" 'People have come to realize that the public schools they send their children to today are not the same as the ones they attended in their youth,' said [Monte] Hancock, who teaches his two school-age children in the family's Melbourne home. 'It's a shock to them when they find out what goes on in schools, and they're in flight to get their kids out of there.'"

"So for me, the jury on home schooling is still out. But you can count me among those who are more than a little in awe of parents who have seized their children back from the state and taken personal responsibility for their education. In a time when everyone who ever attended a PTA meeting talks about family values, they remind us what a big chasm lies between talking the talk and walking the walk."

" 'Two hundred years ago, if you went to school, you didn't go all day,' [home schooling mother Terrie Runnells] said. 'There was work to do on the farm. Kids who are in school all day don't learn how to cook, sew, take out the trash or visit at a nursing home. There's so much more to life.'"