Some homeschooling Mississippi parents say the pioneer-style education experience helps bring their families closer together and helps their kids mature.
"We have not done anything more fulfilling and brought more unity in our home than by home education," says Patrice Bodnar, co-chairman of the Christian Home Educators of Hattiesburg.
She and her husband, Joseph, have been teaching at home the past 16 years. Bodnar says they never enrolled their three children in public schools because they wanted religion to be woven into their lesson plans.
"I wanted to instill the values I had into my children and reinforce them as they grew up," says Bodnar, a high school graduate. "I didn't want others influencing them with their values."
It's just that kind of outside influence that others say is vital to the development of well-rounded students and is best found in traditional public and private schools.
Jonathan Priester, an eighth-grader at Jackson's public Chastain Middle School, says he likes participating in the Junior Optimist Club and playing on the school soccer team. The 13-year-old also likes the diversity of his fellow students.
"We have a mix of everybody — a mix of religions, a mix of people from different economic backgrounds," Priester says. "Not everybody's going to have the same opinion. That's something you'll miss if you're taught at home."
Homeschool families sometimes must take extra steps to provide a full offering of academics. The Bodnars, for example, use a tutor and satellite program for math.
There is no state stipulation on how much education parents must have to teach their own kids.
Mississippi homeschool parents interviewed by The Associated Press had a wide range of backgrounds. In one family, the mother never finished high school and the father had a high-school equivalency diploma. Others, however, were law school graduates or engineers.
Some homeschool parents say they're teaching classes in which they've never had formal instruction, but they don't see that as a problem. Carol McPhearson of Vicksburg, who has a teaching degree, taught one son high school German and will start a biblical Greek course with her ninth-grader this fall.
She hasn't had lessons in either language, but says she learns as they learn. "I'm not intimidated by their foreign languages or their labs," she says.
Just over 10,000 Mississippi children were registered homeschoolers last May. Their fall registration forms are due by Sept. 15.
According to a 1999 U.S. Department of Education survey, the most common reasons parents decide to teach at home are because they want to offer religious instruction and emphasize character and morality; they're dissatisfied with the quality of schools; they want to strengthen family ties or they just think they can provide a better education than the schools can provide.
"We weren't real pleased with just the secular nature of the education they were receiving," says Shelley Crampton of Tupelo, whose family attends a nondenominational Protestant church.
She says she and her husband, Steve, pulled their children out of public schools two years ago because they were unhappy, for example, with one child's fifth-grade reading textbook. She said it was as if "every Democratic special interest group" had written a story for it.
"There was a union story in it, there was a multicultural story in it," says Shelley Crampton, who has a law degree. "There was no grounded truth, we felt like."
Michael and Monica Salda of Hattiesburg thought their two children were advancing beyond their public school grade levels.
"I felt I was better able to meet their needs than the public schools," Monica Salda says.
The decision was tough for the couple. She's a former PTA president and school Parent of the Year. He's an English professor at the University of Southern Mississippi.
"Before homeschooling, their abilities were high and low," Salda said. "We have been able to bring their weaknesses up."
Scott and Mary Leary of Jackson both have law degrees. They first started homeschooling when their oldest child was in second grade. Leary said the boy's time was not being well spent.
Mary Leary is primarily responsible for teaching the couple's four school-age children. Their dining room doubles as the classroom. Scott Leary, a practicing lawyer, helps with religion and history.
"He's the superintendent," Mary Leary jokes.
Along with their home instruction, the children attend an elementary program at Veritas, a Jackson-area classical Christian school that leases space from Wesley Biblical Seminary on East Northside Drive in Jackson.
Veritas acts as a support system to homeschooled children. Mary Leary said she and her husband haven't decided how long they'll continue homeschooling.
Forrest Leary, 12, says there are advantages to being homeschooled.
"I get to spend time with my family," he said. "I get to cover subjects I like to do."
A common concern voiced among skeptics is that children miss out on peer interaction.
"That's a fallacy," Bodnar says. "We do not send our children to the public arena for socialization. Supposedly, we're sending them for education ... the problem is not will the child be socialized, but what activities can they participate in because there are so many to choose from."
Bobby Moore, president of the Mississippi Home Educators Association, says some of the misconceptions about homeschooling are disappearing as it becomes more accepted in the mainstream.