Embarrassingly poor grammar aside, Michael has made his point very eloquently:

Who really cares. Georgia blows tennessee out of the water no pun intended. Homeschooling is just stupid. You think thats good for your children. What you think you are protecting them from something. You think what because you are homeschooling them you are doing them a service. You teach them nothing about the real world- you baby them. I love when people are homeschooled and when they come to the real world like college they do not have the know how to handle themselves. They are completely ignorant to everything.

He seems to think poorly of homeschooling, except for the sadistic enjoyment he experiences at their supposed expense. Bully for Michael! I think Michael could be a poster child for homeschooling, an example of his parents' failure by turning over a [probably] once promising young boy to the government for a couple of decades of mind-dumbing--rather, mind-numbing--indoctrination.

I thought about writing a retort replete with countermanding facts (this blog is full of these already). However, I doubt Michael would (a) be able to comprehend their significance or (b) be willing to accept reality for what it is. To hell with any facts that refute a self-affirming worldview, eh?

As for the aquaria, my wife and daughter have been to both, and the GA one certainly didn't wow them any more than the TN one. Couple this with GA's tendency to have its largest animals die in short order (see here, here, and here), and they're not screaming quality there. I expect the remaining animals are screaming, though (were they so physiologically and intellectually endowed): "Get us outta here before we get killed, too!"

In response to Michael's charge that homeschoolers aren't prepared for the real world, I offer this challenge highly tilted in his favor: design a written test--say, a la Turing--to demonstrate an understanding of the real world, and pick any ten recent, high school graduates of the government you know. (Dumbing that down for Michael's sake, that means pick up to ten people you know who just recently--say, last year--graduated from a public high school.) We'll give the test to these ten graduates and to my nine year old daughter. Let's see who fares better. My only stipulations are that none is allowed assistance in taking the test (can Michael's friends, schooled in the government's ethics, be trusted on the honor system?), and secondly, that I be able to preview the test and provide editorial comment. The latter is largely to insure understandable, English grammar but also to insure the questions are relevant to determining the presence of a real-world understanding. The test (both before and after my editorial contributions) and the results will be posted here. If my daughter fails to best Michael's ten challengers, we will adjust our homeschool curriculum to include the content she missed from the test, thereby insuring her eventual, real-world competency. Michael is free to retest her to verify this. Michael may have the satisfaction in knowing he contributed to the improvement of a homeschooler and therefore made a positive contribution to society (by proxy). If my daughter succeeds in holding her own against these government graduates twice her age, Michael then agrees to either change his tune about homeschooling (i.e., promote it) or at least keep his ignorant mouth shut on the matter.