Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs.
School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them.
I was dyslexic and uneducated and left school at 14. I grew up in Finsbury Park, which was a pretty bad place where you had to fight and be beaten. It was just a constant roundabout of violence.
Whenever you hear news about jobless claims or the unemployment rate, you should translate that in your mind to one simple phrase: Stay in school.
I had forgotten how thrilling a snow day is until my son started school, and as much as he loves it, he swoons at the idea of a free day arriving unexpectedly, laid out like a gift.
I was living as a young single mom. I was 19 when I was divorced, and my daughter was a year old, and I waited tables here three to four nights a week for several years while I was trying to support myself and my daughter and the day I got that acceptance at Harvard Law School was an unforgettable day.
We left my birthplace, Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 when I was 13. I enjoyed the ethnic variety and the interesting students in my public school, P.S. 134. The kids in my neighborhood were only competitive in games, although unfriendly gangs tended to define the limits of our neighborhood.
In middle school, I had an '87 Regal. That was unheard of.
Ever since I was little, my mum used to choose an outfit for me and lay it on the bed so I'd know what I was wearing the next day. I never went to a uniformed school, so I always had an outfit - and I never really grew out of that, I don't think.
I have always loved fashion since I was a kid and customized my school uniforms.
I went to a grim Victorian school with classes of 40 or 50 children. It was a very rigid and unimaginative education, but it did teach us the three Rs.
I was at an all-girls' school, so there were a lot of us who were really awkward. I was this tall when I was 11, so I was really awkward and self-conscious. No one would really have wanted to be mean to me. I was too unimportant.
I didn't mind being in school. But I was usually uninspired and always late. I did what I had to, but not more.
I learned how to sign because when I was growing up in California in order to get into college you needed two semesters of language to get into a University of California school.
I read 'Backstage' a lot when I first was unleashed into the world from drama school. And what was great about it was that if I was using it or not, it was just nice to know what was happening in my community.
I went to school and studied music for a year at USC, which unlocked a bunch of doors for me in terms of my relationship to music.
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels. My sister became unmarried and pregnant during high school, and she kept saying, 'This wasn't supposed to happen! Why is this happening to me?' Someone should have given her another book to read.
High school was interesting, because I went from a public school middle school to an academy where the first year we were doing Latin, chemistry, biology. I mean, I was woefully unprepared for the type of study.
I have never done any other job. I have sung in bands since I was 15. I left school completely unqualified. I have no other training.
I'm not good at many things. But I really like songwriting, and I get a good reaction from it. There's not much that I do that causes a good reaction, so it feels like if I want to have good things happen, then I should do the things I'm good at. I mean, in all seriousness, I left school at 15. I'm unqualified to do anything else.
