I doubt if anything learnt at school is of more value than great literature learnt by heart.
In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.
I studied physics 12 in summer school after I completed grade 12. Did I enjoy it initially? No, I had found physics difficult since grade 11, and I struggled a lot. Did I learn from it? Yes, and as I improved, I started enjoying it more.
From the age of 14 onwards it was really punk rock, The Clash particularly. I think I learnt more from them than I did at school, because that got me into fashion, politics.
I started out with the intention of studying physics. I was a terrible high school student outside of the fact that I did well in physics, but there's a big difference between being good at physics and being a physicist, so I jettisoned that very quickly.
I was reared in a pub - as a young fellow, serving in the pub I learnt far more there about human nature than I learnt in any university or school. I think it gave me a great insight into people.
I went to school for 12 years, and uni for four, but I learnt more about human existence in the 30 hours it took my first child to be born than I did in all those years of study.
Scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess.
The game shapes you. I played for 20 years at all levels, apart from the Premier League. I had a disaster at Bristol City, where in two years I learnt more about myself, the industry, fans, how you get treated, than I ever learnt in my career.
I learned so much more prepping vegetables than I ever did in cooking school.
I didn't want to go to school for more than four years, and I didn't know what you did with a bachelor's in biology. So I switched over and got my degree in communications. I regret it now. It was one of the most idiotic things I ever did.
I was a terrible high school student outside of the fact that I did well in physics, but there's a big difference between being good at physics and being a physicist, so I jettisoned that very quickly.
I don't know if one's more typecasting than the other, or what I am more like. But I know that the high school I went to was a private school. It was prep school. It was a boarding school. So we didn't have a shop class. We didn't have Saturday detention. We went to school on Saturday. We did have Sunday study, which you very rarely get, because then you have 13 straight days of school. Who wants that?
I was exposed to a Muslim school, so I learnt Urdu. I was exposed to a Hindu school, so I learnt Hindi. I was exposed to a Church of England school, so I got my Senior Cambridge certificate.
The NFL today has bigger, stronger, bodies than ever, moving faster than ever, hitting a stationary object harder than ever before - so the physics of the hit have changed.
Whenever you say you're a physicist, there's a certain fraction of people who immediately go, 'Oh, I hated physics in high school.' That's because of the terrible influence of high school physics. Because of it, most people think physics is all about inclined planes and force-vector diagrams.