A programme from VOA Special English Education Report, by Jerilyn Watson (September 2003).

§ 1- A new school year has begun in America. But some children do not go to school. , they learn at home, usually with their parents as teachers. Educational companies, libraries, school systems and the Internet families teaching material.
§ 2- Homeschooling is popular. Homeschooling groups estimate that two million children (around two percent), learn at home. The last government estimate was 850,000 in 1999. numbers are not until next year.
§ 3- Some parents choose homeschooling because of their religious beliefs. Others say it provides more time for the family to be together.
§ 4- Many parents also believe homeschooling problems of a lot of traditional schools. One problem is classes with too many students.
§ 5- Critics, though, say children need to school with other children to help them learn things like social . They also say that some homeschooled children do not get a very good education.
§ 6- All fifty states and the District of Columbia permit homeschooling. Some, however, more preparation by parents or testing of children than others do.
§ 7- Homeschooling is as old as the country. In farm areas, people often lived far from a school. Then, in 1852, the state of Massachusetts to require children to attend school.
§ 8- The public education system . By the nineteen sixties and seventies, however, some Americans believed that traditional education was not helping their children. So a number of parents began homeschooling.
§ 9- Homeschool expert Linda Dobson says some parents began to teach their children at home when some religious schools closed. This happened after changes in in the nineteen eighties. Since then, she says, more people have joined the movement -rich and poor, and people from many races, religions and political beliefs.
§ 10- There is even a "National Home School Honor Society". is based in part on the same tests that students take in school.
§ 11- Homeschooled children go to college and have also won top competitions. These include this year's National Geographic Bee. Fourteen-year-old James Williams knew that the Indian state of Goa is a colony of Portugal.