Reading, Writing, or Rapture?

I'm basically suspicious of the idea of homeschooling, folks. See, while a part of me wants to believe that the majority of homeschoolers just want their kids to receive a better education than the state can provide them, it seems to me that a part of that desire comes not only from a deep distrust of government and people who are different from oneself in the first place, but also a desire to exert a great deal of control over one's own children, in being the only conduit through which their worldview gets constructed. I feel like this is a dangerous thing, because the world is populated by many people with many conflicting interests and views. Getting only one filter for understanding the world isn't much better than getting a blindfold. I've mentioned before instances where this control over children denied them not just a complete education, but basically their lives. I can also point out that this distrust of outsiders is also sometimes a guard against being caught abusing children.

But the biggest thing I worry about is the idea that kids might not get any kind of education at all. That parents, with good intentions or bad, try their own idiosyncrasies out on their kids and adopt this method and that, and wind up with kids who aren't properly educated and aren't well-capable of taking on employment opportunities or caring for themselves. That sort of thing sounds like it could be guilt-ridden and hard to overcome, because the child so (un)educated might themselves be isolated by a distrust of formal learning opportunities to fix their educational deficits.

So, hearing that a "homeschooling" family wants to forgo any curriculum at all because they are waiting on the Rapture strikes me as appalling. That's abusive. We're working on two thousand years since the life of Jesus, and no man knows the hour or the day of his Coming again. So why in the heck wouldn't you want your kids to pick up a little knowledge in the meanwhile on the off-chance they might have use of some adult skills? Or just to keep themselves usefully busy? Or because knowing stuff is rewarding and interacting with the world is why we are actually here?

I just feel such disgust. It's like hampering a baby learning to walk by turning his ankles--denying a growing child the opportunity to learn. Pruning the flowering of their youthful minds into a wasteland topiary of a barren cross. It's denying them their birthright as human beings to prevent them from knowing the creation into which they've been born.

In case you're wondering, unlike Donald Trump, I know very well my favorite scripture: Ecclesiastes 9:10--"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest." For an atheist, these words are even more true. This life here matters. Make it count before it's too late. These people want to wait for the Reckoning before their children live?  What then is there to be reckoned? Rather, suffer your children to come unto the world of man that they know the many faces of God for He is the other, who you meet everywhere and everywhen. (And what you do to the least of these others is what you do to Him.)  And if atheist I know that, and religious thee doesn't, all the more proof for the need of formal schooling.