Kent Slocum reads with the passion and timing of a Baptist preacher four times his age. During his family’s morning devotional, his squeaky 10-year-old voice glides smoothly over ancient Biblical names like “Balak, son of Zippor, the King of Moab,” pausing to emphasize the message of the day …

“Now fear the Lord, and serve him in all faithfulness.”

Kent’s serious face, buried in his thick leather-bound Bible, seems out of place above his red and blue choo-choo train slippers that swing back and forth, barely touching the floor.

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

This is reading class for the five Slocum children, all home schooled by their mother, Mellissa, a petite brunette with the patience of Job. The Slocums struggle over timed math quizzes and phonics flash cards. They take spelling tests and give book reports. But they also start each morning discussing how all the children, from Kent down to 20-month-old Kirsten, can serve the Lord by cheerfully doing their schoolwork and picking up their toys.

Nestled in their picture-perfect suburban home, complete with a small white picket fence in front of the playhouse, this family of unlikely rebels includes five of the two million American children whose parents are rejecting the public school system in favor of an education that integrates the three R’s with moral and ethical values.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates growth in home schooling at 15 to 20 percent per year – tens of thousands of children. Oregon has one of the nation’s fastest growing home-school populations, estimated at more than 20,000 students statewide in 2006. In Eugene, the small Western Oregon city where the Slocums live, official records suggest that the number of home schoolers has doubled during the past ten years. But Michelle Martin, home school coordinator for the local school district believes the numbers may be much higher. Home schoolers are fiercely independent. As many as a third don’t even check in with the school district, she estimates. 

As more and more families leave the public school system, lawmakers across the nation are taking notice and introducing new rules and requirements — in some cases, requiring a specific curriculum, in others, regular achievement tests. In Oregon, standardized tests are already a reality, and families like the Slocums worry about what the state will demand next.

Since the modern home school movement began 30 years ago, liberal and conservative families have fought for the right to educate their children at home, free from the influence of government, the goal; being to raise idealistic kids with a clear vision about how the world works and the ability to fight for their beliefs.

For the Slocums, it’s a Jesus-centered Christianity that shapes daily life. For others, it’s a fear that the regimentation of school restricts kids’ creativity or a general mistrust of government institutions borne of 1960s activism.

Advocates of home schooling say that parents who demand the right to teach their children that God created the world in seven days or that George W. Bush has committed war crimes could be raising passionate people who will cast off the apathy of their generation to become leaders. Detractors say they could be raising naïve ideologues who will further exacerbate the nation’s political divide with an inability to compromise — a generation of soldiers being readied for the culture wars.

This ongoing controversy has led sociologists to label home schooling a “social movement,” and to accuse home schoolers of exacerbating an “atomized society” where no one has a sense of civic duty and national identity. For perhaps the first time in recent history, the average parents can raise a child completely protected from the larger culture without being seen as social outcasts. They can home school, rent videos, get their news from blogs that echo their perspective and spend time with like-minded families. The Slocums, for example, don’t watch TV. They listen to Christian music. The kids don’t go to Cub Scouts; instead, they learn Bible verses and play games with other Christian kids at Awana Club.

Parents like the Slocums believe it is their job is to protect their children.  Why should they abdicate that responsibility during the school day, particularly when teenagers are shooting their classmates and baby-faced junior high kids are having sex.