Dave Neiwert at Orcinus blog has an interesting post on homeschooling. Basically, it can be good, and on the other hand, it has become a breeding ground for racists.

The story opens with a horrifying anecdote that is familiar to many: The home-schooled child who refuses to participate with minority children. It goes on to explore the subset of white supremacists who populate home schooling's fringes:

... Home schooling has a strain of racism running through it that may reflect similar ideas held by others in the broader society. There are no studies or numbers to put racism and home schooling in perspective, but home-schooling laws that ensure that parents have the freedom to make socialization choices for their children also allow some families to completely withdraw from society.

In Texas, a librarian told the Beacon Journal that some home-schooling parents objected to the book selection on the shelves. They lobbied the library to bring back older editions -- books that depicted the United States in the 1950s, prior to the landmark 1964 civil rights legislation.

That idea is espoused on a number of racist Internet sites, where people who have a common hatred of minorities -- especially of African-Americans and Jews -- converse.

Stormfront, a white supremacist organization, has a Web site on "education and home schooling." The overriding theme is to home-school to avoid exposure to other cultures.

Among the discussions is one in which a member suggests stealing and destroying books from the public library -- a popular resource for home schoolers -- to eliminate material that portrays the United States as anything other than a white, Protestant culture.

Go read the whole post for context.

I do not feel strongly about homeschooling one way or the other. I do much prefer that kids learn to deal with the world by going out to school, but of course, if there are problems with a school system, one must do what one has to do.

I do reject the whole homeschooling attitude of superiority and self-righteousness. If one assumes that anything in the public sphere, even private schools, are by default, unacceptable, then that's a problem and it usually means that there is a hidden agenda.

That said, homeschooling is a good thing, my thoughts are more focused on the dark underbelly thereof.