Homeschool: An American History

This is a lively account of one of the most important and overlooked themes in American education. Beginning in the colonial period and working to the present, Gaither describes in rich detail how the home has been used as the base for education of all kinds. The last five chapters focus especially on the modern homeschooling movement and offer the most comprehensive and authoritative account of it ever written. Readers will learn how and why homeschooling emerged when it did, where it has been, and where it may be going.

This book sets the homeschooling movement in a broader historical context and shows the remarkably diverse ways Americans have used their homes to educate from colonial times to the present. Gaither looks at the role of key themes such as social networks of communication, entrepreneurialism, and the public influence of female domesticity in the past and uses their evolution as a tool to comment on the future of homeschooling.