confession, I was lucky, but...

I didn't want for much as a kid. I grew up in a big house -- a house full of art books and classical music LPs. My parents kept me safe, gave me a lot of freedom, and showered me with love and gifts. Every time I compared school with home, school lost the contest.

For other kids, school was a godsend.

There were kids who grew up in slums. School was the one place where anyone cared about them. For them, school could be dangerous and confusing, but it was also a place where they got a hot, free lunch (something I took for granted), where there was a nurse to patch them up, where not everyone around them was drunk, high and abusive. Where there were books.

To kids like this (or to grownups who were once kids like this), my complaints about school must seem pretty rarified and ungrateful.

Then there are all the kids who had to work to go to college. They shelved soup cans all night so that they could take classes by day. And here I am belittling the prize they got for all their toil.

When I've derided school in the past, I've often angered people. They react as if I'm being sacrilegious. Its as if I'm going to Sunday School and telling everyone that God doesn't exist. Well, I don't believe in God, but I'm also a polite person. I don't mock God in churches; nor do I go to football games and shout about how much I hate sports. People have a right to enjoy what they enjoy -- as long as they're not hurting anyone else.

But this is my blog, and I am going to talk here about how much I hated school. Don't read it if you don't want to.

I will admit that there are plenty of things that are way worse than school. Starving is worse; getting hit or molested is worse; dodging (or not dodging) dirty needles is worse. If school helps anyone escape from these horrors, it's doing something right.

But I want to point out that though a concentration-camp victim would kill to be in a minimum-security prison, that doesn't make a the prison a good place. It's just the lessor of two evils.