1 Comment
author

"JD" comments:

This quote has been firmly lodged in my brain for the best part of sixty years -

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.”

― Frank Zappa

I left school at the age of sixteen after wasting five years in Grammar School. It didn't rot my brain, it just bored me and did not teach me anything which was of any use in later life. (a slight exaggeration, we had a very good art teacher for two years and I did learn German and French but I didn't know at the time that they would come in handy when I later worked in Germany and France)

Burning text books? Hard to believe but at my Primary School we were reading Gulliver's Travels and Don Quijote. Does that happen now or have those two books also been incinerated or banned as inappropriate?

p.s.That is the correct spelling of Don Quijote by the way. My English language translation has a note to the effect that the 'x' indicates the 'catalan' origin of the tale which is untrue; Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares which is in the heart of Castilla - La Mancha.

Expand full comment