Here's a perceptive op-ed from the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal: "Home-schoolers threaten our cultural comfort." In all fairness, however, I think that the level of acceptance for home schooling has risen tremendously, at least in some parts of the country.
Here in Richmond, Va., sympathy for home schooling (or at least a lack of antipathy) is fairly high. I imagine that most of the rejection comes from leftists and/or adults who are into minimalist parenting. I suspect they are made to feel guilty by home schoolers, or more traditional parents in general.
Some of the article's criticism is applicable to anyone who puts material goods ahead of the basic spiritual, emotional and intellectual needs of their children:
Young families must make the decision: Will junior go to day care and day school, or will mom stay home and raise him? The rationalizations begin. "A family just can't make it on one income." (Our parents did.) "It just costs so much to raise a child nowadays." (Yeah, if you buy brand-name clothing, pre-prepared food, join every club and activity, and spend half the cost of a house on the daughter’s wedding, it does.) And so, the decision is made. We give up the bulk of our waking hours with our children, as well as the formation of their minds, philosophies, and attitudes, to strangers.
It's the old "here are the keys to the car and leave me alone" syndrome; only now it's "go play your video game, go on the internet, play with your iPhone, and leave me alone" syndrome. But when parents can no longer afford such distractions, as our economic downturn threatens levels of frugality unheard of in decades, the spoiled children will come home to roost. And then what?
