Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi Introduction 3 Chapter One: Inside Home Educatin 10 Chapter Two: From Parents to Teachers 30 Chapter Three: Natural Mothers, Godly Women 72 Chapter Four: Authority and Diversity 107 Chapter Five: Politics 143 Chapter Six: Nurturing the Expanded Self 178 Notes 199 Index 225

Promotional Information

This is a definitive study. For anyone interested in home schooling, this is the book to read. It musters an impressive array of evidence to explain why parents decide to home school their children, and it carefully considers the consequences of home schooling for these children. In the process, the book dispels many of the criticisms that have emerged around the homeschooling movement. Read sympathetically, the book also poses a significant challenge to the educational philosophies still present in most of the nation's public schools. -- Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University Kingdom of Children offers a rich study of the homeschooling movement. It makes important contributions both to research on education and to the study of social movements. The book's engaging and elegant style makes it accessible to general readers and students... Firmly grounded in rich ethnography and interviews, Kingdom of Children provides a compelling introduction to the beliefs that increasingly animate public discussion and an exemplary case study of an effort to enact this alternative vision of education and family. -- Elisabeth Clemens, University of Arizona

About the Author

Mitchell L. Stevens is Associate Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College.

Reviews

"Stevens spent ten years interviewing home-schooling families, watching them teach, pitching tents at their summer camps, hanging out at their conferences, and reading their publications. He has written a careful, intelligent book"--Margaret Talbot, Atlantic Monthly "In the press and on television, home-schoolers are portrayed mainly as white Americans of strong Christian background, most of whom are right-wing fundamentalists. Stevens's study confirms this generic picture, yet his study helps us go beyond it... [T]he intellectual origins of home-schooling are surprisingly nonsectarian."--Howard Gardner, New York Review of Books "Kingdom of Children is about the grown-ups behind the not-so peaceful movement... As Stevens makes clear, those drawn to home schooling tend to be a stronger-willed, contentious lot, and removing them from the public school system doesn't make them less so."--Rebecca Jones, American School Board Journal "For anyone interested in home schooling, this is the book to read."--Choice "This book is extremely well written and thought provoking... Kingdom of Children will no doubt play an important role in the much-needed sociological dialogue surrounding home schooling."--Ed Collom, American Journal of Sociology