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I regard both K-12 education and university education in the country and around the world, as catastrophically awful. This is awkward for me because the vast majority of educated people have bought into the system and regard it as mostly pretty good, and they regard me as a bit whacked for regarding it as primitive and damaging. The six years of secondary school were without a doubt the most cruel and boring years of my life; nothing in my adult life has been remotely as dull nor remotely as cruel. Most of life is fun and interesting (even when I was engaged in manual labor, including picking rock, washing dishes, and cutting brush, all of which were more interesting than school). Although school seems to serve about 20-30% of society well (those who go off to succeed in school and forcibly impose the same educational system on others), for the rest of students it is more or less boring and painful. I have seen happy kids become depressed and suicidal due to school situations that are entirely unnecessary. Someday we will regard 20th century government schooling with the same sense of horror that we currently regard 19th century child factory labor.

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I attended St. John’s College in Santa Fe and regard it as one of the great loves of my life. Although it is known as a “Great Books” school, at which one studies the Great Books of the Western World, from the ancient Greeks through the 20th century, it was most distinctive for me because all classes were taught Socratically; for four years one is constantly thinking and talking, and never being lectured at. Some people have described the experience of going to St. John’s as having your most sacred beliefs ripped to shreds over and over and over again for four years. I loved it. I left Harvard after one year because even if the most famous scholars on earth are talking at you, you are still being talked at, and I hate being talked at.

Michael Strong