Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement : 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. As common as the accomplishments of students who have been home schooled is public speculation about the quality and value of at-home education. This sociological study, focusing on home schooling as a social movement, provides an account of a novel education movement and provides analysis of the relationship between cultural context and a social movement's form and message. Based on ethnographic research conducted throughout the 1990s relying heavily on in-depth interviews with home-schooling parents from a variety of backgrounds in the Chicago area and an examination of 10 national home-schooling organizations, the book describes how the home-schooling movement is essentially two movements, reflecting both the liberal alternative school movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the Christian day school movement of the same era. Chapter 1 of the book introduces the home-school world and describes the nature and limitation of the inquiry. Chapter 2 examines home-schooling literature and samples of home-school curricula, providing a sense of home schoolers' varied pedagogical approaches. The chapter also highlights parents' talk about the hows and whys of home schooling and sketches the relationship between home-school pedagogy and home schoolers' broader world views. Chapter 3 assesses the scope of the work home schooling requires and the different ways in which mothers make sense of that work. Chapter 4 describes how home schoolers have worked to assemble themselves into a national constituency and examines the subtle ways in which different organizational sensibilities have had lasting consequences for the shape of the movement. Chapter 5 addresses how home schoolers go about their politics, recounting a watershed event on Capitol Hill that betrayed and solidified home schoolers' organizational divisions, and offers an explanation for why individual leaders have had such success in their endeavors. Chapter 6 considers what home schoolers teach about the nature of American childhood. Notes for each chapter conclude the book. (KB) "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." "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."--BOOK JACKET. Home-schooling has become an elaborate social movement, with its own celebrities, rituals and networks, which now encompasses more than a million American children, observes Hamilton College sociologist Mitchell L. Stevens in Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement. Moving from why parents opt for home-schooling to the long-term effects on their children, he draws on interviews with a mix of parents from fundamentalist Christians to pagans and educational radicals and persuasively contextualizes the movement within the "organizational strategies of the progressive left and the religious right" in their attempt to preserve their core set of values: "the sanctity of childhood and the primacy of family in the face of an increasingly competitive and bureaucratized society." Contents......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 18 CHAPTER ONE: Inside Home Education......Page 25 CHAPTER TWO: From Parents to Teachers......Page 45 CHAPTER THREE: Natural Mothers, Godly Women......Page 87 CHAPTER FOUR: Authority and Diversity......Page 122 CHAPTER FIVE: Politics......Page 158 CHAPTER SIX: Nurturing the Expanded Self......Page 193 Notes......Page 214 F......Page 240 J......Page 241 S......Page 242 Z......Page 243 Going behind the scenes of the home school movement, this text explores the homes and meetings of home schoolers. It uncovers two very different kinds of home education and explains how this dual history shapes the meaning and practice of home schooling today.