public vs. private

My eighth grade son wants to go to public school for high school next year because he is feeling oppressed

He is oppressed by the khakis, button downs and loafers he has had to wear every day since he was six. He is oppressed by the fact that he cannot grow his shaggy head of hair below his ears. He is oppressed by having to attend chapel each morning when he is questioning his own religious views. He wants to go to school with more progressive kids, or at least a few more leftie Democrat kids.

He has a legitimate interest in attending a more diverse school, but he also has some misconceptions about public school, I think. He's seen "Rock and Roll High School" too many times.

He believes he will have fewer rules and more freedom at a public school, but I think he will find himself very turned off by the "school resource officers" (cops at school) roaming the cinderblock halls. He's used to being outside on a 100 acre farm setting many times each day and in classrooms with big windows that open, etc, etc, etc and I think he'll find the whole public school setting very closed up and depressing, but hey, he's a teenage boy and he thinks I know very little at the moment.

He also wants to go to a school with more kids who want to be in his nascent rock and roll band.

Oh yes, he also told me this morning (in his constant, nonstop lobbying to go to public school) that at a public school, he would no longer be the only teenager with an "unusual mom." I asked him what exactly this meant and he said that he is now embarrassed because I am so much younger than his friends' mothers - he says he's afraid people think I had him when I was 15 years old. I am now officially embarrassing as a parent for something I have zero control over: my age.