[kevingadd]

That would be fine with me, but we have precedents establishing that minors are not well-equipped to make important decisions for themselves (at least until they're older). So I don't know if they can actually make that choice.

I know a couple kids who preferred homeschooling, but mostly because it was easier than going to school. That was to their detriment later on when they started college. I don't know if that makes it wrong, though. Education is definitely not one-size-fits-all.

You could make the libertarian/capitalist argument that if a child is really lazy and wants to do highly relaxed homeschooling that won't prepare them for college, that's fine, and they can just accept never having a good job or lifestyle, I guess? I don't really like that.

If the parent prefers homeschooling but doesn't have the time/energy to do it right, is that similarly fine? Or do they have an obligation to deliver their children an adequate education, just like they have an obligation to feed and care for them (otherwise the kids will be taken away)?

[eurleif]

Anecdote time: I was not just homeschooled, but unschooled. Unschooling basically means that instead of my parents teaching me, I was expected to learn on my own. They provided some direction and assistance, but they weren't especially well-equipped to teach, and I was always free to choose not to learn something, which I absolutely did do out of laziness sometimes.

I got very into programming, and when I was 18, I launched a Web site which succeeded wildly, and has been paying my bills ever since. I did fine on the SAT, and I had a 4.0 GPA during the year I spent in college. (I left after that to run my company.)

My feelings on unschooling are complicated. Knowing how it turned out, there is no way I would go back in time and make my parents send me to school. But I can easily imagine alternative outcomes where I end up dying in a ditch instead of starting a company. I don't think I would ever unschool a child myself.

But since I'm happy with how unschooling turned out for me, how can I support a law denying those potential benefits to everyone else? That's essentially a law against what caused me to be who I am. I'm fairly certain that if I'd been sent to school, I wouldn't have started my company. It was the result of endless hours of tinkering -- time I wouldn't have had if I'd been busy with homework.

It's a bit like doing a startup versus working a normal job. If you do the startup, you might lose all your cash and fail; but you also have a small chance of winning big. High risk, high reward. The job will give you consistent pay, with no chance of losing your hat; but also with no chance of a big win. Low risk, low reward.

High risk certainly isn't for everyone, but imagine a world where no one ever took risks.