My parents were both teachers, and I’ve taught a number of courses myself in universities in the US （though I don’t have any special qualifications to do so）。 But honestly, I never liked school. When I think back on the schools I attended, it pains me to say it （my apologies）， but the truth is, they don’t call up many pleasant memories. In fact, thinking about them makes my neck throb and ache. Maybe, though, the problem was less with the schools themselves than with me.
At any rate, when at long last I finally graduated from university, I remember being relieved, thinking, “Great. Now I never have to go to school again.” It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I’ve never felt any nostalgia about school, not even once （probably）。
Okay, then why am I taking the trouble to discuss schools now?
I think it’s because I’ve reached a point—as a person far removed from school now—where it’s probably a good idea for me to gather my thoughts and feelings about my own school experience, and about education overall. Or, rather, I get the sense it’s an area I need to clarify a bit as I talk about myself. Additionally, another motivation may be conversations I’ve had recently with a few young people who are part of the trend in Japan of students refusing to attend （or avoiding going to） school.
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Honestly, from elementary school through college I was never that good a student. Not that I had bad grades or I was a dropout or anything—I managed to get by okay—but the act of studying itself was something I basically disliked, and I really didn’t study much. The high school I attended in Kobe was a so-called public college preparatory school, a large school with over six hundred students in each grade. We were part of the baby-boomer generation, so there were tons of kids. They would post the names of the top fifty students in the periodic exams we took in each subject （at least that’s my recollection of it）， but my name was never on any of the lists. Meaning I was never in that top ten percent of students with excellent grades. If anything, I was probably in the upper middle range.
The reason I didn’t study hard was simple. It was boring. I just wasn’t interested. There were so many other things in life more fun than studying for school. Reading books, listening to music, going to movies, swimming in the sea, playing baseball, playing around with cats, and when I got a bit older, staying up all night playing mah-jongg with my friends and going on dates with girls…Compared to all those, studying for school was a total bore. I guess that goes without saying.
Not that I felt like I was sloughing off studying just to have a good time. Because deep down, I knew that reading lots of books, listening intently to music—and maybe I should include going out with girls, too—was, for me, a personal form of study that had real significance, a significance greater than studying for any tests for school. I can’t recall now to what extent I was explicitly aware of this or could have articulated it, but I was aware of being sort of defiantly anti-schoolwork. Of course, if the schoolwork involved a topic that interested me, I’d study it on my own initiative.
Another thing I’ve never been much interested in is competing with others for ranking. I’m not saying this to make myself look good or anything, but frankly I just couldn’t be bothered to care about specific numbers—grades or rank or deviation values （thankfully, when I was a teenager we didn’t have that way of ranking students）—used to show where people stood academically. It’s just my personality. I do sort of have a tendency to hate to lose （depending on the circumstances）， but that doesn’t extend much to the level of competing with others.
Anyway, back then, for me reading was more important than anything else. It goes without saying, but there are tons of books that are much more exciting than any textbook. As I turned the pages of those books, I had a vivid, physical sensation, as if the content was becoming part of my flesh and blood. That’s why I couldn’t buckle down to study for exams. I couldn’t see how mechanically cramming information into my head—historical dates, English vocabulary words, and the like—was going to be of any use in the future. Technical knowledge that’s memorized mechanically, not systematically, will, over time, scatter away, to be sucked in somewhere and vanish—maybe into some dark graveyard of useless knowledge. Because there’s no need to retain it in your memory.
Compared to that, things that stay with you over time are far more important. Obviously. The thing is, though, that sort of knowledge isn’t immediately useful. It takes a long time for it to show its true value. That kind of knowledge doesn’t directly link up to grades on exams. The difference between immediate value and nonimmediate value is like the difference between a small teakettle and a large one. The small kettle is handy because it boils quickly, but it cools down quickly, too. A large kettle, on the other hand, takes time for the water to boil, but once it does it doesn’t cool down for a long time. It’s not a question of which one is superior, since each one has its uses and distinctive characteristics. What’s important is knowing how to use these differences to your advantage.