Education.

I wear my A*s like a badge of honour. But what do they mean? Are they, as some people say, worthless compared to the worth of qualifications twenty years ago? Do they indicate a hard-worker or merely someone who's worked hard at absorbing the wrong ideas and ideals?

Such a person's grades will certainly guarantee them a good career - if they want want such a career and think it worth their pursuance.

Is such a person better than the man on the street just because of the fact that from an early age they've suckled at mummy's teat and plumbed daddy's pocket?

Education shouldn't be about competition; it should be about the joy of finding things out, enlightenment and self-improvement.

I grew up in modest circumstances. I still live with my parents - I'm twenty; give me a break for frick sake! I attended a state school. I've always been a C-student - but one who promises brief scintillations of brilliance.

What's the use in getting nothing but A*s if one comes out with a level pegging in each subject? One might as well've not seeked education at all for one has found out nothing about oneself. The word education, after all, comes from the Latin 'educare' which means to seek - especially from within.

Education requires interest and uninterest. What's the use of plying the trades of every subject if all one accomplishes is a finding out that one finds no one subject palatable to one's liking?

Ideas aren't bricks and mortar. They're not absolute. They're progressive - successional. They shouldn't be implanted*; they should grow from the seeds which have blown in the mind's winds since restless youth and now wish to be granted settlement.

There's no rush; a flower doesn't bud any old inopportune moment - it needs to be met with the right conditions at the right time.

*I am of course not talking of such things as Euclidian geometry or, as a matter of fact, most areas of mathematics!