>> middle and high school students it's your time to shine. you are invited to participate in this year's cspan's studentcam documentary competition. in light of the upcoming midterm election picture yourself as a newly elected member of congress. congress. we ask this use competitors what is your top priority and why? make a five to six minute video that shows the importance of your issues them opposing and supporting perspectives. don't be afraid to take risks with your documentary. be bold. amongst the $100,000 in cash prizes is a $5000 grand prize. videos must be submitted by january 20, 2023. visit our website at studentcam.org for competition rules, tips, resources and a step-by-step guide.

>> host: what want to showe cover of this new book, "unschooled: raising curious, well-educated children outside the conventional classroom." and it's written by kerry mcdonald ms. mcdonald before we get into the substance of the book tell us a little bit about yourself. >> guest: sure. it's basically, it's great to be with you. on the senior educational at the foundation for economic education just celebrating our 75th year anniversary this year as a country oldest free-market think tank, i'm also an adjunct scholar at the cato institute, frequent writer at forbes and as you mentioned the author of "unschooled" which came out in 2019 innerspring atonement team but had quite a bit of renewed interest over the past year plus given the full shutdowns and the upsurge in interest in homeschooling and alternative to school taken with against school shutdowns and

delayed reopening plans. >> host: on a practical level have you been a teacher in a classroom or do you have children who are a school-age? >> guest: so i am a homeschooling mom isil. i have four children who have never been schooled who range in age from seven seven to 1e book does high in some of that sort of personal experience and reflection but i traveled the country in writing the book and visit other homeschooling families as well as learning centers and other schooling alternatives that are really cater to families looking for something different, , something more customize for their children's education. outside the to get of the traditional school environment. i background, my undergraduate degree is in economics and then went to graduate school and education policy at harvard and that's why became interested in education choice, freedom and alternatives to school and education entrepreneurship,

really entrepreneurs coming up with new learning models at the k-12 level and new ways to meet the demands the parents had for something different for the kids. >> host: kerry mcdonald, you say your children have been homeschooled but have they been unschooled? is a different? >> guest: yes. so the difference is that homeschooling and un-schooling are of course both alternatives to school. outside of conventional classroom but with un-schooling actually focused on self-directed education. so if we think about un-schooling as sort of disentangling education from schooling, including school at home methods homeschooling. sort of a stereotypical version of homeschooling or you might have a parent sitting around a kitchen table with textbooks and sort of replicating school at home, i challenged that a little bit in this book and suggests

that you don't need replicate school at home even in homeschooling models, that you can encourage children's natural curiosity and creativity. it is apparent really connect those interests and passions that your kids naturally have two available committee resources that people places and things around us. >> host: so how do you get to the basics of teaching math and reading, literacy, two children if in an unschooled environment? >> guest: yeah, so make the point very clearly in the book that it every parents responsible to make sure their children are highly educated, and i would argue that is to rather your children are in school or not in school, that parents need to make sure the kids are actually learning and being educated. with un-schooling e is so much more family involvement in education because parents are really tuned in to their children's strengths and weaknesses and areas of

interest, it is easier to get connect those resources and build upon the knowledge that children have at a natural curiosity to discovery. i do go through the book talking about how to approach reading and math through an unschooled in approach and it's important to mention that they are not sort of anti-curriculum or you know, sort of the traditional learning. it's just that the idea is that if self-directed, student directed as opposed to top down. you'll find many unschooled children will gravitate to a curriculum for some subjects are all subjects in many unschooled yours and taking community college classes in the high school years to get back a survey done on dr. peter great as a psychology professor at boston college and un-schooling advocate who wrote the forward

to my book he and his colleagues discovered most did spend time during high school years taking community college classes, often getting an associates degree at the same age that their peers would beginning high school dipa and in being able to enroll in a four-year university transferring those credits and save quite a bit of money. it's also really practical approach particularly now with skyrocketing tuition rates at universities. >> host: it seems the homeschool and the unschooled movement have grown exponentially in the last 20 years. is that saying something about public education? >> guest: homeschooling has grown tremendously over the past couple of decades. you're right, the first years the u.s. department of education began tracking homeschoolers with 1998 1998 at the timey counted 850,000. that number poured to about 2 million just under 2 million

in 2016, and then over the past year of the school shutdowns since the pandemic began in march 2020 we have seen a tripling of homeschooling rate from the pre-pandemic level. so, so that the u.s. census bureau released a report in february find that now more than 11% of the overall k-12 school age population is being homeschooled, , which is over 5 million students. it's a tremendous growth in one of the thinks u.s. census bureau found in particular was that growth was really being driven in large part by black homeschooling families. there was a fivefold increase the march 2022 the school year that just ended of black homeschooling families. now an overrepresentation more than 16% of the overall homeschool population identifies as black compared to about 15% of black students in the general k-12 public school population.

>> host: is that sending a message about public schools? >> guest: well, i think for this year for sure parents were really frustrated about the late school reopening, zoom district schooling was that meeting the needs of many students, and parents felt like they could do things better, particularly once they got a glimpse perhaps about some of their kids were learning, or were not learning in the classroom through remote schooling beginning last spring. part of it is that. the overall growth in homeschooling over the past couple of decades has been really more of a desire to provide a more personalized and customized education. in fact, the u.s. department of education data from 2012 and 2016 shows that the number one reason that parents are choosing to homeschool is concerned about the environment of other schools, including bullying, negative peer pressure, that sort of thing.

and the number two reason, the number two motivator was a desire for academic excellence. i think that is somewhat of a reflection on the conventional school system but really a sense of parenting re-empowered to help guide their children's education and learning and give them a more robust education, kerry mcdonald, in "unschooled" use the term coercive schooling. what does that mean? >> guest: so coercive schooling a sort of this idea that we are compelling students to be in schools through compulsory schooling laws, as well as to the coercive measures top ten ten measures that yu learned this subject at this time in this way with very little customization. in fact, it doubles down on the standardization of learning over the past couple of decades beginning with the passage of no child left behind act in 2001 which i get into in the

"unschooled" book and that is just accelerate over the past couple of decades. the "new york times" came out with an in-depth article on homeschooling several years ago, and they found some of the biggest growth in today's homeschooling families is happening in urban secular families who were particularly turn off by this growing standardization of schooling, common core curriculum screen, so on, frequent testing, push for academic standards at every younger ages, expecting kindergartners to be reading and all about the really turned off a lot of parents. so this idea of injecting education with more freedom and consent over coercion and conformity. >> host: what's been the role of technology in furthering unschooled and homeschooled children? >> guest: well, now there are just so many online resources for homeschoolers and

conventionally schooled children. we have certainly seen the reliance on technology over the past year. i think that it's been certainly bumpy at the district level in public schools have tried to implement remote learning in many cases but there are incredible private learning online learning programs that homeschoolers continue, continually rely on that i think of the fans were able to discover over the past you. i'm thinking of something like khan academy a nonprofit organization that sort is the leader in online free learning videos that are particularly known for their math curriculum. a lot of homeschoolers have been using them for years and more families discovered in this year. there's just this information really of high quality online learning resources that make homeschooling and his other schooling alternatives more accessible to more families. >> host: you touched on this little bit earlier but you talk to naturally. could you expand on that a

little bit? >> guest: so the idea is that young children are naturally curious, exuberant, creative. they are always asking why, and i really eager to explore and discover their world. and as i mentioned peter gray wrote the forward to my book, as he has so eloquently put, these natural dreiser learning and discovery don't magically turned themselves off when a a child turns five or six years old. we turn them off with our poor system of schooling. so the idea with un-schooling and separating education from schooling, thinking about schooling as one method of education but serving of the only one, and arguably not the best one for the realities of the 21st century, the idea is to just not shut off as natural dreiser for learning, discovery, creativity and curiosity. and instead allow those drives to florists.

we think about the needs of the 21st century where we are increasingly competing and coexisting with robots and machines, you know, what is it that distinguishes human intelligence from artificial intelligence? and its things like creativity, kerry yossi, originality, ingenuity entrepreneurial spirit here and so often those are the qualities that get diminished in a coercive system schooling. we sort of trade originality for obedience in schools. we trade creativity for conformity in schools, and that really sets off those natural human drives for discovery and learning that are so critical now more than ever. >> host: all right. what's a downside to un-schooling? >> guest: you know, i think there is, through upside i think visually as is a moment that families are discovering

conventional schooling is not meeting their needs, circa have met the needs of many counties over the past year and now more than ever families are looking for alternatives for support for school choice has soared over the past year. parents were put back in the driver side, they are being re-empowered to take the reins of their children's education and seek other options. and there are so many education entrepreneurs come online learning programs, community resources that are there to step in and support these families looking for different way to learn. >> host: kerry mcdonald is the author of this book, "unschooled: raising curious, well-educated children outside the conventional classroom." thanks for joining us on booktv. >> guest: great to be with you, peter. thanks. >> american history tv saturdays on c-span2 exploring the people and events that tell the american story. at 12:30 p.m. eastern on the presidency reaping the life of

first lady martha washington are surviving personal letters with lower fraser author of the washingtons and catherine garret research editor at the papers of george washington project at the university university of virginia. at 8 p.m. eastern on lectures in history hillsdale college professor richard campbell talks about american churches and religion during world war i picky shares how american pastors ministers and rabbis spoke about the great war before and after the u.s. entered the conflict. exploring the american story, watch american history tv saturdays on c-span2 and find a full schedule on your program guide our watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents american stories, and on sundays booktv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and autrs