We struggle on until we grow sufficiently confident, and hopefully, contented with our lot. Although we may be unaware of these things at the time, nevertheless our characters develop. But having said that, rarely have I seen such development continue into adulthood, toward the ultimate goal of becoming a righteous person destined for everlasting life. To do so, one must first come to terms with oneself, to find one's true level. Too many men have groped in the darkness unable to find the true meaning of life. As rare as gold among clay are those who through spiritual effort find the true meaning of their lives:  Subjection to God is the purpose of life     such a wonderful treasure to find in the days of one's youth. ⁽⁷⁾  How wretched for those dying in ignorance.

Towards the end of my school life, my hope was to become a carpenter, to work in the vicinity of Caerphilly. In my optimistic imagination I consoled myself with this thought during the dreary years of elementary school (an institution which still stands defiantly between children and the prerogative of parents). It was obvious to me and my classmates that while our teachers were usurping the authority of our parents, they were also indifferent to our fate. We were, as far as they were concerned, academic dropouts     having recently failed entrance exams for places in the school at the top of the town. Nor were we being prepared for the world of industry. Our teachers had no practical experience of industry themselves, and so made no provision for it.

Teaching one's own children is a God-given obligation, one which is warred against by the State and spiritually backward parents. To make the education of one's own children more difficult, governments instigate economic measures which serve to preoccupy married and single parents solely with work, and for strangers to teach and bring up their children.

In my case, a typical example of this was the elderly and severe Mr Bowen, who behaved more like a prison warder. Come to think of it, the quadrangle railings above, and the steps leading to the classrooms, were exactly the same as the inside of a prison.

In all classrooms, in the corner behind the teacher's desk, there stood forbidding cupboards completely full of books. Unfortunately, they all had the same title, some Shakespearean rendering or other. Now if anyone dared to disturb Mr Bowen's daily perusal of the morning newspaper, his grim leather-lined sixty-year-old face would slowly appear above the newsprint.  Then:

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