Because homeschooling is legal.
...and be out of touch with reality. No, I don't mean reality TV. I mean the reality of multiple cultures, alternative views, and of course science that contradicts a literal reading of the least-reliable parts of the Bible.
Most parents who do home schooling do so to 'shelter' their kids from reality.
A hint: Rachel Dolezal was home-schooled.
First, homeschoolers do better on the SATs than those going to public schools. Second, there's nothing wrong with a parent trying to mold them in faith and keep kids from the destructive influences of many public schools.
1. But they are lambs to the slaughter in the real world.
2. Faith in nonsense (like young-earth creationism, Marxism-Leninism, UFOs, Afrocentrism) is worthless.
3. It's up to parents to make clear that their children are to avoid getting drawn into destructive tendencies. Once the kids are out on their own they will face those in real life -- as in the workplace. Learning to recognize dangerous temptation for what it is and learning to avoid it is essential to becoming an adult.
When I was in high school -- not only was I often offered drugs -- some people actually tried to get me to deal drugs!
4. Homeschooling might be acceptable if the parents are unusually adept at teaching -- but such suggests that they could fare better by teaching kids in the public schools.
1. It's empirically true that homeschoolers get higher SAT scores than kids going to public schools. Show me the evidence they're "lambs for the slaughter" in the real world.There's more to learning than the formal curriculum. Most home-schooled kids are isolated from the Real World temptations and dangers.
Kids who attend parochial schools get a religious view, too. Of course, such might be the 'wrong' sort of religious view (Catholic) for those who insist upon home-schooling. But at that, a kid who goes through Catholic schools will get to recognize evolution as a strong theory with no viable alternatives. After all, the Catholic Church doesn't need science as an enemy to faith. If home-schooling exists to deny objective science and promote a mythological history one lays the foundation for a rebellion against the "Christian" part of the eduction.
Those bad influences almost never come from public-school teachers or administrators. Those bad influences come from the neighborhood and mass culture. If those bad influences are concentrated heavily in communities with low socio-economic status (SES), then even home-schooling will be inadequate. But many children will be raised in low-SES environments. So perhaps even a trip to the local grocery will lead a child past addicts strung out, street whores, and other such illustrious members of the community. (irony intended)
Small children obviously cannot flourish in a PG-13, let alone NC-17, environment. Of course it is best that children be shielded from overt sexuality. But public K-12 educators usually do that well enough. I once asked a school administrator in a junior high what was wrong with kids from a certain elementary school. The simple answer? "They go home".
As we all know, K-12 teachers are not the best-and-brightest. They are generally above-average, which has proved average. Temperament matters more than brilliance. There are brilliant people who would lack the patience to interact with children... and then there is the unmentionable.
I got quite a shock going from rural Michigan to urban California as a high-school junior. A different ethnic mix? That was easy. Being an unsophisticated hayseed? I wasn't so unsophisticated as I might have expected. Gangs and drugs? Such was horrible. (By the way -- in my experience, the worst gangs were white!)
"Social maturity" is learned in the School of Hard Knocks.
