Erin belongs to the Mock Trial team that our homeschool cooperative put together. Mock Trial is a national competition of high school age competitors who formally try cases. the cases, I believe, are actual ones. there've been 2 trials so far. actual attorneys (scoring pro bono points) coach the teams. each team supplies lawyers to try the case, and whatever witnesses for their side. there's real lawyering being done, as well as acting. Erin, so far, is just an understudy. only half the team gets to participate in a trial. the 1st trial was in a small local law school. it was fascinating. the 4 (2 boys, 2 girls) lawyers for our team dressed the part, in suits. the girls on the other team all dressed neatly but not in suits. the one boy on that team of attoprneys wore a suit but took the jacket off. that's a points off offense, which the judge noted. the case was a civil suit, someone wanted to collected damages because they got into a traffic accident while using a gps. our side defended. probably the highlight of the trial was when the plaintiff's attorney cross-examined one of the defense's witnesses. the girl who played the witness was very relaxed in her role (a girl on the other side had gotten the giggles and could barely finish), and quite hosile. she wasn't about to give up any incriminating information. which in fact is exactly how the expert witness in the OUI trial we saw recently acted. the attorney was tenacious and it was exciting to watch. I thought the attorney got knocked back on her heels a bit but the judge afterwards commended her performance. one of our attorneys was keen to object, even pointing out to the judge some Mock Trial rules that the judge didn't know, and he had the boy on the ohter side totally flustered. the judge was kindly about that. he didn't score the boy well, but he empathized aferwards. it seemed tense as we watched but in fact our team won by a large margin (each performer is rated on a 1-10 scale). the 2nd trial wasn't even close. the other side at least dressed lawyerly, but they weren't well-practiced. the one who did the closing argument got completely lost. I grant nerves, and wouldn't want to be overly critical, but she'd already done at least one trial before with the same closing, AND she was reading it. the other team didn't object once. something that I noticed, and maybe this is the point of this post, is how the homescholers seemed more mature than the high schoolers. or maybe maturity isn't the right word. I think I perceived a social ceiling over the head of the highschoolers: the school hierarchy. the molding and manipulation that goes on. the implicit weight of judments: what does my teacher think of me, my coach, the popular kids, what, even, do the dorks think. it's all lumped on the backs on every student. everyone is judged, but the homeschoolers inhabit a much less rigid structural system of judgment. the first team that we faced was pretty sharp but a sense of their own freedom was lacking. it seemed telling that one of the team in the 2nd trial was on her cellphone as soon as the trial (not the competition) ended. the Pavlov bell rings and it is time to move on. it is worth at least considering the alternative to public school, admitting the obvious failings thereof. not to proselytize nor to assume homescholing is for everyone. Erin has Asperger's, a high function sort of autism. how does the gristmill deal with that sort of child? fill in he blank.