This is only anecdotal, but I have known a number of these youngsters.
I'm sorry but I find that equivalent to the Maoist youth groups. Life is short and to not allow a child play and the interaction of others is wrong. Maturity comes from all these things and not a rigid life of limited educational and psychological opportunity. I remember reading long ago that mental issues were worse in rural areas (do they exist any more?) than urban areas because of the lack of support, when you are out there alone you better fit in.
Midcan, I can't agree nor see the parallel. In the era of Mao, children were taken from their homes and regimented into a state run educational system intended to make the children good maoists, and to remove parental influence with its prior residual set of values. It seems this could be loosely compared more to what we have today in America than the home school system the boy who spoke at CPAC, and the children I described.
These kids experience a great amount of lattitude in their personal lives to experience what adults experience. How about the actual birth of a calf, or colt, or the responsiblity of a daily routine that demands something of them more than responding to the end-of-class-buzzer sending them to the next classroom; something like shoveling the horse crap out of the barn, a necessary evil, but it provides a good sense of proportion.
Also with these kids who are home schooled, if I were to be concerned about anything, I would be concerned they would have gaps missing from their education, mathematics for instance, but not from socializaton. They have their siblings to socialize with and other children in their rural neighborhoods who are likewise occupied with homeschooling. They experience a greater degree of freedom to experience life outside of the classroom environment than the student in the ordinary classroom and they get a chance to go to the government schools for certain activities to interact with children there too. Unfortunately there is some effort in certain areas to shut them out or exclude them from being able to do that.
Rural neighborhoods do exist all over middle America. As a matter of fact urban government everywhere is trying to zone against that phenomenon calling it "sprawl", claiming that sprawl causes greater costs in government services (like police, fire, school bus transportation, emergency services, county road maintenance, need for water and sewer, etc, etc) the things that goverment ought to see as its worthy responsibilities to serve citizens who are paying property taxes, but in the case of the homeschooled kid don't take school resources. Instead these are seen as excess costs to urban society, which must be limited wherever possible.
Who's to say which is the better emotional environment, the city school with its social structure of cliques, exclusion, bullying, sexual pressures (all which surely do exist) or that of the same environment that produced the likes of an Abraham Lincoln.
PS I enjoyed your photos, well done.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed them. Many of them are subjects which rural Americans enjoy in their daily life; a greater texture than being a part of the regimented government system......