to school; and there is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for
innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison.
But it is in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for
instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and
the governor (who of course would not be warders and governors if they
could write readable books), and beaten or otherwise tormented if you
cannot remember their utterly unmemorable contents. In the prison you
are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or
interest on subjects that they dont understand and dont care about, and
are therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a
prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains;
and they protect you against violence and outrage from your fellow
prisoners. In a school you have none of these advantages. With the
world's bookshelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books, the very
manna sent down from Heaven to feed your souls, you are forced to read
a hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot
write: a book from which no human being can learn anything: a book
which, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense
read, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of
a book all the rest of your life. With millions of acres of woods and
valleys and hills and wind and air and birds and streams and fishes and
all sorts of instructive and healthy things easily accessible, or with
streets and shop windows and crowds and vehicles and all sorts of city
delights at the door, you are forced to sit, not in a room with some
human grace and comfort or furniture and decoration, but in a stalled
pound with a lot of other children, beaten if you talk, beaten if you
move, beaten if you cannot prove by answering idiotic questions that
even when you escaped from the pound and from the eye of your gaoler,
you were still agonizing over his detestable sham books instead of
daring to live. And your childish hatred of your gaoler and flogger is