Educated and Unschooled - Kerry McDonald

The Hope Strategy Podcast

Kerry McDonald shares her optimistic view of education and education innovation along with her insights about the remote learning situation many parents currently face during the pandemic. Kerry defines “Unschooling” - the idea taught in her book “Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom” and gives evidence based advice and hope to parents seeking a better way to educate their children. This episode is a great reflection on what education really is and how it should be approached.

Highlighted Quotes

“Opportunity in Education Entrepreneurship”

We're seeing tremendous growth in all aspects of the economy in terms of entrepreneurship, of course that's not offsetting the vast number of businesses that have been shut down due to government orders, but it is a hopeful sign that entrepreneurship is alive and well and I think, again, education entrepreneurship is ripe for more opportunities and more innovators to create some really wonderful options for families.

“Defining Unschooling”

“Unschooling” is really disentangling education from schooling and seeing schooling as one method to being educated sort of top down, course of type learning where you know here are your daily assignments here are your tests and quizzes here's your ABCDEF grade, and yet learning is so much broader and again more enriching than that experience. Also unschooling doesn't mean that you're not taking classes, it doesn't mean that you're not doing what we would consider school like activities. It just means that it's a less coercive experience and it's more driven by the child's interest.

“Parents”

Parents are the ones, ultimately responsible for making sure their children are highly literate and numerous highly educated, and I argue that that's true whether your children are homeschooled or in a conventional school that it's up to the parents to make sure your children are getting a high quality education that it's your responsibility as a parent to do that.

Resources/Mentions:

Book

• Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom
• Why I Love Homeschooling

Company

• Expanse Learning
• Expanse(Linkedin)

Organization

• FEE.org

Guest Links:

• Kerry - Linkedin
• Kerry Mcdonald Website (Fee.Org)
• Kerry’s Forbes Articles
• Kerry - Facebook
• Kerry - Instagram
• Kerry - Twitter

Podcast Links:

• Instagram: @Hopestrategy
• Facebook: @hopestrategy
• Twitter: @thehopestrategy
• Youtube The Hope Strategy