My folks aren't wealthy. I was actually home-schooled because my PUBLIC school system forbade me from attending. (The town where I live has actually done this before, and is apparently still doing it, and have gotten away with it remarkably well.) It's very dark and Nazi-istic, btw:
They've actually forced parents to have their special-needs children committed to mental asylums of THEIR approval or face stiff penalties for child abuse.
The parents, mind you, not the school system.
Why do they do this?
Because it's more economically "safe" to sweep them under the rug and let them get cannibalized by the state mental health system than it is to offer services for special-needs at either end of the spectrum, be they profoundly retarded or on the total opposite side, extremely bright and intelligent but often with emotional/social difficulties. They're not getting bullied by their classmates, even. They're getting bullied by the state.
It's one of those in the red on the map here -- no, I don't live in Austria, but they sure do party like it's 1939. The ADA wasn't signed until 1990 and by that point this had been going on for over 30 years. Seriously, we're talking adult mental facilities for five-year-olds with maybe just the slightest hint of ADHD. Gifted/talented isn't a word in their vocabulary, never mind foreign taboos like, oh, "compassion" and "empathy"...
Basically if you don't conform to the paradigm your parents are charged with child neglect and forced to shove their kids off to the cuckoo's nest. I was one of the few lucky ones whose parents fought the system tooth and nail to prevent me from going up the creek and getting paddled. Unfortunately, the amount of money my family spent on attorneys to fight the school system drained all our resources for college and even health insurance.
Fortunately, however, I'm still here, which is why I'm typing this today.
