Rezeon
06-04-2011, 10:39 AM
People like to generalize Naruto as being a total idiot, which to be fair has a lot supporting it. Naruto does have some real strokes of genius though so it really leaves me wondering some times.
I got to thinking about the way Naruto was characterized at the begining of the series and something caught my attention. In the early going it was implied that he was barely literate (it was a small detail and never really plot relevant so it easily slips through the cracks). It would be easy to just say that it was because he was a slow learner, but I have to wonder if it might be because he was self taught.
Most people assume that the ninja academy operates like a normal school to some degree teaching the students some of the basics like reading, writing, and math. However there really isn't much to support that assumption. It is a military training facility afterall, so most of its teachings should be directly relevant to combat and espionage.
So what if the academy actually operated on the assumption that the kids were already taught the basics of life, either by their parents or some form of normal pre-school. Most people in the village hated Naruto and didn't even want him to attend the academy, anime fillers even go so far as to say that no teacher was even willing to teach any of his classes until the Third cracked down and ordered Iruka to stick it out despite his objections.
This would leave Naruto completely on his own to figure that stuff out. So if he really was on his own to learn how to read it would severely handicap him when it came time to attend the academy.
Of course Naruto's whole early life has been the subject of so many retcons that the whole period is to inconsistantly portrayed to get an accurate idea about this.
I got to thinking about the way Naruto was characterized at the begining of the series and something caught my attention. In the early going it was implied that he was barely literate (it was a small detail and never really plot relevant so it easily slips through the cracks). It would be easy to just say that it was because he was a slow learner, but I have to wonder if it might be because he was self taught.
Most people assume that the ninja academy operates like a normal school to some degree teaching the students some of the basics like reading, writing, and math. However there really isn't much to support that assumption. It is a military training facility afterall, so most of its teachings should be directly relevant to combat and espionage.
So what if the academy actually operated on the assumption that the kids were already taught the basics of life, either by their parents or some form of normal pre-school. Most people in the village hated Naruto and didn't even want him to attend the academy, anime fillers even go so far as to say that no teacher was even willing to teach any of his classes until the Third cracked down and ordered Iruka to stick it out despite his objections.
This would leave Naruto completely on his own to figure that stuff out. So if he really was on his own to learn how to read it would severely handicap him when it came time to attend the academy.
Of course Naruto's whole early life has been the subject of so many retcons that the whole period is to inconsistantly portrayed to get an accurate idea about this.