My friend's nineteen-year-old son is trying to finish his high school senior year by doing an at-home program. It's different from an actual home schooling program in that he does his work on computer modules and submits them to the teacher at the high school for evaluation. Once the teacher does what he needs, he resets the system so that the next module can be accessed.  Unfortunately for my friend's son, the work is self-guided and he has waited entirely too long to try and get through the required modules to graduate this year.  He requested (sort of) help on his facebook page for the English class modules since he says he is not very good with that subject. I offered to help him and he, surprisingly, took me up on my offer.  I agreed to meet him yesterday at is house to get started not really knowing what to expect. I was shocked at how easy the work actually is. Even though it was a really long time ago, I remember my senior English class consisting of essay writing based on classic literature we had to read or classroom discussions on Shakespeare or Austen books.  The module we worked with yesterday seemed more vocabulary oriented.  It listed 4 or 5 words and their definitions.  It then gave a short excerpt from a book to read.  The next step was to correctly match up the meaning of the vocabulary word with some part of the excerpt.  I was also shocked at how little knowledge my friend's son actually has on some of the definitions of those words.  Words such as dialect, foible and irony were completely lost on him.  It made me feel bad that he struggles so much, but it also made me wonder if this is the norm among the kids of that generation.  Kinda scary.  I will continue to help him if he asks me to.  I just hope it makes a difference.