Education...

I have often said that I received no education at school. This is not a slight against teachers, teaching being a noble profession (that is not, of course, to say that all teachers are noble), but it is a self-evident truth. I am not very well educated. I am privileged to know, and have spoken with, many well-educated people (my tutor, my Latin teacher, my parish priest and many others). I have often spoken with them about their education, and told them about mine, and I always end up feeling altogether rustic and brought up ill. My Latin teacher, for instance, read at least three works of Shakespeare a year at school. I, on the other hand, read only two in my whole five years at school (Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, which I cordially loathed). Her History lessons spanned two and a half thousand years; mine didn't go beyond the Suffragettes. I could go on, but you probably know the story already. With the exception of Latin, the only things I know that I consider to be of any intrinsic worth I have taught myself. And what a horrible thing to have to own up to - being an autodidact! I daresay, my only real education came merely four years ago, when I was taught to conjugate Paro in the Present Tense...