Faith Forming Parents

What would we say of parents who wanted to encourage their kids to play sports by pursuing a strategy something like this?
"We don't want to bias our kids to any particular sport, or force our own (or anyone else's choices on them) so we're going to insulate them from all sports until they're 18 or so when they can choose for themselves. All sports give kids the chance to be physically fit.  When Sally is old enough, she can make her own choice."  We'd say parents like that are nuts.  No one can make a judgement about their suitability to play any sport without actually playing, and no child can play without the support of parents.

It drives me crazy when parents say something like that about raising kids to be "religious."  There's no faith tradition in the world that can be fully engaged from the outside.  Most require a lifetime to understand and value. Religion is a team sport are requires being part of the community/team that practices it.  Parents who want their children to have something of a spiritual life have to play early and long if their children are going to have any chance of understanding and respecting their own or anyone else's faith traditions. 

The recent study by the Pew Charitable Trust on religious knowledge was revealing. The U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions -- including their own. Kids and parents making informed choices don't seem to be the case.
The rising number of "unaffiliates" is a worrisome trend for all faith communities, leading in the extreme to the religion of "me." The spiritually isolated individual is as handicapped and dangerous as a person kept in solitary physical confinement for long periods of time--a shrunken soul, only minimally human.
Parents who care about raising fully-human beings give serious effort to being part of faith communities that nurture faith formation--as much or more than they do their sports teams.
What do you think?