Lea“Schools are an utter waste of young life.
September 12th, 2009 | 
Author: “Schools are an utter waste of young life.
By the way, if either Simon Schama or David Starkey are reading this, they should cover their eyes now. “I am not a historian. I am a children’s author,” Deary says. “I’ve got no qualifications in history. And that’s a massive advantage in reaching my audience. Because historians like Simon Schama and David Starkey just stand on television and lecture you. And when they write books, they’ve got the same lecturing voice. But mine is more: ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve found out! It’s shocking!’”
More than this, though, Deary is profoundly opposed to schools. That is, to the institution of school itself – to the extent that he will never accept an invitation to give a talk in one.
“I get 200 requests a year and the answer is no,” he says. “I detest schools with a passion. I’d rather cut off my left arm and eat it with Marmite than go into a school. And I don’t even like Marmite.
“Schools are an utter waste of young life. Learning things that will never be any use to you. The only reason they are there is to keep kids off the street. They were a Victorian invention. The Industrial Revolution took kids from their families and made the parents work in factories long hours. Then they said, ‘we can’t have these little kids working here.’ So what do we do? Lock them all up in the same room all day and we’ll call it school. I spent hours learning trigonometry, physics, none of which prepared me for life. Relationships, talking to people, managing money, planning your career, how to help someone who has cut their leg open. I have had to learn these things by default.
Terry Deary, the creator of the Horrible Histories
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6120942/Horrible-Histories.html
Oh soooo true!
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