hc + school/education and literature for dean :0
so it’s canon that dean dropped out of high school and got a ged. but he’s also incredibly intelligent in his own way? we also know that dean, when he was younger, wanted to be a firefighter, which isn’t really something that needs a degree either. there’s training and fire academy but not really school, yknow?
so dean’s never been into school. it was something he needed to do when he was growing up, but as soon as he could, he was out. he’s the tough guy, right? so hunting came naturally. it was exhilarating chasing things down, and when john started taking him along, he didn’t need school anymore. school wouldn’t prepare him for the monster that were out there, didn’t teach him lore or mythology or how to kill a wendigo, right? john and bobby and the other hunter and lore books taught him what was useful, what was necessary. in his line of work, it was highly unlikely that he’d need calculus or art or biology. werewolf rip someone’s heart out? it’s easy to see, he doesn’t need a test on anatomy to know that.
and dean doesn’t think of himself as intelligent -- that’s sam’s job. he’s the brawn where sam’s the brain. it’s something he’s accepted. but it’s also not entirely true because dean is really smart. he built his own emf for instance. he can recognize symbols and signs off the top of his head (that band symbol painted in the haunted house episode, or the time he recognized blood spatters as a symbol). in mystery spot, he’s the one that grabs the flyer from the missing guy’s daughter even after being told about his death over and over again. those are just the examples from the show that i can think of off the top of my head, but there are plenty more. he’s street smart to sam’s book smart, which is why they work so well together. they balance each other out.
and yeah, sam does most of the research because that’s his part of the pull. but that’s because dean trusts that sam will find it. if he doesn’t, they call bobby. and that’s why dean doesn’t need to -- until the later seasons when it’s just him and sam, and then he throws himself into the lore just as hard. sometimes harder because he’s got steely determination to figure things out. when he wants to know something, he gonna know it, or god be damned.
when it comes to books, yeah, he spends most time reading lore things. it comes with the job. but we can infer from the various references that dean makes throughout the show that he has read at the least the classics. i don’t think he just sits down and plows through a book in his free time, but when he was younger and in charge of sam and had time to kill while john was out hunting, yeah, he definitely read things like war & peace, hard times, lord of the flies... things that he thought he should know? books that everyone is supposed to read.
i don’t think he ever had a ‘young adult’ book faze, but i think he definitely read goosebumps, if only to see how close r.l.stine got to the truth. he didn’t touch most other scary stories (ie scary stories to tell in the dark). but i also like to think he is a big fan of stephen king because king doesn’t dance around horror? king writes it for what it is -- and writes it knowing that not every horror is a monster. (also, see the misery reference the first time they meet chuck).
but i also think he doesn’t read a lot of things; he skims them or spark notes them so that he can talk about them if he needs to. i think dean’s got add to some level, so he just doesn’t have the patience to sit and read, but that doesn’t mean he’s not interested. he knows the basics, knows enough to reference, and then goes about his business.
