This is the second of two posts dedicated to Jennifer Lois’ new book Home Is Where the School Is: The Logic of Homeschooling and the Emotional Labor of Mothering(New York University Press, 2013). In the first, which you can read here, I summarized the contents of the book. Today I will share some of the thoughts I had as I was reading it.
First, a general comment about the quality of homeschooling scholarship. Before I published my book in 2008 there was only one really good book on homeschooling in print, Mitchell Stevens’ Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement
. Now there are five. In addition to Stevens’ and mine, all researchers should read Kunzman’s Write These Laws on Your Children
, Murphy’s Homeschooling in America
, and now Lois’ Home Is Where the School Is
. The field is in a much better place now than it was when I first got started, and Lois’ book adds significantly to our overall understanding. Here I’m going to discuss two insights I found particularly compelling and conclude with a few criticisms.