So you went to school ...

You went through school. You tried to be a good student; you did your work and you learned your lessons. The pace was painfully slow because every time there was new information, someone didn't get it, and the teacher had to make everyone else wait while she explained the information again to the slow kid.

If you were among the more recent crop of students (students who entered school since the early Eighties), you spent a lot of time in school "breaking up into work groups" where you and a few other students were given a problem to solve or a question to answer. There was always one kid in the group--probably you--who already knew the answer, or grasped the concepts in the lesson while still moving chairs to the work group. This kid was always expected to teach the lesson to the others.

Homework usually meant doing again what you learned earlier in school. Maybe you understood the need for drilling the ideas because repetition often means understanding something more fully, but mostly you found it annoying and felt it intruded on what you wished could have been your free time.

You were bored to death. Hardly ever did anything seem to challenge your mind or offer you any reason to like being in this daytime prison.

Just what was school here for, anyway?