Monk on Regulating Homeschooling in Britain

This post reviews Daniel Monk, “Regulating Home Education: Negotiating Standards, Anomalies, and Rights” in Child and Family Law Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2009): 155-184

Monk, Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, Birbeck at the University of London, has been studying homeschooling for a few years now, his work largely concerned with challenging the dominant discursive tropes used by both advocates and critics of homeschooling, trying to get everyone to see that there is more at stake than the simplistic parent vs. government rhetoric suggests.  This new article is not available online, but a 2004 piece he wrote along these lines is available here.

In the present article Monk summarizes the current legal context of homeschooling in Britain and makes predictions for future policy directions. 

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Jones on Religious Schools and Homeschools

This post reviews Steven L. Jones, Religious Schooling in America: Private Education and Public Life (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).

Jones, Associate Professor of Sociology at Grove City College, here offers a fascinating book about the history of private religious education in America.  It’s not a straightforward chronological history but rather a thematic look, showing in chapter after chapter how common themes have animated the Catholic school movement of the 19th century, the Jewish day school movement of the mid 20th century, and the Protestant day school and homeschool movements of the more recent past. 

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