♪♪ ♪♪ we want to show you know the cover of this new book raising children outside of the conventional classroom and its written by carrie mcdonald.

i am a senior education fellow for economic education and add adjunct scholar at the a instite and as you mentioned is the author of on the schools that came out and had quite a bit of interest given the full shutdowns and the upsurge in interest and alternative schools against the shutdown and of the reopening plans the book does tie in from the personal

experience and reflection and to visit other homeschooling families as well as the learning centers and other school alternatives and customize for their children's education's. with the economics and graduate school and policy at harvard was the education choice and freedom and education entrepreneurship coming up with new learning models for the demand. >> you say your children have been homeschooled. but have they been unschooled, is there a difference? >> the difference is that

homeschooling of course or alternatives to schools in conventional classrooms focused on education if we think about education from schooling including the methods of homeschooling so the stereo typical version of homeschooling where you have a fair and sitting around a kitchen table with textbooks and sort of replicating i challenge that. you don't need to replicate if you can encourage children's national curiosity and creativity and as a parent connect those interests and passions that your kids naturally had to other community

resources. >> what teaching math and literacy to children in an unschooled environment? >> i missed the point so clearly in the book the responsibilities to make sure the children are highly educated and i would argue that is true whether your children are in school or not in school. because there's so much family involvement and the knowledge children have and the curiosity to discover and how to encourage reading and math.

there's the sort of style of traditional learning just the idea is student directed as opposed to top-down so you will find many will gravitate to a curriculum many end up taking community college classes in the high school years and by doctor peter gray and advocate that wrote the forward he and a colleague discovered during the high school years taking community college classes and at the same age being able to enroll in a four-year university transfer of credits into saving

bquite a bit of money so it isa practical approach particularly now with skyrocketing tuition rates at universities. >> it seems that the movement has grown exponentially in the last 20 years. is that saying something about public education? >> something has grown in the the pastcouple of decades, you'. the first time they began tracking homeschoolers was 1998 and that number soared to about 2 million in 2016 and then over the past year the shutdown since the pandemic in march of 2020 we see the tripling of the rate from that pandemic levels of the census bureau released the report in february finding that now moreth than 11% of the overl

school age population is being homeschooled which is over 5 million students with tremendous growth and one of the things the census bureau found in particular is that it's being driven inn large part with a fivefold increase from 2020 and to the black homeschooling families now they identify with about 15% of black students in the general public school population. >> is that sending a message about public schools? >> parents areer frustrated abot the reopenings not meeting the needs of many students and

particularly what some of the kids were learning or not learning in the classroom. part of it is in the past couple of decades more of a desire to provide a more customized education and the department ofu education data from a 2012 and 2016 shows the number one reason that parents are choosing to home school is concerned about the environment of other schools including bullying, negative peer pressures, that sort of thing and the number two motivator is the desire for excellence so that is on the conventional school system and a sense of parenting re- empowered to help guide the children's education learning that they may be getting

elsewhere. >> you use the term coercive schooling. what does that mean? >> this idea that we are compelling students to be in school as well as through the course of top-down measures and a subject at this time and in this role with little customization on the standardization of learning in the past couple of decades beginning with the passage of the no child left behind act. w"the new york times" came out with an article on homeschooling several years ago and found some of the biggest roles happening

the push for the younger ages expecting kindergartners to be reading and all of that goes to parents. >> what's been the role of technology in furthering unschooled and homeschooled children? >> there are so many online resources for homeschoolers and conventional schoolchildren. in the technologies over the past year, i think that it's been certainly bumpy at the district level. but the incredible private learning, online learning

program that they continue to rely on to discover over the past year with a nonprofit organization that's been particularly known for the mass curriculum using them for years and there's this proliferation of high quality online learning resources. >> you touched on this a little bit earlier and talked about natural learning. can you expand on that a little bit? >> the idea is that young children are naturally curious and exuberant and creative and always asking why and are eager to explore and discover their world and as i mentioned who wrote the forward to my book,

the drive through learning and discovery when a child turns five or 6-years-old, we turn them off with sort of separating education from schooling thinking about one method of education and arguably not the best one so the realities of the 21st century and the idea is to not shut off the learning discovery curiosity and instead a drive to flourish. we are increasingly competing with robots and machines. what distinguishes human intelligence to artificial intelligence for creativity, curiosity, originality and

entrepreneurial spirit.en those are the qualities that diminish in the course of systems of schooling's with the originality, with trade creativity's in the schools and the human drive for the discovery of learning that are so critical now more than ever. >> what is the downside to on the schooling? >> i think there is a true upside. there's a moment of discovering that conventional schooling is and meeting their needs over the past yearav and now more than er looking for alternatives for the support of school choice to be re- empowered to take the reins and either option and there are

so many online learning programs and community resources that are there to step in and support. >> outside the conventional classroom, thank you for joining us on booktv. >> great to be with you. thanks. in 1787, james madison gave 167 speeches, made a 72 motions and served on four committees at the constitutional convention in philadelphia. in the preface of his new biography of the president, he writes most importantly, madison offered at the virginia plan, a bold call for a total redesign of the national government that sets the agenda for the convention and established the

foundation upon which the constitution would be built. at that time, james madison was 36-years-old. james madison was the first politician. set the stage about how you ended up doing this in the first place and in the meantime, i will work