USTIN, Texas - Robert Hughes looked like any other eighth-grader the other day as he walked along with his mother, bookbag strapped to his back.
Yet it wasn't a school day but a Saturday afternoon, and he wasn't trudging across the schoolyard but across a scorching airport tarmac at the end of a 6,076-mile field trip. For the preceding six days, his classroom had been a campaign plane, his school bus a Secret Service motorcade, his lecturer the Republican presidential nominee, his main course ''Campaign 2000.''
Hughes is the 13-year-old son of George W. Bush's communications director, Karen P. Hughes. Faced with the prospect of spending the election year separated from her only child, and surprised by his interest in national politics, Hughes decided to take Robert out of school this fall and along with her on the campaign trail.
Using materials provided by his teachers and the University of Texas, she is teaching the honor-roll student in between proofreading her boss's speeches, dealing with the national media, and delivering the campaign's message-of-the-day in the race against Democrat Al Gore.
So far, mother, son, and presidential candidate are thrilled with how it's working out.
''The thing I've liked best so far was the military history lesson from General Schwarzkopf,'' Robert said, referring to a visit to Dayton, Ohio, where he listened to Persian Gulf War commanders Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell talk about military preparedness.
His mother said: ''A presidential campaign is a unique experience. ... It's a wonderful geography lesson and political lesson and history lesson all at once.''
Most supportive is Bush himself, who cleared a seat in his airplane's staff cabin so Robert could tag along with mom. She is one of the trio of top Bush advisers known as the ''Iron Triangle.''
''One of the nicest things about my campaign is to watch Karen and her son share an experience like this,'' said Bush, himself the product of a political family, as his plane flew home Saturday from Florida. ''The idea that she could take a liability for herself - being away from her son all year - and turn it into a positive experience like this is really a credit to her.''
The Texas governor was equally complimentary of his teenage sidekick.
''Robert is not like a lot of other 13-year-olds. He's mature, he's a very good listener, and he's learning a lot about commitment and discipline and disappointment and joy. And he's getting to see his mom work. She's one of the best in the business, and he's getting to see firsthand what a powerful person she is and how good she is at her job.''
The idea of Robert forsaking the classroom for the campaign trail took root last winter, when he traded the warmth of Texas for the bitter cold of New Hampshire to sample the primary campaign. Soon he was riding in the state trooper's car at the head of the motorcade and checking out the view through the lens of a $50,000 CNN video camera.
He also watched firsthand as Bush reacted to the news he had lost the primary to his Republican rival, US Senator John McCain of Arizona.
Last spring, Robert's father, Jerry Hughes, spoke to the principal at the Hill Country Middle School outside Austin to see if road-schooling would be possible under the state's home school law. It was. In August, after Robert got his teacher assignments, his mother wrote to each instructor and proposed the idea of teaching him herself.
''I said I knew we couldn't replicate everything you do in a classroom in a campaign airplane, but our goal was to keep up with the classwork and the major projects,'' she said.
The response was enthusiastic.
Each teacher gave her the class syllabus or a handwritten list of the subjects being covered this fall. The school district lent her the appropriate textbooks, from ''The Story of America'' history book to a language arts workbook.
Some of the classwork dovetails nicely with the campaign environment. One assignment covered quotations, so Robert practiced full and partial quotations by writing about one of the governor's speeches. He spiced the project up by interviewing Bush's ad maker, Mark McKinnon.
The biggest trouble spot was algebra. Robert is taking ninth-grade level math, which is about eight grade levels above his mother's expertise, or so she jokes. She decided to take a pass on teaching him and enrolled Robert in a University of Texas correspondence course.
On the road, Robert and his mother share a hotel room. Wakeup call is sometimes as early as 6 a.m., so there's not a lot of sleeping in. Each day he dresses in khakis and a print shirt, but unlike his classmates, he also affixes a staff pin from the Secret Service to his lapel.
Hughes tries to make sure her son does his algebra in the morning, before the day's events overtake them. Robert goes through the rest of his lessons as the entourage moves from city to city. His bookbag rides in the overhead storage bin.
While Robert spends most of his day with adults, he says he catches up with his friends on weekends and enjoys his campaign companions during the workweek. ''There's a lot of young adults on the campaign,'' he said, his smile showing his braces.
The adults are also entertaining. When his mother walks back to speak with reporters, Robert often tags along, kneeling on a seat beside her as she looks over a seatback to talk to the crowd. Sometimes she turns to him to refresh her memory about details from the private meetings they have attended.
Throughout the year, Robert has met a number of celebrities and TV figures. On Friday night, it was ''Hardball'' host Chris Matthews at a rally outside Miami.
''It's really interesting,'' he said. ''Sometimes they're a lot different [from their TV image] and sometimes they're exactly the same.''
But, perhaps reflecting his mother's job, he said his most eye-opening lesson from the trail is ''how one little thing can turn into a huge thing'' through the amplification of the media.
Yesterday, Robert and his mother headed back out. The campaign spent the day in Beaverton, Ore., and Spokane, Wash., before moving on to California for two days. After an evening home for debate preparation, Bush hits the road again Thursday and Friday, destined for the Midwest battleground states.
The Hugheses will be there every step of the way, as they will through November 7. Should Bush win, the family will probably head off to Washington in January. Should Gore prevail, Robert will finish out the year at Hill Country and graduate with his classmates.
Asked about that prospect, he smiles and says, ''It won't be as fun, but...''
