Yes, as is legitimate medical need (a kid who can't afford to be exposed to typical childhood illnesses, for example). There are reasons to homeschool. There are not nearly as many as there are kids who are homeschooled.

I get involved with kids like this at the college level and that's exactly the sort of "difficult to bridge" gaps in learning that I see across the board. I spoke to one kid years ago after he was kicked from his university class for repeatedly copying from others on tests and even worksheets. I'm not sure, but it seemed like he'd never produced work on his own, his entire educational career to that point. He was homeschooled and the parent would apparently mostly do the work and then he'd just copy it. I guess they thought he'd absorb it by copying it, but what he absorbed was the idea that he'd just always be expected to copy. The idea of knowing enough to actually produce something himself, instead of just copying someone, seemed foreign to him. I don't know how to help a kid who has so fundamentally missed out, but he dropped out so I don't know what would have happened had we tried. I hope he got a job somewhere, but I don't know how.

You can teach them those things yourself though. I agree that public education is under attack, but as a parent you can supplement as long as public school curriculum is only omitting important things (and they obviously always are, because they are teaching to a commonly agreed upon pool of knowledge that is never going to include everything your kid should know) It’s only a serious problem if they are teaching untruths as fact and doing it extensively. Which is what far right homeschoolers perceive to be happening in public school.

Homeschooling makes sense when you think public school is teaching your kid a lot of things that are wrong AND you don’t want them to develop the habit of questioning the knowledge they are given. You don’t want then to be in the habit of thinking about what they learn and deciding what is true. You have to both disagree with what they’ll be taught and not want them to hear that people can have other opinions.

My kids had teachers with a far right bias who told them all sorts of horseshit as “fact” but they weren’t harmed by that because they brought it home and discussed it with me, and with their friends and with other teachers. They learned how to sift through bullshit to form and strengthen their own opinions. My kids had a solid foundation from me that was improved by everything they heard from their various teachers, right and wrong, because all of it taught them to think and question and seek out information and come to independent, well thought out conclusions. I will agree though that if I lived somewhere where everything they taught my kids was patently wrong, homeschooling would have more appeal, but I doubt that’s often the case, UNLESS you think a huge number of things our culture accepts are “wrong”. (Like racial and sexual equality, man’s place in nature, the role of government in legislating sexual freedom, bodily autonomy and sexual identity, etc)

If your goal is simply to create unthinking people who do as they are told and never question your worldview, you don’t expose them to anyone else’s views whether you agree with them or not. You seek out curriculums that echos your “alternative” worldview and you never suggest to them that there are any other valid opinions on the matter. Ie: you homeschool them.

Plenty of kids are homeschooled because the parent does not agree with the culture at large on issues of racism, sexism, the place of religion, or the rule of law. They want their children to never hear any philosophy or truth they don't personally embrace, and it's usually the people who hold very fringe beliefs, who are so committed to ensuring that, that they are willing to jump through hoops to homeschool. Plenty of that guy's customers sought that material out and will go right back to making sure their kids are learning pro-Nazi garbage from someone else. It was not an accident that he was providing that material, and I bet if normal thinking people took a look at almost any homeschooling curriculum, they would be shocked at what it's permissible to tell kids is "true" in the guise of alternative or home education.

For ostensively the same reason but in my opinion, Colleen Hoover is worse. I’ve read two. I read the first because it was everywhere and on lots of lists and it was horrible. Badly written badly plotted with terrible characters. I read the second in case the first was a fluke. Nope. I read Twilight for the same reason (it’s popularity) and also thought it was far from good, and the plot was also problematic at times (having to do with the creeper Edwards treatment of Bella mostly) but I could at least appreciate what teen girls liked about it. There was at least a story there.

I seriously do not understand who is loving Colleen Hoover. She writes psychopaths who victimize others and then have sex. There’s some abuse or murder and more sex and then it’s over. Who is enjoying this? If you’re there for the erotica, there are way better ways to get it.

The article says it’s either the impact of changes in the virus or increased immunity. I’m personally quite worried about long covid so to me, that WAS good news. Why do you say it’s not?