[9th Engineer]

Why should it be up to the parents what gets taught to their kids? The single purpose of an education is to create a productive adult. Tainting the facts that make up a good education with emotion produced maladjusted adults. Take the trend of sheltering students from the uncomfortable aspects of life as an example of bad teaching. Teachers are told not to use red to grade papers because it can cause 'emotional stress', students are later unprepared for rejection and expect other adults around them to continue sheltering them. P.E. is removed from the list of mandatory classes, students stop seeing physical activity as part of an everyday routine. We tell every student that they are gifted and special without any connection to their achievements, students go on to expect any half-assed effort on their part to be highlighted and praised as if it was acceptable. This is why America is dividing into two populations, and the opposite trend has turned Japan into a powerhouse with the rest of Asia soon to follow.
My point is that parents don't make decisions based on the real best interests of their children. Many parents are nothing more than bloated children themselves. Scientists will decide the science background that every highschool graduate should have. Doctors will decide what they should do to stay healthy, and how they should protect themselves from disease. Historians will decide what history they should learn, and economists will teach them how to make smart financial decisions to name a few catagories. If a parent is not one of these things, then they do not have the prerequisite knowledge to say what parts of it are important for their child to know.
Leave these decisions to the respective professional communities already well developed in this country, not politicians and people with no basis on which to make them.