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6bdd2e8 I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing. poverty wealth reality love knowing fame teach facts school Neil Gaiman
3d4f40b THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code will be enforced. 4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds. 5. Our football team will win the championship this year. 6. We expect more of you here. 7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen. 8. Your schedule was created with you in mind. 9. Your locker combination is private. 10. These will be the years you look back on fondly. TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. You will use algebra in your adult lives. 2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away. 3. Students must stay on campus during lunch. 4. The new text books will arrive any day now. 5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores. 6. We are enforcing the dress code. 7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon. 8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals. 9. There is nothing wrong with summer school. 10. We want to hear what you have to say. school Laurie Halse Anderson
9c6535e I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed. school J.K. Rowling
ed5d121 Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself -- educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society. feminism education knowledge-power quip school Doris Lessing
ca927b6 My name is Percy Jackson. I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I a troubled kid? Yeah. You could say that. humor introduction percy-jackson trouble school Rick Riordan
2159a29 It's easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school. emotion awkwardness school Laurie Halse Anderson
c087b9d "Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?" loneliness lies conform wandering antisocial social peer-pressure hurt society bullying school Ray Bradbury
2d81f08 In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk. risk humanity inspirational mistakes school Robert T. Kiyosaki
3e0844b CONJUGATE THIS: I cut class, you cut class, he, she, it cuts class. We cut class, they cut class. We all cut class. I cannot say this in Spanish because I did not go to Spanish today. spanish humor school Laurie Halse Anderson
ac27be0 You can drag my body to school but my spirit refuses to go. school Bill Watterson
102b7cf Don't forget to give Neville our love!' Ginny told James as she hugged him. 'Mum! I can't give a professor !' 'But you Neville-' James rolled his eyes. 'Outside, yeah, but at school he's Professor Longbottom, isn't he? I can't walk into Herbology and give him .... harry-potter humor hogwarts jk-rowling nineteen-years-later neville epilogue professor later deathly-hallows school J.K. Rowling
62b4f04 Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly. library writing bible science bitter childish-beliefs guides invade uneducated unimaginative unthinking guide childish leader leaders imagine ignore home resentment ignorance shame thought the-bible school Isaac Asimov
59f5f92 The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state. ...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. free magazine men-of-straw straw-men rotten preachers liberal self-deception prison state school Henry David Thoreau
d8034bc "Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird." time writing breaking-down-assignment project-management homework project time-management encouragement writing-advice childhood school Anne Lamott
7d5beb0 "But we're a university! We to have a library!" said Ridcully. "It adds . What sort of people would we be if we didn't go into the library?" "Students," said Senior Wrangler morosely." library students university school Terry Pratchett
fa7f5b0 You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it. friends schoolmates pity school Christopher Hitchens
4053ef3 The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.' Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?' That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap. libraries library scholarship scholar librarians school David Eddings
a0ba852 Often, a school is your best bet-perhaps not for education but certainly for protection from an undead attack. revenge shakespeare prospero tempest mercy zombies school Max Brooks
4a4cda7 They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing. imagination pretend school Margaret Atwood
7788c62 She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it. school Terry Pratchett
83db120 Principal Principal: Where's your late pass, mister? Errant Student: I'm on my way to get one now. PP: But you can't be in the hall without a pass. ES: I know, I'm so upset. That's why I need to hurry, so I can get a pass. Principal Principal pauses with a look on his face like Daffy Duck's when Bugs is pulling a fast one. PP: Well, hurry up, then, and get that pass. school Laurie Halse Anderson
c9dca05 "I expect that you must receive top marks at school, young lady." Madeleine smiled as she stirred her tea. "There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction." intelligence obvious school Scott Westerfeld
e7a09f4 You can't eat straight A's. poverty school Maxine Hong Kingston
9dac1d8 There was nothing like a Saturday - unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball. vacation summer school Nora Roberts
e35d25d Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smoke at fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, can be found at sixteen hanging out in bars, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, occasionally stare down a teacher in class, are marked in the attendance book as rebels, and are budding candidates for room-arrest. A schoolmaster will prefer to have a couple of dumbheads in his class than a single genius, and if you regard it objectively, he is of course right. His task is not to produce extravagant intellects but good Latinists, arithmeticians and sober decent folk. The question of who suffers more acutely at the other's hands - the teacher at the boy's, or vice versa - who is more of a tyrant, more of a tormentor, and who profanes parts of the other's soul, student or teacher, is something you cannot examine without remembering your own youth in anger and shame. yet that s not what concerns us here. We have the consolation that among true geniuses the wounds almost always heal. As their personalities develop, they create their art in spite of school. Once dead, and enveloped by the comfortable nimbus of remoteness, they are paraded by the schoolmasters before other generations of students as showpieces and noble examples. Thus teh struggle between rule and spirit repeats itself year after year from school to school. The authorities go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud. And time and again the ones who are detested by their teachers are frequently punished, the runaways and those expelled, are the ones who afterwards add to society's treasure. But some - and who knows how many? - waste away quiet obstinacy and finally go under. education hermann-hesse institution teachers genius students school Hermann Hesse
bec4cfb Everything I need to know... I learned in kindergarten. school Robert Fulghum
da82d8b Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing education school Nassim Nicholas Taleb
f66ebc5 As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn't have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself. That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything - from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it. learning grades imitation rhetoric school Robert M. Pirsig
93a6835 What is the most important thing one learns in school? Self-esteem, support, and friendship. lessons school Terry Tempest Williams
450cd7f I couldn't help but think about school and everything else ending. I liked standing just outside the couches and watching them--it was a kind of sad I didn't mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way. school John Green
1a4b730 "Do you know that feeling? When everything you do seems like a struggle. Where you dont wanna leave the house because you know everyone is judging you. Where you cant even ask for directions in fear that they critise you. Where everyone always seems to be picking out your flaws. That feeling where you feel so damn sick for no reason. Do you know that feeling where you look in the mirror and completly hate what you see. When you grab handfuls and handfuls of fat and just want to cut it all off. That feeling when you see other beautiful girls and just wish you looked like them. When you compare yourself to everyone you meet. When you realise why no one ever showed intrest in you. That feeling where you become so self conscious you dont even turn up at school. That feeling when you feel so disappointed in who you are and everything you have become. That feeling when every bite makes you wanna be sick. When hunger is more satifying that food. The feeling of failure when you eat a meal. Do you know that feeling when you cant run as far as your class. Fear knowing that everyone thinks of you as the"Unfit FAT BITCH" That feeling when you just wanna let it all out but you dont wanna look weak. The fear you have in class when you dont understand something but your too afraid to ask for help. The feeling of being to ashamed to stand up for yourself. depression depression-recovery depression-quotes self-hate teenagers self-harm school Anonymous.
78b6502 The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has -- I'm not kidding. young-adult school J.D. Salinger
84e8b29 Kids didn't have huge backpacks when I was their age. We didn't have backpacks at all. Now it seemed all the kids had them. You saw little second-graders bent over like sherpas, dragging themselves through the school doors under the weight of their packs. Some of the kids had their packs on rollers, hauling them like luggage at the airport. I didn't understand any of this. The world was becoming digital; everything was smaller and lighter. But kids at school lugged more weight than ever. kids logic school Michael Crichton
afbda68 "Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to put it back together more shonkily? How're you s'posed to say Kapellmeister if you can't say Kapellmeister?" truth school David Mitchell
1edea85 "I was also sick of my neighbors, as most Parisians are. I now knew every second of the morning routine of the family upstairs. At 7:00 am alarm goes off, boom, Madame gets out of bed, puts on her deep-sea divers' boots, and stomps across my ceiling to megaphone the kids awake. The kids drop bags of cannonballs onto the floor, then, apparently dragging several sledgehammers each, stampede into the kitchen. They grab their chunks of baguette and go and sit in front of the TV, which is always showing a cartoon about people who do nothing but scream at each other and explode. Every minute, one of the kids cartwheels (while bouncing cannonballs) back into the kitchen for seconds, then returns (bringing with it a family of excitable kangaroos) to the TV. Meanwhile the toilet is flushed, on average, fifty times per drop of urine expelled. Finally, there is a ten-minute period of intensive yelling, and at 8:15 on the dot they all howl and crash their way out of the apartment to school." (p.137)" kids family cannonball cartoon cartwheel ceiling deep-sea-divers-boots kangaroo madame megaphone sledgehammers stampede floor urine yelling neighbors tv bed routine morning toilet kitchen parisians school Stephen Clarke
50c23d2 A classroom . People trying to stick me in classrooms was becoming as predictable and annoying as people trying to kill me, but with less-fun results. humor lol school James Patterson
331e350 "She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. "You're lost!" "You're angry!" "You're in the wrong school!" "You're in the wrong country!" "You're on the wrong planet!" spanish-class school Laurie Halse Anderson
8c99b05 I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here. mrs-reed school Charlotte Brontë
92cb548 Prison for the crime of puberty -- that was how secondary school had seemed. puberty teenage school David Brin
c863cfb No doubt there are some who, when confronted with a line of mathematical symbols, however simply presented, can only see the face of a stern parent or teacher who tried to force into them a non-comprehending parrot-like apparent competence--a duty and a duty alone--and no hint of magic or beauty of the subject might be allowed to come through. hate love teacher math mathematics school Roger Penrose
892b1ba School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts? school Ray Bradbury
56028f0 "But to go to school in a summer morn, O! It drives all joy away; Under a cruel eye outworn, school William Blake
d1fc21f She had always thought applying to college would be exciting. Living away from home, meeting so many new people, Learning new things, making a few poor life desicisons.... school Maureen Johnson
5611d93 Many skills, as every successful entrepreneur knows, cannot be taught in school. They require doing. Sometimes a life of doing. And where money-making is concerned, nothing compresses the time frame needed to leap from my-shit-just-sits-there-until-it-rains poverty to which-of-my-toilets-shall-I-use affluence like an apprenticeship with someone who already has the angles all figured out. poverty success shit school Mohsin Hamid
c0c935c There's always a bit of suspense about the particular way in which a given school year will get off to a bad start. humor school Frank Portman
6abd487 When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi , but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this 'signature' to be removed from all his future editions. Having initially sympathized with some of the early European fascist movements, he wanted to express his repudiation of Hitlerism (or 'the Hun,' as he would perhaps have preferred to say), and wanted no part in tainting the ancient Indian rune by association. In its origin it is a Hindu and Jainas symbol for light, and well worth rescuing. 1945 adolf-hitler fascism-in-europe swastikas rudyard-kipling hinduism symbols nazis world-war-ii england fascism europe school Christopher Hitchens
c246605 In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for? reading school John Irving
5c0485d I spent the next three hours in classrooms, trying not to look at the clocks over various blackboards, and then looking at the clocks, and then being amazed that only a few minutes had passed since I last looked at the clocks, but their sluggishness never ceased to surprise. If I am ever told that I have one day to live, I will head straight for the hallowed halls of Winter Park High School, where a day has been known to last a thousand years. time school John Green
5854480 I was only twelve. But I knew how much I loved her. It was that love that comes before all significance of body and morals. It was that love that was no more bad than wind and sea and sand lying side by side forever. It was made of all the warm long days together at the beach, and the humming quiet days of droning education at the school. All the long Autumn days of the years past when I carried her books home from school. education love beach october forever fall child morals school Ray Bradbury
4460e5d "You love tests?" "Well, yeah. There are questions and answers. True or false, multiple choice, essay. What's not to love?" tests school Nora Roberts
2fb05d4 There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, as least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won't fall down or airplanes that won't suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don't want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. That's all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus. engineering physics school Neal Stephenson
da5b088 "It was 1976. It was one of the darkest days of my life when that nurse, Mrs. Shimmer, pulled out a maxi pad that measured the width and depth of a mattress and showed us how to use it. It had a belt with it that looked like a slingshot that possessed the jaw-dropping potential to pop a man's head like a gourd. As she stretched the belt between the fingers of her two hands, Mrs. Shimmer told us becoming a woman was a magical and beautiful experience. I remember thinking to myself, You're damn right it had better be magic, because that's what it's going to take to get me to wear something like that, Tinkerbell! It looked like a saddle. Weighed as much as one, too. Some girls even cried. I didn't. I raised my hand. "Mrs. Shimmer," I asked the cautiously, "so what kind of security napkins do boys wear when their flower pollinates? Does it have a belt, too?" The room got quiet except for a bubbling round of giggles. "You haven't been paying attention, have you?" Mrs. Shimmer accused sharply. "Boys have stamens, and stamens do not require sanitary napkins. They require self control, but you'll learn that soon enough." I was certainly hoping my naughty bits (what Mrs. Shimmer explained to us was like the pistil of a flower) didn't get out of control, because I had no idea what to do if they did." junior-high menstruation humor nurse health school Laurie Notaro
ad7788f With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected and tortured after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves again. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? mind equality free books imagination education happiness intelligence conform breach burning examiners fliers grabbers imaginative-creators jumpers knowers moutains racers runners snatchers swimmers tinkerers bright intellectual critics target image dread judgment unfamiliar judge constitution rights cowardice bullying weapons different creativity torture school Ray Bradbury
e4de27a "I need a break after school," she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather stay home. At a friend's house you have to do the things other people want to do. I like hanging out with my mom after school because I can learn from her. She's been alive longer than me. We have thoughtful conversations. I like having conversations because they make people happy." happy thoughts feelings learning play mom introverts quiet introvert home thoughtful school Susan Cain
4a57b9a It is wrong to say that schoolmasters lack heart and are dried-up, soulless pedants! No, by no means. When a child's talent which he has sought to kindle suddenly bursts forth, when the boy puts aside his wooden sword, slingshot, bow-and-arrow and other childish games, when he begins to forge ahead, when the seriousness of the work begins to transform the rough-neck into a delicate, serious and an almost ascetic creature, when his face takes on an intelligent, deeper and more purposeful expression - then a teacher's heart laughs with happiness and pride. It is his duty and responsibility to control the raw energies and desires of his charges and replace them with calmer, more moderate ideals. What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools? In young beings there is something wild, ungovernable, uncultured which first has to be tamed. It is like a dangerous flame that has to be controlled or it will destroy. Natural man is unpredictable, opaque, dangerous, like a torrent cascading out of uncharted mountains. At the start, his soul is a jungle without paths or order. And, like a jungle, it must first be cleared and its growth thwarted. Thus it is the school's task to subdue and control man with force and make him a useful member of society, to kindle those qualities in him whose development will bring him to triumphant completion. hermann-hesse tame society church human-nature school Hermann Hesse
af9554e He smiled all the way to physics class. He almost laughed out loud when he passed through the door and saw her shadowy, hunched-over form casting around for a seat in the back. She was in his class; this was excellent. Maybe she'd call him a name if he struck up another conversation. Even curse him out. That might fun. God, he'd probably earn himself a restraining order if he tried to sit next to her. He was so tired of saccharine smiles and cloying tones of voice. People always plastered their eyes to his face for fear of looking anywhere else. He was fed up with everybody being so goddamned nice. That's why he'd already fallen in love with this weird, maladjusted, beautiful girl who carried a chip the size of Ohio on her shoulder. Because nobody was ever mean to the guy in the wheelchair. cloying hunched maladjusted-people saccharine wheelchair school Francine Pascal
e31e321 The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. inadequacy growing-up fear-of-failure school Sylvia Plath
3f172b4 I may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic-struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. school Sylvia Plath
700bfbb "I look like prep school Barbie," Nudge complained, as she entered the kitchen. She caught sight of me in my uniform and looked mollified. "Actually, like prep school Barbie. I'm just Barbie's " nudge max lol school James Patterson
65f8f12 "Stupid English." "English isn't stupid," I say. "Well, my English teacher is." He makes a face. "Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me." "Why not?" "He says lunch isn't a subject." humor grammar school Jodi Picoult
8a2c596 Eighth grade's a distant rumor, a tabled issue, and Dylan knows from experience that the summer between might change anything, everything. He and Mingus Rude too and even Arthur Lomb for that matter are released from the paint-by-numbers page of their schooldays, from their preformatted roles as truant or victim, freed to an unspoiled summer, that inviting medium for doodling in self-transformation. vacation summer school Jonathan Lethem
bc7606c "When we were little," the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, "we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle - we used to call him Tortoise -" "Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?" Alice asked. "We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily: "really you are very dull!" learning mock-turtle turtle tortoise taught wonderland teacher pun school Lewis Carroll
64406d1 Fifth grade was fourth grade with something wrong. Nothing changed outright. Instead it teetered. You'd pushed futility at Public School 38 so long by then you expected the building itself would be embarrassed and quit. The ones who couldn't read still couldn't, the teachers were teaching the same thing for the fifth time now and refusing to meet your eyes, some kids had been left back twice and were the size of janitors. The place was a cage for growing, nothing else. School lunch turned out to be the five-year-plan, the going concern. You couldn't be left back from fish sticks and sloppy joes. You'd retain at the least two thousand half-pint containers of vitamin D-enriched chocolate milk. Two black guys from the projects, twins, were actually named Ronald and Donald MacDonald. The twins themselves only shrugged, couldn't be made to agree it was incredible. school Jonathan Lethem
87543ba It wasn't for children, seventh grade. You could read the stress of even entering the building in the postures of the teachers, the security guards. Nobody could relax in such a racial and hormonal disaster area. school Jonathan Lethem
363ca9e Susie: Hi Calvin! Aren't you excited about going to school? Look at all these great school supplies I got! I love having new notebooks and stuff! Calvin:All I've got to say is they're not making me learn any foreign languages. If English is good enough for me, then by golly, it's good enough for the rest of the world! Everyone should just speak English or shut up, that's what I say! Susie: You should maybe check the chemical content of your breakfast cereal. humor school Bill Watterson
c4f8341 It was the smell that hit her first. It was a sterile, antiseptic and very distinctive medical smell, a smell with an underlying metallic reek of blood beneath it. Disturbing as this was, Selena wasn't necessarily shocked. It was a hospital, after all. Just like schools had a tendency to smell like chalk dust and sweat and cafeteria mystery meat, just like auto shops stank of gasoline and rust, hospitals had an odour reflecting their whole purpose, and it was sort of redundant to try and hide it. stink redundancy smell reek hospital blood school Rebecca McNutt
681ca3c A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age group. It comes from reading books above one. reading learning vocabulary school J.R.R. Tolkien
dc5a489 The question is not, Does or doesn't public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling. school Neil Postman
987da24 Good bye AEHS. You suck. I hate you. And yet... Somehow I'll miss you too. princess-diaries meg-cabot school Meg Cabot
a4af8e2 Reading relaxes me. reading relaxation school Elizabeth Newton
b699ac1 "Sorry I'm late," Ms. Egami said to the class. She dropped her papers, which scattered in that special way papers do when one is running late." papers late teacher school Adam Rex
1dedf50 He saw her right after the seventh-period bell rang. She seemed dressed for the sole purpose of blending in with the lockers, but she stood out, anyway. It didn't matter that her wide blue eyes were narrowed or that her pretty mouth was twisted into a near snarl -- she was blatantly beautiful. It was kind of sick the way Ed was preoccupied with beautiful girls these days. He felt a little sorry for her. (He was also preoccupied with finding ways of feeling sorry for people.) She was new and trying hard not to look it. She was confused and trying to look tough. It was endearing is what it was. blending-in endearing lockers snarls pity school Francine Pascal
2f4b1ba "No," moaned Tom in despair. "School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer's even over! Ruin half the vacation!" summer school Ray Bradbury
894c4ed They don't have regular time at school, you know. They have periods. All of a sudden an alarm goes off and you're supposed to drop what you're doing and rush off to a different room with a different teacher to do something completely different! How can anybody learn like that? school Gordon Korman
3f0d35c Mark, trying his best to distance himself from the cruel and pathetic 21st century, hadn't listened to the news reports, not even when the dark green jeeps and helicopters showed up in town, men dressed in identical uniforms, just like in school, always standing with stony faces, setting up shelters and warning signals and food storage boxes. And as the public service announcements and racist propaganda bloomed onto the screens in every classroom, Mark's only observation was that the United States still had such a long way to go. When times were dire, they resorted to using inaccurate stereotypes and ignorance as a weapon, with an impressionable society always willing to believe without further question. racism war education bigitry box public-service-announcement radiation radioactive screen sheeple storage-box classroom nuclear nuclear-war army military united-states society weapon propaganda ignorance stereotype school Rebecca McNutt
c5555bb As Melissa got closer, the taste of school began to foul her mouth. midnighters scott-westerfeld school Scott Westerfeld
d7c1a91 If. If Mingus Rude could be kept in this place, kept somehow in Dylan's pocket, in his stinging, smudgy hands, then summer wouldn't give way to whatever came after. If. If. Fat chance. Summer on Dean Street had lasted one day and that day was over, it was dark out, had been for hours. The Williamsburg Savings Bank tower clock read nine-thirty in red-and-blue neon. Final score, a million to nothing. The million-dollar kid. Your school wasn't on fire, you were. autumn summer school Jonathan Lethem
ebae6f8 The boy knew that escaping school was the surest sign of his election. humour election school Flannery O'Connor
2a89ea4 It starts innocently. Casually. You turn up at the annual spring fair full of beans, help with the raffle tickets (because the pretty red-haired music teacher asks you to) and win a bottle of whiskey (all school raffles are fixed), and, before you know where you are, you're turning up at the weekly school council meetings, organizing concerts, discussing plans for a new music department, donating funds for the rejuvenation of the water fountains--you're implicated in the school, you're involved in it. Sooner or later you stop dropping your children at the school gates. You start following them in. pta involvement school Zadie Smith
e3121db "You went to school," Lee said. "I mean, at some point. And it didn't suit you very well. They wanted to teach you things you didn't care about. Dates and math and trivia about dead presidents. They didn't teach persuasion. Your ability to persuade is the single most important determinant of your quality of life, and they didn't cover that at all. Well, we do. And we're looking for students with natural aptitude." lexicon persuasion school Max Barry
1c9b5d5 From elementary school through high school, my siblings and I were hectored to excel in every class, to win medals in science fairs, to be chosen princess of the prom, to win election to student government. Thereby and only thereby, we learned, could we expect to gain admission to the right college, which in turn would get us into Harvard Medical School: life's one sure path to meaningful success and lasting happiness. school Jon Krakauer
00fe2b1 "Dana raised her hand. "I learned about exaggeration," she said. "It was all my teacher ever talked about. We had like ten thousand tests on it, and the teacher would kill you if you didn't spell it right." "That's very good, Dana!" said Mrs. Jewls. "You learned your lesson well." teacher lesson school Louis Sachar
96935b9 The stress of it all. How the hell are we expected at the age of sixteen (and seventeen, in your case) to decide what we want to do for the rest of our lives? Right now all I want to do is get of school, not start planning to get into another one. You're lucky you've always known what you want to do. future education stress school Cecelia Ahern
91b3956 "Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. If there is anyone here this afternoon whom I have convinced that books are meant to be enjoyed, that English is nothing to do with duty, that it has nothing to do with school - with exercises and homework and ticks and crosses - then I am a happy man." He turned away but then he turned back again and he suddenly simply shouted, he bellowed "To hell with school," he cried. "To hell with school. English is what matters. ENGLISH IS LIFE." The Head grabbed him and led him off to her sitting-room for tea, not looking too thrilled, and we were let out and I went flying home." reading english school Jane Gardam
4ab6552 I was not a good scholar, and during my last year at school I made little effort. This was not due to laziness ... , but to a state of youthful day-dreaming and indifference ... that was only ... pierced when creative desire enveloped me like ether. school Hermann Hesse
a1a7e68 "You did a politics project on a government that got overthrown on the due date? Man, did anybody ever tell you you've got no luck?" "I suspected it," said Raymond ironically." politics humor project luck school Gordon Korman
36282ff "And what if the other kids laugh at me?" Kerry complained to her parents as she nibbled on a piece of toast that morning. "I have a Cape Breton accent! They'll know I'm from Canada and they'll start asking me if I lived in an igloo or ate maple syrup, bacon and seal meat every day!" "You're really overreacting," Susan chuckled, sipping on a glass of orange juice. "Canada is a lot like the States and the only thing separating both countries is an imaginary boarder! If anyone laughs at you, tell them it doesn't snow year-round, you got free health care while you were there and that you never rode a polar bear to school. Besides, do you know how many popular movies and TV shows from the States were filmed in Canada?" "It's not just the Canada stuff mom," Kerry sighed worriedly. "I'm from Dym, it's an industrial dump!" "Yeah, and have you looked at Pittsburgh lately?" Susan asked. "Full of coal mines and steel mills, just like Sydney was when we lived there! I actually rather came to like the pollution, I don't think I'd ever want to leave it." funny wisdom pittsburgh polar-bear seal cape-breton nova-scotia canada united-states weird morning girl teenager parents stereotype teen joke nostalgia school Rebecca McNutt
597ca16 If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon-- you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks. nature books learning life plants insects knowledge school Michael Crichton
531113a And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brick mason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, not sordid money-getting... The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not fame. learning education school W.E.B. Du Bois
c54b50d Her philosophy was, if it had a pulse, it could be killed. I didn't really have a philosophy, but I could see how talking with the school director would be difficult for her. If he said something she didn't like, chopping him to tiny pieces wouldn't exactly help me get into the school. humor self-control school Ilona Andrews
e0a18d4 Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy. education social-class school Betty Smith
b9525a1 She was right: school was lonely. The eighteen and nineteen year olds didn't socialize with the younger kids, and though there were plenty of students my age and younger [...] their lives were so cloistered and their concerns so foolish and foreign-seeming that it was as if they spoke some lost middle-school tongue I'd forgotten. They lived at home with their parents; they worried about things like grade curves and Italian Abroad and summer internships at the UN; they freaked out if you lit a cigarette in front of them; they were earnest, well-meaning, undamaged, clueless. For all I had in common with any of them, I might as well have tried to go down and hang out with the eight year olds at PS 41. clueless earnest undamaged foolish lonely school Donna Tartt
8c17eee Back in grade school, my shrinks tried to channel my viciousness into a constructive outlet, so I cut things with scissors. Heavy, cheap fabrics Diane bought by the bolt. I sliced through them with old metal shears going up and down: . The soft growl of the fabrics as I sliced it apart, and that perfect last moment, when your thumb is getting sore and your shoulders hurt from hunching and cut, cut, cut... free, the fabric now swaying in two pieces in your hands, a curtain parted. And then what? That's how I felt now, like I'd been sawing away at something and come to the end and here I was by myself again, in my small house with no job, no family, and I was holding two ends of fabric and didn't know what to do next. hate life fabric confusion therapy school Gillian Flynn
799e786 "I am here to help her learn," Tansy said, "not to keep her from it." -- teach learn school Richard Peck
8d64729 Hannah wanted to put the next day's work on the blackboard. This would mean that she needn't turn her back on the class first thing, which is as unwise in junior teaching as in lion-taming. primary-school stage-school teacher-quotations theatre-school teacher-quotes teaching school Penelope Fitzgerald
d2a73b5 This was the eighteenth day in a row that the special was Mushroom Surprise. It was called Mushroom Surprise because it would have been a surprise if anybody had ever ordered it. No one ever did--except Louis, of course. That's why they'd had it for eighteen days. There was always plenty left over. mushroom lunch surprise school Louis Sachar
8779556 "Mac raised his hand. "Once I could only find one of my socks," he said. "Man, I looked everywhere for it! Under the bed, in the bathroom. You'll never guess where I finally found it." "In the refrigerator," said Bob. Mac's mouth dropped open. "How'd you know?" Bob shrugged. "Where else?" refrigerator socks school Louis Sachar
bf85d10 "What do you eat?" she asked. "Mulligan stew," said Bob. "My friends and I collect scraps of food all day, and then we cook it up in a big pot and share it. It's always different, but very tasty." "Why is it called mulligan stew?" asked Stephen. "There was once a hobo named Mulligan," said Bob. "He made the first mulligan stew." "Was he a good cook?" asked Todd. "No, he was eaten by cannibals." mulligan stew hobo food school Louis Sachar
57e9e44 The hobo wore old black shoes that also looked like they were too big for him, but that might have been because he wasn't wearing any socks. shoes socks school Louis Sachar
b7062ab "I have a package for somebody named Mrs. Jewls," he said. "I'll take it," said Louis. "Are you Mrs. Jewls?" asked the man. "No," said Louis. "I have to give it to Mrs. Jewls," said the man. Louis thought a moment. He didn't want the man disturbing the children. He knew how much they hated to be interrupted when they were working. "I'm Mrs. Jewls," he said. "But you just said you weren't Mrs. Jewls," said the man. "I changed my mind," said Louis. The man got the package out of the back of the truck and gave it to Louis. "Here you go, Mrs. Jewls," he said." humor package ups witty school Louis Sachar
397964a Either Ault was a lot harder than my junior high had been, or I was getting dumber- I suspected both. If I wasn't literally getting dumber, I knew at least that I'd lost the glow that surrounds you when the teachers think you're one of the smart, responsible ones, that glow that shines brighter every time you raise your hand in class to say the perfect thing, or you run out of room in a blue book during an exam and have to ask for a second one. struggle intelligence classes college academics dumb school Curtis Sittenfeld
d20ac3f "The mysterious Enoch Root meets 8-year-old Benjamin Franklin, Boston, 1713: "Do I look like a schoolmaster to you?" "No, but you talk like one." "You know something of schoolmasters, do you?" "Yes, sir," the boy says, faltering a bit as he sees the jaws of the trap swinging toward his leg. "Yet here it is the middle of Monday--" "The place was empty 'cause of the Hanging. I didn't want to stay and--" "And what?" "Get more ahead of the others than I was already." "If you are ahead, the correct thing is to get used to it--not to make yourself into an imbecile. Come, you belong in school." intelligence colonial-america educataion massachusetts-bay-colony gifted school Neal Stephenson
d907b23 "No one's ever brought me flowers before," said Mr. Kidswatter. "You may not believe this, Louis, but I don't have many friends." He put his hand on Louis's shoulder. "You're like a son to me," he said. "And you're a maggot-infested string bean," muttered Louis. "What?" asked Mr. K. "I said, you're a magnificent human being." principal school Louis Sachar
671659f "There are two elevators. One is blue. One is red. When you want to go up, you take the blue elevator. When you want to go down, you take the red elevator. It's that simple. It can't go wrong! The blue one only goes up. And the red one only goes down." And so, at last, Wayside School got elevators. A blue one and a red one. They each worked perfectly one time -- and never could be used again." school Louis Sachar
870e36c "What's wrong with Louis?" asked Ron. "Is he sick or something?" "Yes," said Jenny. "He's got a real bad disease. And it's spelled L-O-V-E." love spelling school Louis Sachar
aa130ec Mes baigeme mokykla, pasizadejome draugauti visa gyvenima ir nuejome skirtingais keliais loyal school Julian Barnes
3808eec "I know what I'm talking about, Alecto! When I think of Jud, I think of the times he wanted to be a coal miner, the times he took Wendy and me sailing in the harbour, the times he showed me how to play soccer, but I forgot all the bullying and I'll never understand why. And now you ask me, you ask me what happened once we were in high school. You said you didn't understand what having a family was like, so ask me!" Mandy was shouting at him without even realizing it, her words sharp and unforgiving. "I...." Alecto started, hesitating for a moment. "You don't seem like yourself Mandy Valems, not at all...." "No, go ahead! You want to know what having a real family is like?" Mandy snapped, turning to stare at him coldly. "Ask me what happened, I'll tell you anything you want to know!" "...What happened?" Alecto asked quietly, looking nervous and confused. "I stayed late after school in shop class when I was in grade 9, trying to keep my lousy grades up. I was building a birdhouse, something like that, and that was when Jud and all his popular jock friends came storming in, laughing and swearing like a bunch of pigs," Mandy continued. "So ask me what happened next." "I... I don't want to ask you what happened," Alecto replied. "Ask me!" Mandy yelled. "Alright, what happened next...?" Alecto questioned." friendship imaginary-friend beat-up cape-breton-parents wood-shop nova-scotia assault shop confession canada attack cruelty high-school friend conflict stress bully bullying fight wood school Rebecca McNutt
4f14022 Registration Day' by Gavin Gunhold (1899-- ) Toronto Review of Poetry, 1947 On registration day at taxidermy school I distinctly saw the eyes of the stuffed moose Move. poetry humor moose taxidermy taxidermy-school school Gordon Korman
ce0d281 School never teaches you about this mangled human slime, it slays me. You spend all your time learning the capital of Surinam while these retards carve their initials in your back. school D.B.C. Pierre
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