Also, their parent(s) could have forced them.
HOWEVER, even then, you are marrying the family to a certain extent. I know nowadays you can't get too picky (my wife's family is half Novus Ordo and half "nothing") but sometimes the badness of the parents passes on to the children, if you know what I mean. Their values, priorities, beliefs, etc.
But I agree with your post Lad. It does show moral weakness, laziness, and worst of all, a signal that they might be a sheep. NOT a good thing for the coming age.
However important it was to be awake and aware for the past 50 years, it's about to become 10X as important.
Sending your kid to public school in the 80's was a poor choice. In the 90's or 00's it was a much worse choice. Doing so in 2020 could actually be fatal -- due to long term effects of traumatization, propaganda, mask wearing, emotional damage, and mandatory vaccines. That's to say nothing about the current "Woke" nature of the educational system. We celebrated Columbus Day back in the 80's and early 90's (my public school career). Today, they completely vilify the White Man and Columbus in particular. His "day" is now known as "Indigenous Peoples' Day". I'm not kidding.