LETTER OF THE DAY
OK, it’s a column but this quote deserved some pub:
But I do not think that school life bears more than a fleeting resemblance to real life.
Where in real life is one’s day broken up by bells? In prison, perhaps, and the more poorly-run factories. Where in real life does one spend one’s day with 30 other persons of exactly one’s own age and one much older authority figure? Nowhere.
Where else does one run the risk of getting beaten up in the locker room? Prison, I suppose. Where else does one spend an hour now and again in a mass of people whipping oneself and the rest of the crowd into a frenzied show of “spirit?” Perhaps in totalitarian regimes.
The whole column is worth a read.