old thoughts of school

It's funny this dry dust of classroom, the misty windows, the grey sills.
And teacher, a slob like you, with his loosely-held "authority", in his meaningless shirt and trousers, starch-washed, as meaningless as your uniform.
It's strange the primitive knifemarks of graffiti on the desk, the anxious scrawl. It's strange how many things go wrong from the teacher or tutor's mouth to your ear, how much is misunderstood or forgotten, how the vain preambles of language result so often in nothing.
What a void is education. It's energy dissipated and ruined, cast forward into the classroom, trampled over, wasted. It's the bleak and dissatisfied teacher, that clumsy, fleshy human just like you, with the same arrogance and emptiness. Formalised education is just a ritual played out for ritual reasons.

after the banquet part 7

Wandering, M and his friends had come to the main school building which loomed dark above them. In front of them was a large, open room used for storage, dark-flagstoned, its dim walls covered in graffiti. M had dreamily traipsed inside, not quite knowing why, and his friends had followed, sniffing, all of them remembering this strange empty room, this draughty alcove, as their hang-out in years gone by, where they would spit green snot on the ceiling or try to shatter dark frosted windows.
The place was cemented, grey, and most like a prison cell, except for the dank draughts that swept in from the playground chilling the kids in winters past, and a grim blue door set in one of the walls which led to who knows where, interior storage rooms full of dust and skeletons probably. This had been the gang's hang-out where they would read magazines and fight, huddle up against the cold, sniff and cry out...