Kerry McDonald | The Unschooling Movement & The Many Pitfalls Of Conventional Education

00:04 The planet's puppet masters almost surely have a plan There clearly may be something there beyond the realm of man Until we've thoroughly tested every last closed chested view Find the more you think, you know unless you really do Who would we be without THC? We know they're lying to us just don't know what degree

00:41 be without THC. The highest side chat show, Greg Carlwood and company Brace yourself, people. From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood and it's pretty clear society is on shaky ground with too many people living under a high degree of stress and irritation with very little direction in their lives And if we reverse engineer many of our problems and why so many adults seem behind in creative problem-solving discernment emotional intelligence and independent thinking

01:23 All roads lead to having to take a good hard look at the education system in this country. Not only have we been slowly slipping further down the list in most major categories for as long as I've been alive, But our mandated school system seems to have been quite possibly crafted with ill intent from the ground up. With investors in the system just looking to get more bodies on the assembly line as opposed to nurturing anyone that could actually become their competition, emphasizing gold star accumulation and pats on the head from authority figures over almost anything else Breaking down the independent spirit of children in exchange for a regimented oppressive structure that is closer matched to prison than an optimal learning environment. Conditioning us to respond to bells and lockstep, preparing us for adulthood where your work is never really done, those who can't conform are often labeled as slow from incredibly early age or drugged until they feel appropriately numb

02:17 And if this all might sound like I'm going a bit too far, take a good look at the quality of food offered to our growing youth at some of the most important times in their development and tell me if it seems like they want optimized healthy robust children. Well lucky for us there are incredible people out there fighting for much better alternatives like today's guest Carrie McDonald. Carrie is a senior education fellow at The Foundation Of Economic Education and hosts The Weekly Liberated podcast She is also the author of Unschooled, Raising Curious Well-Educated Children Outside of the Conventional Classroom as well as being an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute, Education Policy Fellow at State Policy Network and a regular Forbes contributor. Carey's research interests include homeschooling and schooling alternatives self directed learning education entrepreneurship parent empowerment school choice and family and child policy

03:11 She has a master's degree in education policy from Harvard University, a bachelor's degree in economics from Bowdoin College and she is front and center in the very encouraging unschooling movement. So let's get into it! The education educator parent empowerer an increasingly important unschooling advocate Carrie welcome to the higher side Hi Greg, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me! Yeah this is a real pleasure your book is excellent I appreciate the deep dive into the history of our education system the data we have regarding how it affects children and all the great alternatives that you highlight

03:48 And I like the term unschooling, which you write is simply living and allowing your children to live without the specter of conventional schooling and school-like thinking. It is the act of fusing living and learning of seeing them as one in the same." And it's hard to disagree with that but elaborate a bit for us if you could how does the philosophy behind unschooling compare to the philosophy behind conventional government schools? That's a great question and I do kind of explore the history of the term unschooling as well as sort of the philosophical roots of unschooling or self-directed education. I use the terms interchangeably throughout unschooled, and the term unschooling was actually coined in 1977 by John Folt

04:34 He was a renowned author and educator. He wrote the bestselling books, How Children Fail and How Children Learn in the 1960s. And he became a real leading advocate for homeschooling and for parents opting out of government schools to educate their own children using the resources of their communities and really pushing for this self-directed approach to allow children's interests and passions to drive their learning instead of just sort of replicating school at home. So he really pushed for what we would think of as more of this unstructured approach to homeschooling and not just changing the location of school to home, but essentially importing all of those same characteristics in school with top-down expectations and curriculum and evaluation that we might see in sort of standard homeschooling environments. And so really on

05:24 Unschooling and self-directed education are truly the opposite of what we would consider standard schooling. It's a much more bottom-up approach, much more decentralized. Really again focused on an individual child interest and passions and having that guide learning and the sort of fundamental premise is I'm sure you can appreciate as the father of a young child, a toddler at this point. Young children are naturally curious and creative and especially i'm sure you'll see over the coming months and years they Young children are incredibly inquisitive. They're always asking why, they're always eager to explore the world around them and figure out what things work and how things work and why they work that way

06:09 And the sort of idea with unschooling is that those natural drives for learning can continue, should continue will continue if we allow children to continue to learn in that really exploratory way that they're given. The chance to do when they're young by simply not placing them into this kind of traditional schooling structure And the person who wrote the foreword to my unschooled book is Boston College psychology professor, Peter Gray who also wrote the book Free To Learn. And he's a real advocate for unschooling and self-directed education and a critic of forced schooling and compulsory schooling. He will say too that sort of these natural drives for learning and discovery don't turn themselves off when a child turns five or six years old and heads to kindergarten we turn them off

06:59 with our coercive system of schooling, to paraphrase his insights there. And so I think that's just the sort of the general idea is let's just allow that creativity and curiosity and those natural drives for learning to continue throughout childhood and adolescence. Yes, that is a great setup. You made a good point there about kids in their youth before they reach school age. That's something I was going to bring up that is in the book a lot you talk about the way we tend to think about kids at around the age of five or so when they start school we allow them to grow and learn naturally for the first five years and then it's going to kindergarten. And much like maybe the puberty stage of life we've talked ourselves into thinking that there is this other stage of life around five where playtime is over kids need to knuckle down and that

07:52 declining childhood creativity is just a natural consequence of growing up. But with unschooled kids, we see something totally different right? Yeah so a couple of things there first I would say that really just even in the past generation and we've seen schooling take over much more of children's lives and adolescent lives than ever before We have schooling starting at much younger ages many children sort of in daycare preschool now universal, you know government preschool in some areas and pre-k programs so that standard schooling structure begins in some places much earlier than age five or six and extends much later into adolescence. You know it was the case certainly when I was a teenager that you know teens in the afternoon had after school jobs or would work on weekends and would have summer jobs

08:44 And today, not only is teen labor force participation down to sort of record lows. But you also see that in place of the kind of real life work experience and some of these other experiences outside of school today's adolescents are frequently doing academic things they're continuing to do sort of school like activities even in the afterschool and summer vacations and so on. So forced schooling has really come to define so much of childhood and adolescence and consume so much of young people's lives today, much more than it was even a generation ago. And along with that is this sort of push for expectations academic expectations down to younger ages

09:31 at this point, you know, kindergartners are expected to read. And if they're not reading by the end of kindergarten, they're often labeled as reading delayed and all that's changed there are the expectations around kindergarten and early childhood development and learning, not the children themselves. In fact it was an interesting research study done by researchers at the University of Virginia who found that In 1998, only about 30% of kindergarten teachers surveyed said that children should be reading by the end of kindergarten. And just 12 years later in passage of No Child Left Behind at the federal level and pushed towards kind more standardized education, by 2010 80% percent of teachers said that children should be reading by the end of kindergarten again all that had changed really was the benchmark not the children

10:22 And that's where we're seeing, and we can go into this I'm sure in our discussion today but we're seeing kind of skyrocketing rates of children being labeled with ADHD and other sorts of maladies because in many cases they're just simply too young to be doing academic work that again a generation ago we wouldn't have even expected them to do. Great points! On the subject of benchmarks i'm actually curious because i hear a lot of maybe hyperbole and then i just don't know where the truth really is in terms of, the last couple years and what cove it has done and distance learning all the policies around that how to affected kids.

11:02 i've heard that kids are drastically behind traditional benchmarks i've heard that it's really not so bad i have even heard that the benchmarks themselves have been quietly. Change the bars of been lowered so that, is easier to climb over because they know that there's been some setbacks because of this what your thoughts on all that Well, I think there's a couple of interesting things with that point. And certainly all of these media headlines screaming about learning loss pandemic learning loss over the past couple of years of remote zoom schooling through one district and certainly that was suboptimal in a disaster for some families with school districts simply not set up to

11:47 perform, you know remotely. In other cases it was a way for families to actually see what was happening in their children's classrooms and maybe realize the curriculum wasn't actually that great to begin with whether it was in person or virtual but either way certainly the focus right now is on this pandemic learning loss and I had an article not too long ago at fee.org where I basically said the issue here is not learning loss, it's schooling. It's sort of that we've talked about this for years with summer slide which was the term used to describe this alleged learning loss from students from the spring semester then learning loss over the summer and then they come back in the fall and forgotten what they learned in the spring. And you know, I made the point

12:34 Over several years, including in the unschooled book and now again and in terms of talking about this alleged coven learning loss that you know content that can be so easily lost. was never really learned authentically to begin with. I mean, if it's so easy to lose all of that content, was it ever really something that students really learned and had kind of internalized? And sort of the same idea that we graduate from high school at say 18, if we can still quickly lose what we've supposedly learned over all those years again, what does it say about the quality of that learning? So that's sorta the main point there, that the quality of schooling and this kinda

13:13 Memorization and regurgitation that happens in conventional classrooms isn't really learning. It's sort of playing the game of school, making sure you give the teacher the answer that he or she wants and that you regurgitate correctly on a test but it doesn't necessarily signal That you're actually learning meaningful content And then sort of the larger point is You'll much more likely learn content when it's tied to your interests and passions, when it's kind of self-directed driven by you as an individual in pursuit of your own goals and objectives. And I'll also say another, you know sort of another viewpoint on that is I've talked to education entrepreneurs and micro school founders across the country especially those who create these kind of outside-of-the system non traditional education options like micro schools and learning pods at home school collaboratives. And I talked to one micro school founder recently in Kansas

14:07 who had worked for years in the Wichita public schools as a teacher, had then left to create a tutoring center which she turned into a full-time micro school during the COVID response because her parents really wanted something formal and not just kind of part time tutoring program. And they didn't want to send their kids back to the district schools And during her time of working with the tutoring center and then formulating the micro school, and then looking at this supposed data on learning loss. She said that really this just exposed kind of the low quality of learning that existed even prior to COVID it just now people are more attuned to those low expectations in those low performance benchmarks

14:48 Right on right yeah i love hearing examples like that and great points it's not really about the coven policies its about the bad foundation it's like the distance learning just through gasoline on an already pretty bad educational dumpster fire there we have And you also made the point that it did give parents an opportunity to get a closer look at their kids education and a lot of them didn't like what they were saying i find it really exciting actually just how many different sectors of business, During the last couple years saw how little control they had when it came to things like lockdowns and there are many people pivoting make sure they don't fall into the same situation independent holistic health doctors on the rise more business owners are looking into.

15:38 The private membership association structure, which gives them more freedom networking and local community action has never been stronger. And in the education sector this seems to be really popping off. Can you give people a sense of what this counter reaction really looks like across the country? And how many new options families have now that they might not have had just three years ago? Yes, that's such a great question Greg because I think about the education disruption or transformation really over the past couple of years. I like to put it into buckets of what I call the three E's so there is empowerment exit and entrepreneurship and you had this parent empowerment certainly beginning in the spring 2020 where parents actually had a close up look at what was happening in their kids schools and then their classrooms

16:29 And then certainly throughout the rest of the kind of academic year 2020 into 21, continue to kinda see the ways in which local district schools were not responsive to parents' needs. Yet private schools and parochial schools were much more responsive because they had bills to pay and they wouldn't be able to stay open if they didn't accommodate the families that were choosing them. So we saw them much more adaptive and creative really in kind of getting back to normal as quickly and safely as possible. So parent empowerment certainly in 2020, we also saw the rise then in 2020 of what were called pandemic pods which were really these co-learning communities or coops that

17:09 came together spontaneously. Families just realizing that school was going to stay shuttered or was going to continue being remote for an indefinite period of time and families realizing that they had to take matters into their own hands, then make sure the kids were getting that necessary social interaction and continue to learn academic content that mattered to them so they ended up forming these parent-driven learning pods either with taking turns as parents leading a pod or in some cases hiring an adult educator to facilitate a curriculum. And what was really exciting is that through that process, we saw in 2020 and 2021 a real exit from assigned district schools. We saw the U.S. homeschool population more than double according to the US Census Bureau in 2020 to more than 11% of the U.S. K-12 school age population are more than 5 million students

18:03 And the biggest driver of that exit, of that growth in the homeschool population were Black homeschooling families. Black students became overrepresented in the home school population compared to their representation and the overall US K-12 public school population was a fivefold increase that year according to the census of black homeschooling families. Now even though we're more than two years into this and schools are back to normal We still see declining enrollment in many places and homeschooling rates still well above pre-pandemic levels. And families really continuing to choose private schools, parochial schools obviously homeschooling microschools is now roughly 2 million students attending microschool full time which are sort of these hybrids between what we would think of as private schools and homeschooling

18:53 And charter school enrollment has also gone up. So even though now we're you know several academic years into this, we're still seeing districts in many places lose enrollment the Boston Globe just talking recently about Boston Public Schools down again enrollment this year. And I think it's just because parents really have been empowered to take matters into their own hands, to search for other options, to create other options and to collaborate with others. To do that and you know, you asked for an example so I can give you a talk all day about some examples but i'll give you one that I think speaks to what you're talking about with PMAs these private membership associations that have really come on the scene and I think been really popular and certainly serve an important purpose

19:36 One example is an education entrepreneur who I interviewed for my podcast and written about her, Jill Perez in New Jersey. She was a long time public school teacher in New Jersey and when COVID hit she ended up creating a pandemic pod with some other families didn't want to subject her kids to remote learning and kind of COVID policies in the classroom. And so throughout the academic year, she and several other families met and continued learning and having that social interaction. It became so popular with other members of her community that they urged her to do something more formal. So last year in the fall of 2021 she ended up leasing a building and opening a full-time micro school with about 45 kids

20:20 And she hired educators, public school teachers from New York City Public Schools who were burnt out and fed up with the kinds of ongoing COVID policies that they were contending with and remote schooling and all the uncertainties and unpredictabilities that they had to contend with. And she was able to recruit them into her micro school she said you know I can't pay them as much as they're making in the New York City public schools but i can offer them that creativity that flexibility that freedom. that they're missing in district schools. And this is the kind of example that we see, certainly what I see across the country Jill set up her program as a private membership association. Interestingly New Jersey is one of the easiest states in the country to homeschool and they have very light regulation of homeschooling and so it's easy to kinda gather families together in these voluntary communities to create these co-learning spaces

21:15 And so it's been really successful for her. And I'll just add one more thing, it's been so successful that she ended up purchasing a building for her micro school and continues to expand. Beautiful! Well examples like that are great and the fact that she is expanding is even better but you do bring out something I wanted to dig into a little more with you and that is not all states are created equal when it comes to homeschooling freedoms or lack thereof Can you fill us in a bit more on which states are out on both the good and bad extremes when it comes to this? And have there been any new laws passed in the wake of the last couple years that stick out as shining examples when it comes to what we want to see an education optionality. Yeah, I mean, I think there's so much to unpack their

22:02 Certainly there are states that are low regulation of homeschooling, obviously New Jersey being one of them. And then some States like New York that you just again right next door to New Jersey but are among the most difficult to home school in. One of the things I've been spending the past year doing though is talking with education entrepreneurs these micro-school founders and creators of learning pods and other non traditional models across the country about what some of their challenges are as they try to start their programs and try to scale their programs. And it's interesting to kind of see where there are are these hubs of education entrepreneurship. I think of, for example South Florida where I spent a lot of time over the fall there's a real cluster of micro schools their majority minority owned majority minority students in those micro schools and they're able to access these micro schools through Florida's robust school choice programs they have tax credit scholarship programs that allow income eligible families to attend some of these programs

23:02 Which tend to be lower cost than traditional private options more generally micro schools are often a quarter of the cost in some cases of traditional private schools there these intentionally small mixed stage one room schoolhouse models usually under 50 kids. and really with that personalized mastery based curriculum. And so we're seeing those clusters there, Florida also tends to be very kind of open to entrepreneurship and unlike the rest of the country remained open during 2020 and 2021 and kind of encouraged more entrepreneurship there. So they are ahead of the pack. And then I'm also seeing clusters of educational entrepreneurship in states without robust school choice policies. I think for example in Kansas

23:47 There's a real cluster of education entrepreneurs in the Wichita, Kansas area. Another state that tends to be really easy to open businesses in and being entrepreneur in and so even though there is no school choice policies there it tends to be a low regulation state for these education entrepreneurs and innovators they're able to try something new and get that off the ground. But that's a key issue is just making it easy for these educational entrepreneurs to start and scale their organizations by removing barriers that they may be facing Yes and i had heard that arizona just passed a great law for educational choice and west virginia is doing some good things, i don't hear much about california. I know i have to leave the state for a lot of reasons but i do think that's one of them i did here through the grapevine net at least locally in san diego there's a bit of an issue with the unschooling movement i mean it's happening everywhere so there are groups here but

24:48 I guess legislators or the government is coming in and like, we're required nationwide for kids to go to school. And so I guess the state can kind of decide what qualifies as a school and they don't think a bunch of kids playing in the park qualifies as a school? There's some of that struggle going on here from what I understand. Well, I think there's always attacks on homeschoolers and certainly non-traditional learning models anything that's outside of the norm tends Maybe confuse people, especially policymakers who like to put people into standard boxes and certainly don't like competition with district schools. I will say though that California is another state where it's relatively easy to homeschool there's lots of home schoolers there It's also relatively easy to start a private school So it's interesting that some states that we would think of as highly restrictive in some areas high regulation States

25:40 for some sectors can be easier when it comes to non-traditional education and homeschooling. That doesn't mean that it won't still entail some battles and some fight for liberty among homeschoolers and unschoolers there, but tends to be easier. Interestingly in a policy paper I wrote for State Policy Network earlier this fall that kind of looks at some of these key challenges that education entrepreneurs encounter across the country. I talk about a report that came out in 2021 by the Cato Institute that ranked the states according to how friendly they were toward entrepreneurship. And this was in all sectors, not just education but all sectors including highly regulated industries like alcohol and they found that in the top five states for a kind of entrepreneurial friendliness low regulation for entrepreneurs was Colorado and yet when I talked to education entrepreneurs

26:34 Some of them said that they wouldn't even think about going to Colorado as they scale their micro school networks and so on, because it can be so difficult to be an education entrepreneur in that state. So that shows too that even states that could be friendly toward entrepreneurs in other sectors might not be friendly to entrepreneurs in education And it's just state by state. Yeah, good points. It's a mixed bag everywhere it seems and to get a little more into the history of the American education system another good line in the book one of yours actually is that American schooling was designed to strip the joy of natural learning following the human will to explore and discover in favor of conformity and compliance

27:19 I agree but talk to us about that word designed because a lot of people might think our schools have been neglected, that they've slowly eroded in quality. But to say they were designed to produce a lot of the problems they produce is another thing what can you tell us about the history of the American school system that shows this to be the case? Right. So in the book, I trace the history of American education and compulsory schooling dating back to the 17th century so soon after the Pilgrims arrived in what became Massachusetts Bay Colony in Plymouth in 1620 about two decades later they passed the colony's first compulsory education laws that required

28:02 cities or towns of a certain size to provide educational resources. So smaller towns were required to hire a teacher and larger towns and cities were required to open and operate a grammar school, so at that time in the 17th century, the compulsion with education rested on the cities and towns and municipalities to provide educational options to families that wanted them And yet at the time, you also throughout the colonial and revolutionary era had a whole mix of education options. You did have these public schools that were in these cities and towns required by law to be created but you also had a wide assortment of private schools and charity schools and church schools. You had what were known as dame schools which we would consider little in-home nursery schools

28:55 in your neighbor's kitchen who would teach kind of the three Rs to young children. And homeschooling was, of course, the default during the colonial and American Revolutionary eras and apprenticeships were really the key pathway for adolescents into adulthood. All that really changed beginning in 1852 with Massachusetts my home state leading the way again in compulsion with passing the country's first compulsory schooling statute, 1852 now requiring all parents to send their children to an assigned district school under a legal threat of force.

29:32 And that was really a shift from, again the compulsion being on the municipality to the compulsion being on the parents. And I think that that was the moment where we really did see this shift of design to compliance and conformity if we think about what's happening certainly in the Boston area in the early 19th century or late mid-19th century there was a tremendous amount of immigration. The city of Boston doubled in size between 1820 and 1840 And most of that immigration was coming from Irish Catholic immigrants to Boston who really challenged the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture of the time. People in Massachusetts didn't like that, you know? Just a couple years before Massachusetts passed its compulsory attendance law, the Massachusetts state legislature

30:20 Said and I'll quote those pouring in upon us in masses of thousands upon Thousands are wholly of another kind in morals and intellect. Oh, And this was a true you know anti-catholic Anti-immigrant sentiment that was pervasive In Massachusetts and in the Boston area at the time and then that really led to the creation of compulsory schooling and this sense that all children had to attend these what were known as common schools. The architect of that was Horace Mann, who was instrumental in passing that first compulsory schooling statute based on the kind of Prussian model of learning that he was so enamored with. And what was interesting is that even though these common schools at the time were supposedly secular they had all Protestant teachers and texts

31:12 And they were, you know for all intents and purposes what we would think of as Protestant trying to kind of mold these young children into the dominant culture of the times. And it's really interesting because a lot of these Catholic families rebelled and they started creating their own parallel system of parochial schools throughout the latter part of the 19th century, so we're not sending our kids to these purportedly secular but obviously Protestant common schools. So they created their own system of private schools and that all came to a peak in the 1920s when Oregon tried to ban attendance at any private schools. They wanted children to only attend public schools, and at the time in Oregon really the only private schools that were in existence were parochial schools there weren't independent private schools and thankfully

32:01 The US Supreme Court shot down that Oregon law in the landmark Supreme Court case of Pierce versus the Society of Sisters, where they said that the child is not the mere creature of the state. Well, that is a great history lesson and the quote you read I feel like I could hear that even today in a lot of cases. And the fights the struggles seem to be similar today there's a lot of talk about Educators sliding in their cultural beliefs or there political religious views that really have no place in the classroom and it just seems like that's a tail as old as time but horse man we have talked about him before, add the prussian model more of a militaristic regimented type of system obviously that is what we have if you just.

32:54 examine it but something i didn't know that i learned from your book is that horace man also created the nation's first mental institution in eighteen thirty three so people can make a lap what they will if they thought that went very well but you make other great points about the myths we've been told as to why national compulsory education was developed. One of those is that we were told that illiteracy was rampant in the 1800's, but apparently that's not all that true? Yeah I'll just say one other thing about Horace Mann that's really interesting is he homeschooled his own children while mandating compulsory schooling for others and if you read some of his writings he had a lot of contempt for parents

33:41 you know, calling them hostages to our cause and so forth. Really this disdain for parents and especially again these parents who kind of conflicted with the dominant cultural ethos of the time. So right! At that time there was this sense that oh or at least historically the narrative has been that we need a compulsory common schooling because low literacy rates and yet if you look at the data, it will show that we actually had quite high literacy rates in Massachusetts upwards of 90% literacy rates at the time that compulsory schooling laws were passed. Certainly

34:19 You know, it was illegal at the time for slaves to be taught to read. And I talk in my book actually about some slave communities where they actually defied those laws with a thirst for knowledge and literacy was strong and so many of them defied those laws to teach themselves and others helped to educate slaves as well even though it was against the law Women were obviously not as equitably recognized in educational settings as men, and yet still we had high levels of literacy at the time. Yeah I just found some of that to be pretty surprising worth fitting in here and I'm not sure what the literacy rate is today but I definitely thought people were much more illiterate in the past

35:03 Yeah, I mean it's hard to know. It would probably be a little bit anachronistic to kind of compare literacy rates then and now different kinds of standards of literacy but certainly when we see some of these standardized test scores coming out of different parts of this country you know it's hard to say that were actually quite a bit more literate even though of course kids are spending so much more time in compulsory schooling settings and yet not necessarily having the outcomes that education reformers would want Yeah, you're right about it being a little difficult to compare. I think even the quality of literature and the quality... The complexity even of like what kids might have been reading then or people in general then versus now is quite different but while we're talking about reading and writing critics of the unschooling movement might say that

35:54 that self-directed learning is great for kids. Sure, if you're interested in bugs this week let's learn about bugs! If you want to know how concrete works next week we'll do that but eventually we have to learn to read and write. Eventually we have to learn things kids might not want to sit down and learn what would you say to that? And just the idea of contrasting teaching reading versus learning reading Yeah, I mean, a couple of things there. One is just this sense within unschooling and self-directed educational philosophy that if you allow individuals to pursue their own passions and interests they'll learn through that process so if the child is interested in bugs like you said they'll want to read about bugs and learn about bugs

36:41 and discover more that way. So it's an entry point into learning, reading and writing in arithmetic through their interests but it's all driven by them with their ability to opt out at any time and kind of move on to another interest so it's this kinda bottom up educational approach instead of a top down approach saying this is what you're gonna learn in this way at this time with this specific assessment model And the other point that I make in The Unschooled book is that unschooling doesn't mean that you're never using formal curriculum or you're not learning what we would consider a traditional way. It just means that you are choosing that curriculum, or that standard approach so you will find

37:21 Many students who learn in unschooled environments or Sudbury model schools, which I talk about in the book quite extensively and other kinds of self-directed learning settings that you know as children certainly get later into their childhood and adolescence. They may have goals to attend college or achieve some kind of career goal And then they'll start studying for the SATs Or taking community college classes are potentially even doing what we would consider a conventional high school curriculum, but it's again all driven by them with their ability to quit with their ability to exit if that's not what they want and just shift gears. And it's in some ways giving young people the same level of respect as individual people that we would

38:02 want as adults, right? That if we are not happy for example in a specific job or specific career path that we have the ability to quit. We have the ability to move on to something different and it's sort of providing that same sort of freedom and flexibility to young people. Good points! The parts of the book that talk about reading i just really interesting cuz you have people who have studied this and their assessment is that kids learn to read, not necessarily are taught to read it's kind of weird to think about but we kinda assume you send your kid to school the teacher teaches them to read over time, what. We don't necessarily have much of a comparison as to what would've happened if we didn't send them to school and we just introduce them to stories they liked and kinda let themselves direct their own reading ability but experts seem to say that

39:03 reading isn't as much of a hot skill as it is just a naturally learn skill that we don't need to be taught to read from some authority figure necessarily and i never really thought much about that but it was pretty interesting. Well, there's always discussions on the reading wars. Right? I mean we heard actually it was just a renewed interest in the reading wars of phonics versus whole language and the pendulum typically swings back and forth depending on the expert consensus of the day but one of the things that you know i talk about in The Unschooled Book is just how children would learn to read and gain natural literacy outside of a standard school setting so there's

39:44 kind of category of talking about what's the best way to teach reading or to have children be literate within a standard school system. And that's where I think some of the debates today come from, whole language versus phonics. But if we can remove that whole paradigm of education from a standard setting and think about how children learn outside of conventional schooling it's a completely different ballgame and that's where you know for example i talk about research in the book looking at young people who've learned outside of a conventional school setting researchers in England finding that the average age of proficiency for reading, meaning a child could read almost anything that they're given is about eight and a half. If we think about a bell curve of reading competence it would start you know kind of early maybe an early reader around four years old and then a late reader maybe 11 years old and kind of the bell curve that the middle of the bell curve would be around eight and a half

40:38 And like I mentioned earlier in our discussion, Greg, you know today's expectations in standard schooling sessions and standard schooling settings for literacy really are at the far left of that bell curve, really expecting now four and five-year olds to be learning to read and reading proficiently. Even though again maybe it's more closer to eight and a half but if you had an eight and a half year old in a standard public school setting that was not reading proficiently it's very likely that they would be labeled with a reading delay or a reading disability when it could just be that they're not quite ready to read Yeah, yeah. Or they're just disinterested as well that's another huge factor and if I can just add one other point to that sure put a fine point on it is

41:23 One of the things you hear over and over, and I talk about this in the book as well is that those quote unquote later readers. Those children that read maybe at eight or later tend to become very proficient readers very quickly so they may not be reading at all or very little. And then once they hit that kind of peak point of proficiency there reading Harry Potter within a couple of weeks. That's interesting anecdote but I heard over and over and it's also captured in some of these data Yeah yeah great points there's examples in the book where kids who are late readers and up reading way more complex stuff way sooner because once they decide their interested in it kinda takes off and, i have developed an interest in the work of rudolf steiner to a degree and some of the stuff he says about education just like.

42:12 things i don't expect to hear his has some really off the wall ideas and one of them is around reading like he didn't think it's needed to learn to read until way later that the structure of language in reading actually hindered their creative spirits and. I've thought about Waldorf schools as an alternative and then when i hear about that, I'm like, I don't know. There's also a couple other things I don't love like having to sign a document that says there'll be no technology in the house it's like okay you know I'm not Amish we're gonna have a little technology around that doesn't mean I want iPads in the classroom but you know it is what it is there's uh a lot of these alternatives Montessori, Waldorf

42:52 You find an in the book you talk about this there are different but not necessarily different enough they're still built on similar scaffolding and a similar foundation to traditional schools, add on schooling is really much bolder and much more different. situation, maybe you could talk to us about that through a couple of stories about your own kids because I've heard you tell stories about how this has worked and that really sounded like it's working pretty well for ya. Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting. So we have these alternative learning models that are very child-centered Montessori and Waldorf being two examples you're right that in many Waldorf schools they don't even begin to teach reading until much later than children would learn to read in traditional schools because they do recognize that bell curve of reading competence and do kind of push it more towards the center of the bell curve there

43:51 So that's interesting. And they're just, they're beautiful educational philosophies you know one of the things I often say is that my preferred educational philosophy and approach is self-directed education and unschooling but my larger priority is to expand the amount and diversity of education options that families are able to access You know, I have my preference but other families might find that something else is a better match for their child's individual needs and interests or their family's vision and values. And that's great! And I think that's what so exciting right now about the micro school movement and education entrepreneurship more broadly as we're just seeing this abundance of options

44:32 and diversity of options ranging from these unschooling learning centers and micro schools to Montessori micro schools, to classical models of micro schooling. You know kind of something for everybody so that's just great to see it really is just about what individual families preferences are But in terms of unschooling and self-directed education, I write a lot about in the book about my children's experiences of kind of learning outside of schooling through following their own passions and interests. I talk a lot about the Sudbury model of schooling modeled after Sudbury Valley School which was founded in 1968 and continues to exist today. My younger kids actually attend Sudbury Valley

45:14 And Sudbury, the Sudbury model is now expanded across the world to dozens of other Sudbury style schools. And Sudbury was modeled after the Summerhill School, the famed Summerhill School that was founded in England in 1921 by A.S. Neale and then A.S. Neal ended up writing a book in 1960 called Summer Hill School, a new view of childhood that ended up selling about 2 million copies in its first decade in print and inspired other educators like John Holt who I mentioned earlier on was the person who coined the term unschooling as well as Paul Goodman who wrote compulsory miseducation. Yvonne Illich who wrote Deschooling Society and so on. So it's interesting just to see where all this kind of fits into the self-directed...the modern self directed education movement today

46:02 Mm. Very interesting and in terms of your own kids, I've heard you say that...I think it's your oldest daughter she started in martial arts on her own direction and then from there was interested in Korean culture and language and then from there you just found someone locally who speaks Korean as a first language and set up meetings with them and now your daughter has learned Korean? Yeah yeah that's a perfect example of there was a new martial arts studio that was opening in our neighborhood and she expressed interest in what was happening there. They had a little TV that was kind of showing the martial art moves, and she was like oh that's interesting I want to know about that! I think she was about 11 at the time so she ended up walking in and talking with

46:49 person who was running the martial arts studio and took a introductory lesson and fell in love with martial arts. She now has her black belt, here we are probably over five years later. And yes through that process of learning martial arts and really committing to that she became interested in Korean culture and history and began reading more about that and then did some Korean language classes that are on Duolingo which is a free online language learning platform She loved that, but then wanted something a little bit more rigorous. So then I was able to find her just kind of through community networks here in Boston, native South Korean speaker who she met with periodically to learn Korean language so and she still loves languages as the result of that. But that's another example what I was saying before that unschooling

47:38 is not necessarily not using curriculum or using instructors and kind of these sort of formal metrics of what we would consider with education. It just means that it's all self-chosen. Yeah, I think that's really interesting especially that you just use your local network. I think that needs to happen more and more in our society because we kinda got away from it with these big overarching mega corporations just standardizing everything for us And it also probably speaks to why so many kids, myself included go through school and come out and people finally start asking well what do you want to do with your life? What are you interested in? It's like I don't know. I never even got much of a chance to think about it everything has been kind of thrown at me and its probably a factor there is also kinda psychological issue that parents probably deal with letting go

48:31 to a degree maybe letting go is in the right term but another example of another place for this happens is staying and jobs that we don't like because were afraid of the unknown, we can't quit because we just don't know that other job that next thing it could be worse than this even though this is bad and. I'm sure that happens in this case to when you talk to new parents are like yeah i know the public education system is in the toilet but, i went through it and i managed to come out okay maybe i should just put my kid at because this unschooling thing. It's so unstructured its i just don't know about it again the unknown is scary to people do u end up having a deal with that there's parents who know the system is suboptimal but at least what they know

49:17 Well, come on Greg you must have known that you would be a podcaster when you were in elementary school right? I mean of course. But it's the perfect example if we don't even know what the jobs will be five, 10 15 years from now. Right? So we have a conventional system of schooling that has set expectations and kind of arbitrary curriculum goals that may be completely mismatched with the jobs of the future and were not kind of helping kids to develop those curiosities and critical thinking skills and agency in sense that they're in charge of their own destiny that will really enable them

49:57 identify and adapt to whatever kind of economic conditions might exist at the time, and whatever new opportunities might appear in the marketplace. And I think you make another really interesting point that is so crucial as I think a lot of us went through public schools K-12 and got good at playing the game of school again regurgitating for the teacher in the test what they wanted But not really kind of internalizing this love of learning because it was much more about conformity and compliance in school than about creativity and curiosity.

50:35 So I think a lot of us as adults might look back on this and say, well that's just what school is. Like you just have to grin and bear it. And instead I think I'd urge parents to say there is another way like your kids don't have to... Well first they shouldn't be miserable in school there are joyful learning spaces and ways in which children can learn and develop that are just filled with joy and happiness, and that should be a priority for parents. But the other thing to think about is that you know is it really worth having your kids sort of leave their creativity and curiosity at the schoolhouse door right? And trade creativity for compliance and kind of learn to color in the lines and stay in a straight line and all of that when they're walking from class to class like is that really what's going to help them achieve

51:26 what a parent would want them to achieve in later life. And that achievement is very much around, I think personal agency self-actualization human flourishing and i'm just not sure that kind of the standard system of schooling can facilitate that. Yeah totally agree and I guess before we really start wrapping this thing up These are podcast listeners and you said you're upping it to two a week. There are a lot of really good stories on your podcast, personal stories from people. Are there particular episodes that you thought were personal favorites that maybe people should start with if they wanted to jump into an episode or two? Oh, that's great! Thank you. Yes the podcast is The Liberated Podcast

52:12 You know, I did one at the end of November that I referenced in our discussion today. Greg, that is about these micro school founders in Jackson Mississippi where the daughter is off of her anxiety and ADHD medications. That was episode 51 in November 29th. That would be one to really think about. And then you know, I mean, I think they're all they're also interesting kind of take what sort of works for particular interests. There's one that I did in early November from a visit in Kansas on micro-schooling and neurodiversity, so micro school founders creating an intentional micro school community for neurodiverse students with autism and ADHD and other kinds

53:00 That was a really, I thought inspirational one. There's another one with the founder who I mentioned is whose goal is 100 schools in 10 years so just kind of poke around and see but just some great words of wisdom there from entrepreneurs across the country. Yes yes I love it well Carrie this has been really awesome! Of course Unschooled is the book tell them about any other irons in the fire that you have that they might want to follow up on? Yeah, so right now I'm just working on a lot of storytelling around these entrepreneurs who are building innovative learning models continuing to travel. We'll be doing more travel in 2023 to different cities across the country meeting with these clusters

53:45 of education entrepreneurs telling their stories at Forbes and in my columns at Fee. I also have a weekly email newsletter that digs into kind of deeper issues around the podcast guests, and also kinda educational trends from this fresh perspective maybe a non-traditional unconventional perspective so love to have people follow me there Great. Awesome, well thanks again I am happy to see people taking back their power and a lot of different ways and education is one of the big areas where it's most important and maybe we will see the fruits in 20 years when our next generation is more creative and less constricted but this was great keep doing what you do and take care Thanks Craig

54:33 Heck yeah, heck yeah Hireside Chatter. So glad I put this one on the calendar! I think i originally learned about Carrie when I was preparing for the John Bush interview he had Carrie on his show and I just thought she was great not only knowledgeable in a wide range of creative things happening outside the standard educational box but also being a podcaster means I know she'll have a decent audio setup It's hard to not at least consider that when thinking about who to bring on. So I'm glad she was willing to talk on a show with the name like The Hireside Chats given that she is a serious person doing serious things! Anyway, also a big thank you to The Plate Scrapers and Blue Grass Boys of Virginia for that opening theme cover if you like that kind of music AT ALL check them out their YouTube channel has some great stuff

55:26 Someone in their circle definitely knows a lot about audio because even their music videos, the audio is just so crisp it's hard not to love it. They actually did an original theme for me back in the day when we were doing it like that and then they were the first to send me a cover of the one we're using now at the time that it came out and basically spawned this whole idea of trying to collect more and more covers of it I appreciate that they did it first and for the idea. But yes, even before i had a kid, I was kind of big on this education topic. The history is spelled out so well that obviously there was an ulterior motive to compulsory schooling that wasn't just trying to produce the best and brightest in our education is so critical to how we think as adults

56:20 A lot of those patterns that are established then carry on through the rest of our lives. Carlin summed up a lot of this really well in the early 2000s, it's about three minutes I'm just gonna play it But if you talk to one of them about this, if you isolate one of them and sit him down rationally and talk to him about the low IQs and the dumb behavior and bad decisions right away they start talking about education. That's the big answer to everything. Education! They say we need more money for education We need more books, more teachers, more classrooms, more schools...we need more testing for the kids You say well you know we've tried all that but the kids still can't pass the test He says ah don't worry about that were going to lower the passing grades

57:00 That's what they do in a lot of these schools now. They lower the passing grades so more kids can pass, more kids passed The school looks good Everybody is happy the IQ of the country slips another two or three points and pretty soon all you'll need to get into college is a fucking pencil Got a pencil? Get the fuck in there it's physics Then everyone wonders why 17 other countries graduate more scientists than we do. Education! Politicians know that word, they use it on you. Politicians have traditionally hidden behind three things the flag the Bible and children no child left behind no child left behind oh really well it wasn't long ago you were talking about giving kids a head start head start? Left behind someone's losing fucking ground here

57:42 But there's a reason, there's a reason. There is a reason for this. There is a reason education sucks and it's the same reason that will never ever be fixed It's never gonna get any better Don't look for it Be happy with what you got Because the owners of this country don't want that I'm talking about the real owners now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all of the important decisions Forget the politicians! The politicians are put there to give you an idea that you have freedom of choice You don't You have no choice. You have owners, they own you! They own everything! They own all the important land... ...they own and control the corporations that long since bought and paid for the Senate, Congress, State Houses, City Halls... ...they got the judges in their back pockets And they own all of big media companies so they control just about all news and information you get to hear They got ya by the balls!! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying

58:40 to get what they want. Well, we know what they want! They want more for themselves and less for everybody else but I'll tell you what they don't want... They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interest. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want that, you know what they want? They want obedient workers! Obedient workers! People who are just smart enough to run their machines and do their paperwork And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with lower pay

59:24 longer hours to reduce benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're coming for your social security money! They want your fucking retirement money! They want it back! So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street and you know something? They'll get it all from ya sooner or later because they own this fucking place It's a big club...and YOU ain't in it You and I are not in The Big Club Mm-mm, and people always do remember that last line but so much of the entire bit is about education. It's getting worse and worse and they don't care The only thing I think he said that was slightly incorrect is that it can't be fixed Education as a government institution? Yeah sure And I know that's what he really meant But the hope and opportunity IS in what's going on in Carrie's world

1:03:37 The higher side chats.com pull it up in your mobile browser, it's quite easy and to the actual plus members I can't thank you enough you really are the muscle behind this show and a lot of ways and you keep the train chugging along hopefully for all my remaining years Before we go, it's important to look at the events that you guys have created at HiresideMeetups.com a free and open meetup calendar available to any THC listeners who want to form a stronger local community based on mutual love for the sort of things we talk about around here You do have to make an account. It helps us prevent spam and also it's just good to have a person running point on any event that shows up on the calendar, but it is not just for plus people. And in fact, it's totally separate your plus account does not ported over there I've seen some confusion in both regards so just to set the record straight, it is for anyone and it is separate from any persons Plus Account

1:04:39 It is just a basic account that you would make, that is required for putting events on the calendar and also for RSVPing which is just good form. It's polite! You want a person to know how many they should expect but it is typically a good time from what I hear and next on the list we got The Los Angeles Truthers on January 12th going to Flame International Restaurant once again January 13th, the National Friday the 13th meetup in Nevada City at The National Bar.

1:05:16 Also January 13th, the Sinspiracy Monthly Mad Tree Brewing Meetup for THC fans in Cincinnati Ohio. January 14 Denver Colorado they are having a book swap on top of just getting together also January 14th the Williamton THC meet and greet at Williamton Brewery Company in Williamton North Carolina January 15th we have a meetup in Sandy, Utah at Athena Beans. January 17th would you look at that someone put one on the calendar for San Diego at Society Brewing I will just be getting off of plane from a trip i'm taking to New Orleans with some buddies of mine it's going to be hard to miss one right here my hometown will see what happens

1:06:05 And then for the rest of January, we have some in Philadelphia one in Portland and one. Guatemala how interesting if you're in any of those areas hop onto the site and get the details as well as RSVP. And if there's not one in your area hop on the site and add it to the list. And that said, it was great to have a solutions focused show today. It is how we win What is the counter reaction to seeing the world that's being built for us? We can't just stare at it in awe and say we don't want it to show up because... It tends too. But if you want to build a better way for ourselves and those who are on our page, well it starts here In education So I really appreciate what Carrie does Let her know if you do too And I guess I'll say that I've done my part

1:07:01 Your move, state curriculum crafters, obedience training teachers and pawnmaking public educators. Your fucking move. Oh no You see The world isn't random It's attached to puppet strings Control over a thing A nine-to-five is trying to steal ya Now don't that job seem silly? Hello, can you hear me? Or should I play back recordings from some spying agency Wish we were younger and free. I'll be thankful when it's all exposed The vast conspiracy There is such a difference between us And the damn problem

1:08:12 Hello from the higher side Calling out a thousand cries They'll tell you the story Of everything that's been done And they'll call out deception Of the web that's been spun Hello from the higher side They'll tell you about something that no one else will Have you heard, have you heard about the real since long ago? But no, they're cartoons It's so typical of me to talk about this stuff I'm sorry That's good and well

1:09:23 Did you ever hear the argument that nothing really happens? It's no secret And that the best is plumb, it's doubling your time Follow from the higher side They're calling out a thousand cards They'll tell you some The elite have done and now call out deception On the web that's been spun Hollow from the hype, challenging your path And I'll tell you someday That the battle has begun But we can't fight it without the minds where it is won At the war of the world

1:10:54 Hello from the higher side They're calling out our lives And they'll tell you everything that you've done and they'll call reception on the web that's been spooled From the higher side challenging your paradigm, and they'll tell you

1:11:33 But we can't fight it with violence The mind's where it's run, that's the point