> And I agree it can be more efficient to tailor a curriculum to a child...if your goal is to only learn that one thing.

I assume that by "that one thing" you mean the curriculum itself. It seems obvious that the core concern of the education system should be the mastery of some agreed-upon curriculum, and that students performance should be the primary metric by which the system is judged. The rebranding of the public schools as socio-cultural stewards is a head fake designed to move the discussion away from how these educators have failed in their core mission. It is also a natural result of the overrepresentation of social science majors in the teaching profession.

> What they'll miss is how to tolerate and work with other, very different people.

Public schools are actually very bad at this. Especially in primary school, students primarily interact with children their same age. Students form social groups, self-segregating by gender, race, economic status, neighborhood, etc. Students learn to exclude others and ostracize those who aren't members of their groups. The author speaks writes about his and his family's experiences.

> Traveling is great too, you can learn a lot, more people in the US should do it.

Again, the author talks about this. He moved the family to Costa Rica for six months. His children are studying Mandarin for an upcoming trip to China. Public schooling families are tied to the public school schedule, and therefore generally must travel when it is most expensive and most crowded. Also, I'm not sure why you think homeschooling would preclude or discourage travel.

> However, I worry about abandoning the system and isolation.

These children are not isolated. Again, the author talks about the myriad activities in which the children are engaged, as well as the time they actually get to spend forming more meaningful bonds with their family members. I know many people can speak to how isolated one can feel in a public school.

If by "the system" you mean our society and system of government, I'm not sure why you view these children as some sort of threat. They are well-loved and competent; and if they weren't, you acknowledge that the schools are not responsible for parenting them. Aside from textbook Marxists, even people who are against homeschooling generally feel broken homes are much more of a societal threat.

If by "the system" you mean the public school system, I wouldn't worry. The public school system isn't going anywhere. It's a massive bureaucracy and children (especially those with working parents) have to go somewhere during the day. By your standards, the schools will probably only become more successful, by housing an increasing number of children of various backgrounds in the same place during the workday.

> There's already large politic, social, etc divides, I think this will make them worse.

I'd like to see some evidence that the homeschooling population will have any impact on whether society at large is polarized or not on a particular subject. There are plenty of issues where the polarization is simply a result of people having more information. The usual example is when some people want to build a bridge and some people don't want to build the bridge. The solution is not to compromise and build half the bridge. And a large number of people are going to be unhappy whether or not the bridge is built. But that's not indicative of a failure of government, but rather how government works. More people today understand how policies affect them personally and are able to advocate for themselves more effectively. At any rate, it's safe to say that the public schools have probably tended toward your ideal more over the last few decades and the polarization has become more pronounced, so it's tough to say that the recent small trend toward homeschooling is causing or contributing to the polarization.

> Also, a call to be more like the prosperity when our founding fathers time? Please..that's a sheathed call for racism, slavery, and all sorts of persecution.

This I think you nailed. It's easy to see that these people will not stop until slavery is reinstituted nationwide.