Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement / Edition 1

ISBN-13: 9780691114682 Publisher: Princeton University Press Publication date: 04/13/2003 Series: Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology , #37 Edition description: New Edition Pages: 256 Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) 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 a