Son #1's school experience, thus far:

According to Son #1, public high school's academic load is "chump stuff" compared to homeschool.

Torn jeans and T-shirts are completely wrong. You must wear black, blacker than space. This requires a trip to the mall, which is an hour from home, and much more expensive than, say, the thrift store.

Racial tension is everywhere. But the kids who tease Justin for being latino, or Son #1 for being white and the wearer of a wicked Jewfro, are balanced by the kids who give him a new nickname. He is, in goth circles, "DK", while the African-American kids call him "C-Dogg".

While, back in the day, people cornered each other in the hall to find out who liked whom, today that is all done by text message, with similar results.

The bisexuals play spin-the-bottle after lunch.

Some classes are completely out of control, dominated by obscenity-shouting thugs, people who don't bother to do the (minimal) required work and then complain when they don't understand anything, and those who leave for the bathroom and never return. Substitute teachers are a fact of life. The principal relies on in-house sheriff's deputies to cart off the most unruly kids, so that teachers can at minimum enter their own classrooms. And yet, this is somehow seen as a more legitimate route to college than homeschooling, in the eyes of the State.

Son #1 comes home every day with stories about his school, his friends, his classes, and the rest. I am honored and thrilled to be intimately included in his life. I am also mortified, on a daily basis.