>> thank you all. you all cut to the bone and the soul. thank you. ♪♪ >> american history tv saturdays on c-span2 exploring people and events that tell the american story. 12:30 p.m. eastern on the presidency revealing the life of martha washington from her surviving personal letters, author of the washington catherine garrett, research editor the papers of george washington project of the university of virginia and 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, college professor richard campbell talking about american churches and religion during world war i and shows 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 watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. >> there are a lot of places to get political information for only i c-span to get it straight from the source. no matter where you're from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here or here or here or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. >> i want to show you the coverage of this new book, unschooled, raising curious well educated children outside conventional classroom written by carrie mcdonald.

before we get into the substance of the book, tell us about yourself. >> it's great to be with you and i'm a senior education fellow at the foundation for economic education celebrating our 75th anniversary this year. i am a scholar at the cato institute and the writer at forbes and author of unschooled which came out in 2019, spring of 2019 and had quite a bit of renewed interest this past year plus doing school shutdowns and upsurge in interest in homeschooling and alternatives to schools particularly with school shutdowns and delayed reopening plans.. >> on a practical level, have you been a teacher in a classroom where children of preschool age? >> i'm homeschooling mom myself,

i have four children who have never been schooled and range in age seven to 14 so the book does tighten some of the personal experience and reflection but i travel the country in writing the book and visit other homeschooling families as well as self-directed learning centers and other schooling alternatives cater to families looking for something different and customize for the children's education outside of the traditional environment for school. my undergraduate is an heir to alex and went to graduate school at harvard and that's where i became interested in education choice and freedom and alternatives to school and education entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs coming up with new earning models of the k to 12 level and new ways to meet the demand for something different for the kids.

>> you say your children have been homeschooled but have they been unschooled? is there a difference? >> yes. the differences that homeschooling and on schooling are both alternatives to school outside conventional classroom but with on schooling it focused on self-directed education so we think about on schooling as disentangling education from schooling including school at home methods, homeschooling to the stereotypical version of homeschooling where you might have a parent sitting around the kitchen table textbooks advocating school at home, i challenge that a little bit in this book to suggest that you don't need to replicate school at home even in homeschooling models, you can encourage children's natural create curiosity and creativity and of as a parent connect the interests and passions your kids naturally have to available

community resources, places and things around us. >> how do you get to the basics of teaching math and reading literacy to children in an unschooled environment? >> i made it clear in the book that after every parents responsibility to make sure their children are highly educated. i would t argue is true whether your children are o in school or not, parents need to make sure their kids are actually learning and being educated and with on schooling because there is so much more family involvement in education because parents are tuned in to their children's strength and weaknesses and areas of interest, it's easier to connect resources and build upon the knowledge children have in their natural curiosity so i go through the book talking about how to approach reading and math through an un-

schooling approach and it's important to mention on schooling is not anti- curriculum or anti- traditional fluid learning, is the idea that it's self student directed as opposed to walking down. many unschooled children will graphic take toward a curriculum or some or all subjects, many take community college classes in high school years. a survey done on on schoolers by doctor peter ray, psychology professor at boston college and an advocate who wrote the forward to my book, he and his colleague discovered most on schoolers spent time during their high school years taking community college classes often getting an associates degree at the same age their peers would

be getting a high school diploma and then able to enroll in a four-year university, transferring credits and saving quite a bit of money so it's practical particularly now with skyrocketing tuition rates at universities. ... have grown exponentially in the last 20 years is that saying something about public education? >> it has grown tremendously over the past couple of decades, the first year the u.s. department of education begin tracking homeschoolers was 1998 at the time they counted 850,000 that number to 2 million, just under 2 million in 2016 and over the past year when the school shutdown since up again underpinned them a week in a march 2020 we seen a tripling of the homeschooling from the pre-pandemic level so the u.s. census bureau released a report

in february finding that more than 11% of the overall k-12 school-age population is been in. > now more than percent of the population identifies as black compared to 15 percent of black students in the general k through five public school population. host: is that sending a. message to public schools? >> this year for sure parents were frustrated about delayed school reopening then zoom

school did not meet the needs of many students and parents felt like they could do things better particularly once i got a glimpse at what the kids were or were not learning in the classroom part of it is thatoo the growth of homeschooling over the past couple of decades has been more of a desire to provide a more personalized and custom-made education that data from 2012 and 2016 shows the number one reason parents are choosing to homeschool is that concern of other schools including bullying, negative pressure, that sortt of thing and theas number two motivator was that desire for academic excellence that is a reflection on the conventional school system that a sense of parenting we empowered to help

guide children's education to give a more robust education. host: you use the term coercive schooling. what does that mean? >> it is the idea that we are compelling students to be in school through the laws and through the coercive measures top-down that this time in this way with very little customization into double down on the standardization of learning over the past couple of decades beginning with the no child left behind act from 2001 that has just been tolerated and "the new york times"e came out with an in-depth article on homeschooling a couple years ago and they found that some of the biggest urban secular

families are particularly turned off by the growing standardization of schooling of common core curriculum and the push for academic standards and expecting kindergartners to be reading that really has turned off a lot of parents. so the idea of injecting more consent over conformity. host: what is r the role of technology to further unschooled and homeschooledom children? >> there are so many online resources for homeschoolers andd conventional children. we have seen with technology over the past year it has been bumpy as publiced schools try to implement remote learning but

there are incredible online learning programs that they continually rely on that other families could discover over the past year like kahn academy the nonprofit organization that isrg the leader of online free learning videos that's known for their math curriculum and a lot of homeschoolers have been using them for years and a lot more families discover them this year but high-quality online learning resources to make homeschooling and other alternatives more accessible to more families. host: you talk about natural learning can you expand on that? >> in children naturally curious and exuberant and creative always asking why and

are eager to explore and discover their world. so as he has so eloquently put to drive the learning and discovery when a child turns five or six years old we turn them off with the schooling so the idea with an schooling separating education from schooling instead of one method of education but not the only mad. for the realities of the 21st century and the idea is to not shut off a natural drive to creativity and curiosity. and think of the needs of the 2t century we are increasingly competing andpe coexisting with

human intelligence versus artificial intelligence like creativity and curiosity on the entrepreneurial spirit andnd so often in a coercive system of schooling to trade originality for obedience and trading creativity for conformity and not shut off the natural human t drive for discovery and learning that is still critical now more than ever. host: what is the downside to unscrewing - - an schooling. >> it is a moment that families are discovering conventional school is not meeting the needs of many families over the past year and now more than ever they are looking for alternatives to support school choice has soared and has been we

empowered to take the reins of their children's education and seek other options and there are so many online learning programs, community resources to step in and support these families. host: carrie mcdonald is the author. thank you for joining us on booktv.