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school days
Keith Richards about his school days
“In junior school they start grading you each school year, each section of kids into three sections, fast, average, and slow. When you’re eleven you take an examination called the 11-plus, which is the big trauma, because this virtually dictates the rest of your life as far as the system goes… That decided whether you went to grammar school, which is where you receive a sort of semi-classical education for the masses, or to what they call a technical one, which I ended up in, which is actually for kids that are usually pretty bright but that just won’t accept discipline very well…
…The school for kids that don’t stand much of a chance of doing anything except unskilled or semiskilled labor is called secondary modern. Technical school was completely the wrong thing for me. Working with the hands, metalwork. I can’t even measure an inch properly, so they’re forcing me to make a set of drills or something, to a thousandth-of-an-inch accuracy. I did my best to get thrown out of that place. Took me four years, but I did it.”
