All Authors
Kerry McDonald holds a B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education and the Velinda Jonson Family Education Fellow at State Policy Network, as well as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. She contributes regularly to Forbes and The 74. McDonald lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband and four children, whom she has raised with an unschooling philosophy.
Key Ideas
- →Self-directed learning is not a fringe experiment but a well-documented approach with strong outcomes in motivation, creativity, and lifelong learning
- →Compulsory mass schooling is a historically recent and culturally specific invention — not the default human condition
- →The most important things children need to thrive are autonomy, time, and a rich environment — not curriculum or instruction
- →Education entrepreneurship and school choice are the most powerful levers for expanding access to self-directed education
- →Unschooling succeeds not through the absence of learning but through the presence of a rich, supportive home environment