And then I heard you hadn't
Which was true?
Its me all right and yet I really died
My death was by the doctors certified
Now don't be tiresome. Tell me something new.
That's an old story -- risen from the dead
Like Lazarus.
That wasn't what I said
I simply say I died yet this is me.
Pinch you and I will find you solid flesh
Or is it spirit you pretend to be
A ghost perhaps or transmigrating soul..."
"The greatest thing of all is of course to get the hang of life.
...School is but a part of this -- I don't say how large a part. Apprenticeship perhaps a larger part...
We have to bear in mind that school never would have needed to exist but for the invention of letters and numbers...
When I say you have learned to read assume that by the end of high school you have got where you can be trusted to read on alone. You can be left to see to it that everything you do has a proper admixture of reading Letters and numbers...
And if not -- if you haven't taken these means to hear the chances are (this will happen:) you will be back at school (again) in your forties or fifties for some adult education.
I can just hear the colloquy that would ensue.
'What are you back here for?' 'My name's Adult
I went to school when young without result.'
'You don't want culture what you need's a cult.'
And very close to the mark in my opinion. Books failed with you. Either they never touched you at all or they made a book fool out of you. You didn't learn to read and you are back to another try at it.
Teachers have had more directly to do with you than they will ever have again even if you go to college. In college you would be thrown with them but less as your instructors and disciplinarians than as your examples to emulate in thought and expression. There will be only two kind of you from now on, the self made in college and the self made out of college.
A final word about what it is
--from The Notebooks of Robert Frost
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