WHY I WOULDN'T HAVE ATTENDED SCHOOL IF I HAD HAD THE CHANCE, AND ALSO WHY I HEARTILY WISH I HAD NEVER DARKENED A SCHOOL'S DOORS.

"The happiest days of your life are when you are at school".

RUBBISH!

The first day I went to school, I cried my eyes out. With good reason, I discovered. If I had known then what was in store for me, like Dickens's Oliver Twist, I would have cried the louder.

School has nothing to do with education under capitalism. The powers that be, of whatever political persuasion (and, as the example of the Soviet Union and its satelites shows, Socialist powers that be are as guilty in this as are their capitalist brethren) are not interested in educating working people for the simple reason that if working people were educated they would realise the folly of work. Furthermore, they would also realise the truth of Frank Owen's dictum in "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" that money is the cause of poverty (echoed by a humble Nazarene carpenter 2,000 years before Tressell's time (see Matthew 6:24) and begin to start changing society.

That's the last thing the ruling class want.

That's why they send children to school.

To cause them to stumble.

To kill childhood.

To kill children.

To destroy childhood.

To destroy children.

AND THAT'S WHY I WISH I HAD NEVER GONE TO SCHOOL!