Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement. 
More than one million American children are schooled by their parents. As their ranks grow, home schoolers are making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities. The few studies conducted suggest that homeschooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized. Yet we still know little about this alternative to one of society's most fundamental institutions. Beyond a vague notion of children reading around the kitchen table, we don't know what home schooling looks like from the inside.
Sociologist Mitchell Stevens goes behind the scenes of the homeschool movement and into the homes and meetings of home schoolers. What he finds are two very different kinds of home education--one rooted in the liberal alternative school movement of the 1960s and 1970s and one stemming from the Christian day school movement of the same era. Stevens explains how this dual history shapes the meaning and practice of home schooling today. In the process, he introduces us to an unlikely mix of parents (including fundamentalist Protestants, pagans, naturalists, and educational radicals) and notes the core values on which they agree: the sanctity of childhood and the primacy of family in the face of a highly competitive, bureaucratized society.
Kingdom of Children aptly places home schoolers within longer traditions of American social activism. It reveals that home schooling is not a random collection of individuals but an elaborate social movement with its own celebrities, networks, and characteristic lifeways. Stevens shows how home schoolers have built their philosophical and religious convictions into the practical structure of the cause, and documents the political consequences of their success at doing so.
Ultimately, the history of home schooling serves as a parable about the organizational strategies of the progressive left and the religious right since the 1960s.Kingdom of Children shows what happens when progressive ideals meet conventional politics, demonstrates the extraordinary political capacity of conservative Protestantism, and explains the subtle ways in which cultural sensibility shapes social movement outcomes more generally.
Reviews
I also like the fact that the author was interested in parents and families and not simply whether or not the homeschooled child tests better, gets enough socialization, have their own friends and get into college. What the author set out to find is what drives the parent to homeschool. And what "practical household decisions" make homeschooling possible. Because as he notes "conventional parenting is a lot of work" and he "suspected that homeschooling is even more labor intensive." And he set out to find out "how people decided that they could afford the time, lost wages, and mental energy that homeschooling costs." And "how homeschoolers assemble the help they need to get the job done."
He also include the study in 1995 that sociologist "Maralee Mayberry and her colleagues released the best comprehensive statistical study of home educators to date." The authors fifty-six item questionnaire included measures of parental occupation, educational attainment, religious affiliation, household size and income and the divisions of domestic labour. Working with a sample of home educating families in Nevada, Utah and Washington the researchers painted a picture of a predominantly white, middle class and religious movement. Ninety-eight percent of the survey respondents were white 1 percent were Asian Americans, the rest a mix of African American, Native American and Hispanics. Most parents were under age forty and the vast majority or 97% were married. 43% claimed at least some post secondary education, and additional 33 percent were college graduate. Professional and technical and managerial and administrative occupations were heavily represented among the fathers some were craft or service workers and a few were ranchers or farmers. 57% reported incomes of between 25 and 50k, 26% reported less. Compared to the general public the respondents were better educated slightly more affluent and more likely to be white. They also found that homeschooling is heavily gendered. 78% of mothers do the homeschooling. Also of interest to is the religious aspect. 91% reported that religious commitment was very important. 78% claim they attend church weekly. Yet 20% say they are not religious per se. 12% didn't answer the religious question. What surprised me was the fact we know more Asian and Jewish homeschoolers that any group, so this study should have studied homeschoolers in NYC, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco as well in order to get a better read on a more diverse section. The states studied are higher income and better educated so the results make sense.
I also like the book because the author notes the SAT study by Jon Wartes of Washington State homeschooled students. Although these were done in the 80's. The author does note the HSLDA funded study by Lawrence Rudner and I was happy the author noted "The study's findings must be tempered by the fact the research was built with a nonrandom convince sample, financed by a highly interested advocacy organization, and has received criticism from both within and beyond the homeschool community."
The author also explains the while homeschooling is legal in all states that some states have strict rules as far as parents reporting to state educational authorities. This is often one of the first questions I get from a parent asking about homeschooling. Is it legal? How do I find out? And I like the fact the author noted the Sikkink study that shows that homeschool parents are more involved in cicvic life than public school parents.
And the history of homeschooling since the 80s is covered well. And I am glad ton see that John Holt and Holt Associates are given good coverage since this is the one organization we joined in the early 80s and was the most secular or accepting of all homeschool families. So often all I hear is that the majority of homeschoolers are conservative Christians, even though my experience since the early 1970s shows (yes I live in a more liberal area of California) that there are more secular homeschoolers, or at least ones who are free spirits.
This is a book that any fair minded person interested in homeschooling should read. This is one of my top 3 homeschool books.
The focus of Mitchell's book is the division between home schoolers who view home schooling as a form of Christian education and those who view home schooling as a secular activity. Mitchell's thesis is that this division defines much of the discourse, organization and politics of home schooling. It also reflects concepts of womanhood, childhood and family.
From a sociological perspective, I think that this book's biggest contributions is an implicit critique of some themes in the sociology of education, where schools are seen as propagators of the status quo. Here, we have an example of how an institution, public education, is relaxing its grip and new forms of education are being created. This is not to say that public education is on the path to extinction, but this book shows how viables alternatives to dominant institutions emerge.
To summarize: first in depth sociological work on home schooling, takes home schoolers seriously as people, clear
writing and very little jargon and furthers our understanding of educational institutions and social change. A sure winner!