Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 24, 1993                   TAG: 9305240099
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

HOME SCHOOLING ON THE RISEI

Since home schooling became legal in the state in 1984, the number of children being taught outside schools has grown by about 25 percent each year. As of last Sept. 30, Virginia had approved home schooling for 5,842 children, about one-half of 1 percent of the state's total students.

Fairfax County, the state's largest school district, has the most home schoolers, 576. Craig County, west of Roanoke, with 23 of its 678 school-age children being taught at home, has the highest percentage in the state, 3.3 percent.

The Home School Legal Defense Association, with headquarters in Purcellville, estimates that there are 750,000 to 1 million children being educated at home in the United States.

"As the public schools get worse . . . more parents are deciding, `Hey, I can do that,' " said Christopher J. Klicka, the group's senior lawyer.

Opponents, including the National Education Association, said home schooling does not offer the same quality education as classroom teaching and does not give children the chance to learn social skills.

Interest in do-it-yourself education is heightened in Virginia this year because Mike Farris, founder of the home schooling association, is seeking the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, and his criticism of public schools has become an issue in the campaign.

Farris' opponent for the GOP lieutenant governor nomination, McLean lawyer Bobbie Kilberg, has contended that Farris "wants to destroy the public school systems in Virginia and across the nation."

The Farrises, who have eight children and a ninth on the way, are evangelical Christians who believe "parents have the right to direct the education of their children."

Like many home school parents, the Farrises object to sex education in public schools. "We're not going to have our kids putting condoms on bananas," Farris said.

Karen Bell, who taught school in California before moving to Northern Virginia, said she decided several years ago to teach her children at home after a conference with her daughter Annette's second-grade teacher, who asked the little girl what she wanted to be when she grew up.

When Annette replied "a mommy," Bell recalled, the teacher said, "Yes, but what do you want to be?"

Bell and her husband also wanted to avoid high school biology, which teaches evolution.

"Evolution is a lie," she said. "If you knew something wasn't true, would you waste your time teaching it to your kids?"

A 1990 nationwide study of 1,516 families teaching about 4,600 children at home, commissioned by the home schooling association, found that about 95 percent of the families described themselves as "born-again Christians," with the largest group, about 40 percent, considering themselves "independent charismatic or independent fundamental-evangelical."

A typical home school parent has two to three years of college, which is less than required to teach school but more than the national average of all parents, the study said. About 35 percent of the mothers, who provide about 90 percent of the instruction, had college degrees.