I believe homeschooling should be an option, and I can understand why some parents choose it.
I have often been dismayed by the negative things I've seen my kids absorb from their peers in school: the commercialism, materialism, homophobia, shallow celebrity culture, disrespect for authority, etc. Not that my sons are innocent little angels corrupted by the other kids -- heck, they probably exert it on the other kids at least as much as the other way around -- just that those are elements in the society we live in that run rampant in schools and that I wish I could shield them from.
But I can't. I'm not sure I even want to, because they have to live in that society eventually, anyway, and I'm not sure they can fully deal with it if they haven't any first-hand experience with it. And while I have often been dismayed at the negative aspects of their peer interaction, I think it has at least as many -- well, more, actually -- positive effects.
And I wouldn't have homeschooled my kids in a million years. We would not all have made it through alive. My sons are academically gifted and I have often been disappointed in their schools' abilities to nurture those skills, but on a full-time basis I don't think I could have done it well myself. Without the teaching skills, and without the example of other, more obedient kids, it would have been really, really hard.
But if my kids were bullied, or if I wanted to try to take on the monumental task of raising a child who does not subscribe to cultural values I
oppose, I'd like to have it as an option.