I went to 12 years of Catholic education and the mindset you describe was never mentioned once.
It's depressing and my cousin's son who is being home schooled by the same sort of religious mother is just criminally under-educated for his age. We don't live in a small city, one of the larger ones in America. It's just sad to see that this is often the status quo around here.
That's why home schooling is just a terrible thing to allow to happen to kids. They can't choose what bullshit they're fed at home, mandatory free public education to some level is the main thing that can help them have a decent start at life.
My partner and I, not at all religious, are home-schooling our eleven-year-old because the public school was completely failing him. Pandemic-era zoom classes were especially worthless. By contrast, a few hours of parental attention each day has him thriving. We have the freedom to work with his natural curiosity, and the normal variations in the pace of skill development, instead of boxing him into a fixed curriculum.
If you grow up as a catholic in the south, you’re in the minority. Sunday mass is just a small part of someone’s week, and you’ll spend most of your time around Protestants.
Most people are heavily influenced by their peers, and it can be pretty jarring for someone to accept that an ideology they’ve surrounded themselves with is wrong.