Some kids just aren't good at playing the game. From what I've seen, those are the very ones who tend to make excellent engineers. (Said the daughter of an engineer, the best friend of an engineer, the wife of an engineer, and very probably the mom of at least one engineer...)
Following dumb rules doesn't usually appeal to a good problem solver. They tend to bristle and rebel against rules that the rest of us accept as just part of the way things are.
That's neither a pro or a con for the kid's choices, really, nor is it a recommendation for or against homeschooling. It's just an observation: if he won't play the game, then I'll bet the kid will make a really good, efficient, smart engineer.
