I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

She folded her arms, suddenly feeling like she used to at school: the stupid one who answered questions wrong. That was the reason why she didn't do much talking. Talking was deceit, one of the games people played to keep themselves from looking the world in the eye.

"Frannie," he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes. "What, Stuart?
" "Do you think... do you think people ever learn anything?" She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue. "I don't know," she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more, to illuminate her first response, and could only say it again: I don't know.

"It was a kind of one-upmanship, where nobody knows what's going on, and they'd put the other one down as if they did know. They all fake that they know, and if one student admits for a moment that something is confusing by asking a question, the others take a high-handed attitude, acting as if it's not confusing at all, telling him that he's wasting their time... All the work they did, intelligent people, but they got themselves into this funny state of mind, this strange kind of self-propagating "education" which is meaningless, utterly meaningless."

"When I went to school they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "Happy". They told me I didn't understand the assignment and I told them they didn't understand life."

And I will not ask what all others ask of you - why? Because what I have come to understand is that there is no why. To ask why is to impose expectations on mute existence - expectations it is in no way obliged to meet or even extend. And so I make no more, ask no more.

You don't learn anything in school. It's just a waste of time. You lug around books and all and do homework. They give too much homework. You shouldn't be doing homework. Nobody's interested in it. The teachers are stupid. They shouldn't have any women in there. They don't know how to teach. And they shouldn't make anyone go to school. You don't want to go, you don't go, that's all. It's ridiculous. I don't remember one thing I learned in school. I don't listen to weakies. My two and a half years in Erasmus High I wasted. I didn't like the whole thing. You have to mix with all those stupid kids. The teachers are even stupider than the kids. They talk down to the kids. Half of them are crazy. If they'd have let me, I would have quit before I was sixteen.

We had a very interesting experience and the teachers at a time didn’t even know how to handle us and the boys in the class, some of them were a bit uncomfortable and wouldn’t answer a question they were not too sure about.

If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer.

When I go back to school everyone asks a lot of questions. Then, after about a week, when I've answered everything, we get back to normal. I've never been one of the cool people at school, but then again, I don't get the people who are cool. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that they don't interest me.

I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations

"Who are you?" the woman said at last.

"Lyra Silver — "

"No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this?" Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.

The teacher asked wards what the meaning of life was. They began to put forward versions. Only the failing student, sitting at the last desk, was silent, staring stupidly down. When the noise subsided a little, the teacher turned to him: «What do you think about this?» — «I do not think about what is not...» — answered dunce.

I sat listening to pupils recite, knowing and understanding what was being said and done, but utterly incapable of opening my mouth when called upon. The students around me seemed so sure of themselves that I despaired of ever being able to conduct myself as they did.