Are Homeschoolers Guilty of Abandoning Ship?

I followed a link from Principled Discovery's blog to this post at Street Prophets titled "Homeschools offer no guarantees." It was interesting, and the debate in the comments is even more interesting. This, from one of the very last comments posted by a "Jeff G," struck me, it reminds me so much of CM's warning about utilitarian education:

"...big business--big corporations--are having a horrible impact on education. I fear we may be turning our schools into career grist mills, and to me that smacks of social engineering. Career prep is important, but education is about much much more than what you wanna be when you grow up. As Thomas Jefferson pointed out, education is critical to the functioning of a democratic republic. The ability to think critically is of enormous import. An electorate that cannot deconstruct the media, analyze and detect bias in news and information, think and analyze logically, and communicate clearly and effectively will not be able to sustain a democratic system."

The debate is interesting because, while I've thought about homeschoolers being guilty of abandoning the mission field by refusing to be "salt and light" in public schools, I'd never really considered that homeschooling is, in a sense, a self-centered action that leaves everyone else's kids to their fates in the system. Not that it makes me reconsider homeschooling - I don't think that having my children in the system would help the system or any of the other victims of it. I just hadn't heard of that argument before, or heard of people leaving their own children there, even when they're not doing well, for that reason.