement in the markets so
8:41that was so maybe that was sort of the
8:42academic seeds but then when i went to
8:45harvard
8:47it became crystallized for me i remember
8:50i was in one graduate school class where
8:52we had to meet up in small groups to
8:55talk about a policy solution to a
8:57particular
8:59public policy issue
9:00and we had say 20 minutes in the small
9:03group to come up with our policy
9:05solution and so started off in the group
9:07and somebody said well let's just raise
9:09taxes and then somebody else said well
9:11let's just raise taxes somebody else
9:13said let's just raise taxes
9:15uh and so you know two and a half
9:17minutes into what would be the 20-minute
9:19discussion it seemed like
9:20that we had our solution and then of
9:22course it got to me and i said you know
9:23i don't think raising taxes is the right
9:25solution i think we should look at some
9:27other uh options to this particular
9:30policy issue uh and that was really i
9:32think a crystallizing moment for me as i
9:34began to say you know what what is sort
9:36of a political philosophy around lower
9:38taxes free markets limited role of
9:41government individual freedom and choice
9:44and of course that's what how i found my
9:45way to libertarianism
9:48okay
9:49interesting so harvard
9:51a lot of people think of as sort of a
9:53liberal
9:54uh bastion of contemporary thought but
9:58it actually led you the opposite
10:00direction to libertarianism so that's
10:02that's pretty interesting
10:04what about tell me a little bit what oh
10:07go ahead were you gonna say something no
10:08i was just gonna say i think that's true
10:10i think um
10:12you know there were i think then and
10:14continues to be now um
10:16sort of a monoculture in terms of
10:18thought and particularly around
10:19education policy and and for me that was
10:22very eye-opening because i said you know
10:24this
10:25this doesn't seem right we need to have
10:26you know a diverse set of um opinions
10:29and solutions uh to look at these really
10:32complex public policy issues so it was
10:35certainly um helpful for me to be able
10:38to say you know that's not the kind of
10:40approach that i'm taking to
10:42uh education policy and realizing that
10:44there were other options there
10:47yeah yeah
10:48tell me a little bit about what it's
10:49like being a scholar at the cato
10:52institute and and
10:54education fellow at fee which is a
10:56foundation for economic education
10:59what does that mean what do you do on a
11:01daily basis
11:02yeah so my primary work is as a senior
11:04fellow at the foundation for economic
11:06education
11:07fee.org fee is the country's oldest
11:10libertarian think tank it was founded in
11:121946 by leonard reed
11:14just celebrated our 75th year
11:16anniversary and so i do a lot of writing
11:18and speaking uh various conferences and
11:20engagements through fee i just launched
11:23a brand new podcast called the liberated
11:25podcast that really looks at education
11:29related issues um using the principles
11:32of a free society or through the lens of
11:34a free society including individual
11:36liberty limited government free markets
11:38entrepreneurship and so on um so you
11:41know a great a great spot for me and
11:43then with kato you know similar i do
11:45various you know policy briefs for them
11:47i did one about why school choice is
11:49good for homeschoolers um and really
11:52looking at how expanding school choice
11:54can help everybody including
11:55homeschoolers who may not
11:57initially sort of really think that
11:58there's anything in it for them uh and
12:01just you know being able to kind of push
12:03the conversation on some of these issues
12:06yeah yeah interesting
12:08so i've always thought of education as
12:10being
12:11very similar in a way to religion it's
12:14it's very it can be very personal it's
12:16it's helping shape the way you look at
12:17the world the way you live your life and
12:20yet in the country that was mostly
12:22founded on religious freedom america
12:25we have some
12:26very strong laws around education such
12:29as compulsory schooling for the crime of
12:31turning six years old you've got to be
12:34put in a cage for the next what 12 years
12:37for eight hours a day
12:39how do you think that came about
12:42yeah you know i would also say that the
12:43country was founded on educational
12:45freedom as well i mean we think about um
12:48the early days of the colonies and i
12:50talk about this in the unschooled book
12:51the pilgrims of course settled in
12:54massachusetts bay colony in 1620
12:57and just a couple of decades later in
12:58the 1640s they passed the colony's first
13:01compulsory education laws
13:03um that for the first time recognized a
13:05state interest in an educated citizenry
13:08and compelled cities and towns of a
13:10certain size to either hire a teacher or
13:14open and operate a grammar school
13:17so they recognized the need to provide
13:20kind of these public options public
13:22education options to families but the
13:24compulsion was on the various
13:26municipalities
13:28to provide these education resources to
13:30any families that wanted them the
13:32compulsion was not on families to take
13:34advantage of these education options and
13:37in fact many didn't the kind of default
13:40uh in these early colonial days was that
13:42the family was the center of a child's
13:44education
13:46the parents would be the ones to
13:47determine how their children would be
13:49educated and that they would use all
13:51kinds of various resources they would
13:53use tutors or they would use what were
13:55known as dame schools where your
13:57neighbor would have a little
13:59kindergarten uh in the you know their
14:01kitchen to kind of teach young children
14:03their abcs or they would use
14:05apprenticeship programs um that were of
14:07course widespread in the colonial and
14:09revolutionary era and that all changed
14:12in 1852
14:14when massachusetts again leading the way
14:17in compulsion passed the
14:19country's first compulsory education a
14:22compulsory schooling laws which for the
14:24first time mandated school attendance
14:27under legal threat of force now parents
14:29were compelled to send their children
14:32to these district schools and i go
14:35through in the book a lot of
14:37the kind of history of how that came to
14:38be and a lot of it was really
14:41embedded in anti-immigrant sentiment
14:44there was a influx of irish catholic
14:46immigrants in particular into the boston
14:48area in the early to mid 19th century
14:51the population of boston doubled between
14:531820 and 1840 and there was tremendous
14:55amount of cultural change a lot of these
14:59immigrants were irish catholic
15:00immigrants that
15:01challenged the dominant anglo-saxon
15:04protestant culture and ethos of the time
15:07and so creating these now compulsory
15:10public schools which were purportedly
15:12secular but had um protestant teachers
15:16and texts
15:18were seen as a way to sort of assimilate
15:20these irish catholic immigrants and it's
15:22interesting to note and i talk about
15:23this in the book as well that a lot of
15:25irish fam irish catholic families
15:27rebelled and created their own parallel
15:30system of parochial schools that really
15:32flourished in the late 19th century
15:35and so you know i think what we're
15:36seeing now is just more and more
15:38families
15:39recognizing that they
15:41that there is today a mismatch between
15:44what they want for their children's
15:45education and what is currently provided
15:47in district schools i think the
15:49coronavirus response particularly in the
15:51spring of 2020
15:53shed a lot of light for families as they
15:55saw perhaps for the first time up close
15:57through zoom school what their kids were
15:59actually doing in those classrooms and
16:01realized that they needed and wanted to
16:04take back control of their children's
16:05education from
16:07government officials and school local
16:09school officials
16:10and find some other options
16:13yeah yeah i feel like there's a huge
16:16mental shift that has to take place and
16:18like
16:19when people first hear about the idea of
16:21homeschooling they think at least from
16:23what people i've encountered oh that's
16:24kind of weird i don't why would you do
16:26that of course the pandemic has helped
16:28with that but then there's this further
16:30idea of unschooling where it's giving
16:32your kid total or at least a lot more
16:35responsibility towards self-directed
16:38education
16:39that that word unschooling
16:42why do you think that what do you think
16:43about that word i don't personally like
16:45it that much i prefer self-directed
16:47learning but why did you choose that
16:48word for the title of your book
16:52yeah so i define unschooling in the book
16:53as disentangling education from
16:56schooling and recognizing that even
17:00as an approach to homeschooling um you
17:04know you don't necessarily need to
17:05replicate school at home and of course
17:07this is what a lot of families kind of
17:09associated homeschooling with back in
17:11the spring of 2020 oh we're just going
17:13to you know kind of import the school
17:15curriculum or these kinds of benchmarks
17:18and expectations that we find in a
17:20conventional classroom we'll just import
17:21that into our home and that's
17:22homeschooling and certainly that's one
17:25approach but i would argue that we don't
17:28need to be tied to that model of
17:30schooling which again is sort of has
17:32these roots in 19th century industrial
17:34model of education that instead we can
17:37think about self-directed education
17:40allowing a child's interest and passions
17:42to drive their learning and then
17:43surround them with the tremendous
17:45resources of our communities both
17:47digital resources and
17:49real life resources in our communities
17:51the mentors the classes the enrichment
17:54opportunities around us as well as just
17:56again this tremendous
17:58abundance of tools and resources in the
18:01online world many of which are free or
18:03low cost so in some ways just thinking
18:06about education beyond schooling it
18:08makes sense for the 21st century
18:11when we do have access to so many more
18:14resources than we did you know you think
18:16about when kids used to go to school it
18:17was because that was where the teachers
18:19were and that was where the textbooks
18:21were and that was where the knowledge
18:23was was based now of course we have
18:25access to that all around us and so
18:27kind of having kids be
18:30forced to go to school five days a week
18:32180 days a year
18:34in this sort of confined age segregated
18:37classroom i think is is just
18:40more and more incompatible with the
18:41needs and realities of the 21st century
18:43and i think more families are realizing
18:45that you know one thing that certainly
18:46the pandemic response did was uproot our
18:49sense of work and a lot of
18:51employers and employees are embracing
18:54telework and working from home and
18:56having more freedom and flexibility in
18:58our work schedules and that doesn't seem
19:00to be going away and i think more
19:02families are realizing gee you know if
19:03i'm not tied to an office building five
19:06days a week and uh tied to this kind of
19:08conventional notion of work then maybe
19:11my children don't need to be tied to a
19:13conventional approach to education
19:15either
19:18yeah that's that's a good insight i
19:19hadn't thought of it that way before
19:21you know
19:23i still do find it hard
19:24uh to understand why some people find it
19:26so strange that uh to homeschool or
19:30unschool your kids because as an adult
19:32that's the way we learn all the time
19:33when i'm interested in something i read
19:35books about it i'll go on amazon i'll go
19:37on youtube
19:39if i need to fix something around the
19:40house
19:42it's like this ju this sort of
19:43just-in-time learning where you're
19:45you're learning what you need to and
19:47then you use that you move on to the
19:48next thing
19:50some things i go really deep on some
19:51things are just surface level but we're
19:54doing that all the time as adults but
19:56for students and kids
19:58we seem to think that oh no they need to
20:00have this they need to learn a little
20:02bit of everything just in case and that
20:04is just
20:05that style of learning we never do that
20:08or rarely do we do that as we get older
20:10and as adults but for some reason
20:13this
20:14horrible way of learning seems to
20:15persist what are your thoughts on why
20:17that yeah
20:19i think that's right you know i think
20:21but i also think more and more families
20:23are realizing um
20:25that children learn in much the same way
20:28that adults learn and that we do have
20:29all of these incredible resources around
20:31us so why not grant the freedom and
20:33flexibility to our children
20:35in their learning as we you know allow
20:38ourselves and so i think we're seeing
20:39that shift i also think and i talk about
20:42this a bit in unschooled as well that um
20:44you know the realities of the 21st
20:46century are such that we increasingly
20:48are competing with robots
20:51and artificial intelligence and so when
20:54we think about the key differentiators
20:57between humans and machines
20:59the key differentiators between human
21:02intelligence and artificial intelligence
21:04it's things like
21:06creativity curiosity an entrepreneurial
21:09spirit a desire for exploration and
21:11discovery
21:13and those are often the qualities these
21:16these really important critical
21:18human qualities that are eroded through
21:21a top-down system of conventional
21:23schooling you know you think about when
21:24a child enters a classroom in the early
21:27days of their schooling experience all
21:29of that kind of natural exuberance for
21:31learning that young children all exhibit
21:34slowly sort of fades and it's not
21:36because kids kind of grow out of that
21:38exuberance for learning it's that this
21:40conventional system of schooling stifles
21:43those qualities those human qualities of
21:47creativity and curiosity and discovery
21:50and so the key really is to just not
21:52stifle those human qualities and to
21:56encourage
21:57creativity over conformity and
22:00originality over obedience
22:03to really enable us to meet the
22:05challenges of the 21st century
22:08yeah
22:09do you see yourself as an entrepreneur
22:11uh doing the roles that you do i know
22:13you also write for forbes which is
22:16uh an entrepreneurial website
22:19but how do you yeah you know i'm an
22:21entrepreneur
22:23absolutely you know i'm an independent
22:25contractor for the think tanks that i
22:26work with and one of the kind of best
22:28parts of my job is
22:31being able to identify and write about
22:35and spotlight and cultivate
22:37education entrepreneurs i really am
22:40inspired by these people
22:42who are in many cases are educators or
22:45people who've been for example public
22:46school teachers
22:48who are
22:49leaving the classroom to create micro
22:52schools or tutoring programs or
22:55platforms that encourage um different
22:58ways of teaching and learning and so
23:00that is such a great rewarding thing for
23:03me
23:05do you try to inculcate that in your
23:07kids as well
23:10absolutely yeah i mean i think you know
23:12we think about what makes this country
23:14great it really is that entrepreneurial
23:16spirit and that um
23:18zest for innovation and invention
23:20um that's available to us here and so
23:23the more that we can encourage
23:25our children to think originally and
23:27creatively
23:29and come up with solutions to various
23:31problems i think we'll all be better off
23:34yeah yeah can you give us a little bit
23:36of an idea of what an unschooling day is
23:38like in your family
23:41yeah so i will say my oldest is a fif is
23:4415 now she is enrolled in a
23:47dual enrollment high school college
23:51program through arizona state university
23:53that i highly recommend it's called asu
23:55prep digital
23:57and so she this was something she wanted
23:59to do she's very passionate about
24:03academics and excelling in particular
24:06math and science are kind of her key
24:09interest areas and so this sort of
24:12academic approach was really important
24:14for her
24:15and so we were able to find this
24:16incredible program that she absolutely
24:18loves and that's one of the things that
24:20i that i make that's a point that i make
24:22in the unschooled book is that
24:24unschooling doesn't mean that you're not
24:26using curriculum it doesn't mean that
24:27you're not following sort of this
24:29academic timeline it just means that
24:32it's something that that is driven by
24:34the child with the support and
24:36facilitation of adults
24:37um and so you know my kids generally do
24:40take their academic classes but they're
24:43things that they're particularly
24:44interested in
24:45and then they're able to spend a lot of
24:47their time in other areas pursuing their
24:49other passions my
24:5213 year old son is a big skateboarder so
24:54he spends a lot of his time
24:56skateboarding
24:57my 11 year old daughter is passionate
25:00about a lot of things in particular
25:01she's the musician in our household so
25:03she played several instruments and this
25:05was something that she you know really
25:06wanted to develop a passion that that
25:08she had and then my little guy my
25:10eight-year-old is interested in
25:12everything but i would say he is our
25:13kind of master chess player cribbage
25:16player board game guy
25:20nice
25:22one thing that i've noticed with my kids
25:23is that i try to encourage them to
25:26create and to not just consume was you
25:28know try to
25:30foster this idea of being a creator and
25:32putting things out there rather than
25:34just because some of sometimes i think
25:36the best way to learn is to teach others
25:38so for example if my kids get a new toy
25:41i'll try to encourage them hey let's put
25:43a a review of it on your youtube channel
25:45and you can talk about the toy talk
25:47about the different aspects of it then
25:48they're learning a little bit of
25:49marketing a little bit of video
25:51production things like that
25:53um
25:54but a lot of times they'll just sit
25:55there and they'll just want to watch
25:56youtube videos of other kids opening
25:58their toys or something like that
26:00how do you find a balance between
26:02creating versus uh
26:04just allowing your kids or creating and
26:07pushing your kids versus allowing them
26:08to kind of follow their natural way of
26:10learning
26:12yeah you know i just think it comes sort
26:14of organically through family dynamics
26:16you know i mean parents have
26:17expectations for their children and
26:20they need to kind of stay true to that
26:22you know one of the things i say very
26:23strongly in the unschooled book is that
26:26parents have the ultimate responsibility
26:28to make sure that their children are
26:30highly educated that their children are
26:31highly literate and numerate and i would
26:33say that that goes
26:35that goes for children who are
26:36homeschooled as well as children who are
26:38in schools that it's ultimately up to
26:40the parents to make sure that their
26:42children are in the best educational
26:43environment possible and that they're
26:45learning everything that they need to be
26:47learning and that they're living up to
26:48their full potential i think that's the
26:49parents responsibility not the schools
26:52or not the the states um and so you know
26:55it is this balance you're right between
26:57making sure that children are learning
26:59um the academics they need but also
27:01pursuing their passions and i think you
27:02know what a lot of unschoolers and
27:04homeschoolers would say is that when you
27:06allow
27:07learning to be more emergent and
27:09immersive
27:10um that happens naturally you know like
27:12i play i was just before i got on the
27:15call with you today i was playing
27:16scrabble with my eight-year-old which of
27:18course is you know filled with literacy
27:21um and calculations and and all of that
27:24so i think some of it is just um
27:27you know cultivating those family
27:28relationships pursuing the child's
27:31interest and realizing how much learning
27:33comes from that
27:36have you noticed the difference between
27:38your
27:38your boys and your girls i i forgot how
27:40uh did you you said you had three kids
27:43i have four yeah they're two boys and
27:45two girls yep
27:47have you noticed a difference between uh
27:48boys and girls or has it just been
27:50individual for each kid
27:53yeah i think it's been individual i
27:54don't i don't see it kind of breaking
27:56down by gender um i think it's
27:58definitely
27:59just individual interests and wonderful
28:02seeing their unique personalities and
28:04the different ways they learn and the
28:06different you know tools and resources
28:07that they gravitate to
28:10yeah yeah
28:12yeah the re i guess the reason i asked
28:13is because my daughter learned to read
28:15fairly uh early on
28:17but my son he's turning five now he's
28:19not really interested in
28:22letters and numbers that much but he
28:23isn't very interested in helping me
28:25build things or fix things around the
28:27house
28:28and um i
28:30that and that kind of mimics what i
28:32experienced growing up as well i was
28:34more actually interested in doing things
28:36and i just i was curious if you found a
28:38similarity
28:40amongst the genders but
28:42probably each kid yeah i mean i think it
28:44i think it could be yeah i don't know
28:45that it breaks down in my little um
28:48sample size that way but they all read
28:51it different at different ages
28:53uh in my book i cite research that shows
28:55that kind of the average age for
28:58students learning outside of a
28:59conventional classroom to gain
29:01proficiency in reading meaning they
29:03could read almost anything is eight and
29:05a half
29:06and of course what we find in the us
29:08today
29:09is that more and more we are
29:12in american schools forcing children to
29:16learn to read at ever younger ages
29:19in fact nowadays expecting
29:21kindergartners so these five-year-olds
29:23to read and and increasingly we're
29:25finding that students that are not
29:26reading at that young age
29:29are either labeled as reading delayed or
29:32increasingly labeled with adhd
29:35because of their inability to sit still
29:37and do academic work in kindergarten and
29:40it's not the kids that have changed it's
29:42the benchmarks that have changed and the
29:44academic expectations
29:46and i think that's the real tragedy is
29:47that we need to allow for children to
29:49develop on their own individual
29:51timelines to recognize that some kids
29:53will read it four and four or five and
29:55some kids might not read until they're
29:56eight or nine and we need to provide for
29:58that kind of flexibility the same way we
30:00provide for that flexibility in other
30:02areas of child development you know if
30:04not every child was walking by the time
30:06they're 12 months old we wouldn't say
30:08they were walking delayed
30:10we would acknowledge that there is this
30:13span of time and that it kind of
30:15operates on a bell curve
30:17of when children learn to walk and when
30:20and when children learn to read and i
30:21think providing more of that freedom and
30:23flexibility uh in educational settings
30:26is critical and certainly homeschoolers
30:28have been doing that for a long time
30:31yeah yeah i think that's one of the
30:34what you mentioned there is that
30:35individuality and i i read a lot of
30:37books or autobiographies about
30:39entrepreneurs and great thinkers and a
30:41lot of times
30:42they're they don't fit the mold and i
30:44feel that's my fear about public
30:46education is sort of a one-size-fits-all
30:48it's like if you're a little bit outside
30:50of the norm or on either end of the tail
30:52of the bell curve you you could get
30:54labeled you can get ignored and you can
30:57get pushed in a direction that's not
30:58really optimized for you
31:01but have you found that amongst people
31:03like ceos or entrepreneurs or thinkers i
31:06think you had a story about thomas
31:07edison
31:08about it
31:10correct me if i'm wrong but i think his
31:11mom started homeschooling him because he
31:13was a little bit outside the norm but
31:15have you found that as well
31:17yeah i talk in the book about thomas
31:19edison who
31:20went to the school went to school for
31:21the first time when he was eight years
31:23old this was kind of mid-19th century
31:26and he was he only lasted a couple of
31:29weeks because his teacher
31:31called him adult
31:33which means kind of fuzzy in the mind
31:35not a clear thinker and his mom who was
31:38a teacher really pushed back
31:40against the t the thomas's teacher
31:43but didn't make any headway so she
31:45pulled him out and homeschooled him
31:48he was reading you know great literature
31:50by the time he was a tween he was
31:53creating a makeshift lab in his basement
31:56and you know really kind of developed
31:58those skills that ultimately led to him
32:01um being an inventor and in fact i talk
32:04about one of his chemists in a biography
32:06of thomas edison
32:08who worked in his famous lab in new
32:10jersey and he said that you know
32:12if
32:13thomas edison had gone to school he
32:15wouldn't have had the audacity to create
32:18such impossible things so just this
32:21ability to look beyond kind of
32:23convention and imagine different
32:25possibilities and different solutions as
32:27opposed to
32:29kind of the standardized way in which we
32:30learn in school i think is so critical
32:32one of the pieces of research that i
32:34cite in the unschooled book
32:36is
32:37research on the outcomes of grown
32:39unschoolers so
32:41the person who wrote the forward to my
32:43unschooled book is dr peter gray who's a
32:46psychology professor at boston college
32:48and a big proponent of self-directed
32:50learning
32:52and he and his colleague gina riley did
32:54a survey of grown unschoolers and they
32:58found that more than half of these grown
33:00unschoolers were working as
33:02entrepreneurs in adulthood and many of
33:05them were were working in fields related
33:08to interests that they
33:11began cultivating in childhood or
33:12adolescence
33:14so really no surprise there i think that
33:16this again this creativity curiosity
33:18ability to think about things in a
33:20different way would lead to
33:22entrepreneurship
33:24later in life
33:27yeah
33:28part of what i liked about your book is
33:30how you incorporate
33:32uh quotes and books from both the left
33:34and the right so you had quotes in there
33:36from noam chomsky
33:38and you had quotes from the other side
33:40as well in books and resources
33:42yeah it seems to me that the the old
33:45left like the cis 60s like hippie they
33:48were they would be more
33:50favorable towards this type of schooling
33:52but now it seems like the left is more
33:54aligned with us the status model the one
33:57size fits all do you still see the uh
34:00this is there's a that there's a
34:01distinction between left and right as it
34:03relates to homeschooling
34:06well it's one of the reasons why i
34:08traced the origins of
34:10unschooling and self-directed education
34:13back to the ideas of the enlightenment
34:15and of john locke who was even in the
34:19late 17th century what we would think of
34:21as a proponent today of gentle parenting
34:24and natural learning uh and of course
34:27you know kind of form the foundation of
34:30our liberal values of non-coercion and
34:34of
34:35self-determination and tolerance for
34:37difference
34:38and so i think those are classical
34:39liberal values that we see in the
34:42history of unschooling and of course in
34:44other areas as well
34:45and that we just need to remember today
34:47that you know this is about um
34:50choice over force uh consent over
34:53coercion you know one of my favorite
34:55quotes from john locke is it is one
34:58thing to persuade another to command uh
35:01one thing to
35:04push with
35:05penalties another with argument uh
35:07something i think i just botched that a
35:08little bit but it's something along
35:10those lines and you know i think it's
35:12even more relevant today we have to
35:14think about
35:15freedom over force and and certainly
35:17we've seen that um in the evolution of
35:19homeschooling and unschooling as well
35:22yeah
35:24well carrie i really appreciate you
35:25taking the time out of your day to come
35:27on the call with me and talk about your
35:28book and these ideas alright is there
35:30anything that we
35:32we have or haven't covered today that
35:34you'd like to add before we end the call
35:37no it's been great talking with you erin
35:39i would just say that to your listeners
35:41they can find me at the foundation for
35:44economic education at fee.org slash
35:47kerry k-e-r-r-y
35:49there you can see links to my articles
35:53find my new podcast
35:56to sign up for my weekly newsletter and
35:57connect with me in social media and over
35:59email
36:02great thanks so much for coming on the
36:03call today carrie
36:05thanks erin

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