Mitchell Stevens

This is a sociological study of U.S. homeschooling, mostly since the late 1970's.

Stevens tries to sort out the fork homeschooling took down an evangelical Christian path on the one hand and a vaguely lefty nonsectarian path on the other (and how the right-wing side managed to prevail as the homeschooling "norm").

He oversimplifies both Christianity and feminism a bit, but for someone not particularly versed in religion in the U.S. and coming to feminism mostly through a specific, academic show more second-wavy perspective, I think he does a fair job.

I learned a lot about the history of the current homeschool movement from this book. I also appreciated a non-homeschooler's perspective on the movement, since most homeschooling books by homeschoolers are so clearly biased. show less

I enjoyed reading this book, partly because my youngest niece has gone through the admissions process this past academic year. Creating a Class reiterated what I already knew about the competitiveness of the admissions process, but it was interesting hearing it from an "outside insider." (The author is a professor who did a stint in Admissions.) I'd definitely recommend this book to people in academia, as well as parents interested in sending their children to a competitive school.

This author is unusually knowledgeable about homeschooling and has a lot of interesting things to say about the development of the movement from a sociological standpoint. I don't agree with him on everything, and the homeschooling world seems to me to be a lot bigger and more complex than what he was able to study, but, still, this is a very interesting read.