What is wrong with a kid marching to the beat of his own drummer? Kids are not all alike; they each have their own interests. If a teenager shows an aptitude and desire to learn auto mechanics, why should that kid have to suffer through four years of dead boring classes during which he could otherwise be engaged learning the skill for which he's best suited? I'm not saying that kids should not have some basic math, history and language arts, but not all kids plan to go to college, and are not college material, so why not gear some courses for those kids rather than make them sit in the classroom with kids who have a penchant for learning the 'liberal arts', and continue to feel like they are failures for not learning at the same rate.
Some may consider that kid wierd; I've come to think of kids like him as motivated to get out into the world and DO something, sooner, rather than later.
Some homeschooled kids get a bad rap for not joining groups or getting involved in things, so they're considered strange. Has it ever occurred to folks that some kids WANT to homeschool so that they won't be forced to deal with a whole classroom of kids their own age, with whom they have nothing in common, and cannot even hold a conversation because of it? Maybe they're not particularly shy, just not interested in what the other kids have to say. It's amazing that so many homeschooled kids, when they meet up with others, are astounded they they all have so much in common. They just didn't have those things in common with their 'schooled' peers.
You could call that eccentric, or wierd. I say vive le difference!
You are mixing in too many subjects. We happen to be talking about some of the observations we've made of homeschooled children.
As for not needing all those classes if one wants to be an auto mechanic. That is very shortsighted. An auto mechanic may one day want to be the boss and run his own business; if he doesn't have some very good math and english skills, I pity him. I also believe in differences, but I try to look a bit further down the pike.