Contempt

[J]anet and I were in a unique French village near Limoges called Oradour sur Glane, a town without a single inhabitant, all its buildings intact except the ruined church which had been burned to the ground on June 10, 1944, by retreating German military forces in WWII.  On that day every single citizen was murdered save one - an eight-year-old boy, Roger Godfrin, who disobeyed his schoolteachers when they obeyed German orders to bring their classes to the town square and church. "Hurry! Hurry!" Roger remembers them saying, "Don't keep them waiting!" Without his contempt for school, which led him to run away and hide instead, Roger would have burned to ashes with the rest.

--John Taylor Gatto, "Weapons Of Mass Instruction", p. 109-110