We all learn better when we all learn better.

I hate it when people try to diagnose Calvin with some mental disorder like ADHD or schizophrenia to provide explanation for his actions. It's convenient for us to put him in a box and label him as something because he operates outside the bounds of what is considered to be normal. He doesn't pay attention in class, so Mrs. Wormwood assumes he has a poor attention span, and that sending him the principals office will somehow fix that. But as we can see, Calvin has an exceptional attention span, just not for learning from a chalkboard. Calvin constructs elaborate fantasies and narratives in his mind in order to cope with the tedium of the life adults are forcing upon him, and seems to be able to occupy himself for an indefinite period with these stories. 

The hostility that the adults around him have for his imagination and his quirkiness informs Calvin's view of them as oppressors, as we can see exemplified in this strip. I also think it's very telling to note that Calvin doesn't just see adults as cruel slavedrivers, but as something completely foreign to him, something (quite literally) alien. He doesn't understand how adults can operate the way they do, and why they seem to want to follow a certain set of arbitrary rules. Calvin views himself as a renegade, a rouge, who is a protagonist in a heroic tale against these confounding forces. 

Although I did think many of their tendencies were incomprehensible, I never felt this distant from adults as a child. I attribute some of this to the fact that I was good at school, enjoyed doing math problems, and so was liked and encouraged by my teachers. I fit the mold of the good student. Still, there were certainly times when my imagination was quashed by authorities because it was inconvenient for them to adapt lesson plans around it. Now, I don't fault my teachers for this, but I do see how Calvin must feel at the extreme of this spectrum, where the way he is taught is so diametrically opposed to the way in which he learns.