Other related topics at:
Knowledge/Learning
49. Education; Learning
We talked of the education of children; and I asked him what he
thought was best to teach them first. Johnson: "Sir, it is
no matter what you teach them first, any more than what leg you
shall put into your breeches first. 
Sir, you may stand disputing
which is best to put in first, but in the mean time your breech
is bare. Sir, while you are considering which of the
two things you should teach your child first, another boy has
learnt them both."
Boswell: Life
Link
63. Education; Learning; Reading
"People have now-a-days got a strange opinion that everything
should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures
can do so much as reading the books from which the lectures are
taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures,
except where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach
chemistry by lectures:-- You might teach the making of shoes by
lectures!"
Boswell: Life
Link
900. Education; Learning
"There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly,
but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one
end, they lose at the other."
Boswell: Life of Johnson
Link
1,146. Education; Youth
"To learn is the proper business of youth; and whether we
increase our knowledge by books or by conversation, we are
equally indebted to foreign assistance."
Johnson: Rambler #121 (May 14, 1751)
Link
1,147. Education; Humanity
"The greater part of students are not born with abilities to
construct systems, or advance knowledge; nor can have any hope
beyond that of becoming intelligent hearers in the schools of
art, of being able to comprehend what others discover, and to
remember what others teach. Even those to whom Providence hath
allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to
improve a single science. In every other part of learning they
must be content to follow opinions which they are not able to
examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their
own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge to
the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the
collective labour of a thousand intellects."
Johnson: Rambler #121 (May 14, 1751)
Link
1,261. Education;Progress
"Whatever or abilities or application, we must submit to learn
from others what perhaps would have lain hid for ever from human
penetration, had not some remote inquiry brought it to
view; as treasures are thrown up by the ploughman and
the digger in the rude exercise of their common occupations."
Johnson: Rambler #154 (September 7, 1751)
Link
1,262. Education; Progress
"The man whose genius qualifies him for great undertakings must
at least be content to learn from books the present state of
human knowledge; that he may not ascribe to himself the invention
of arts generally known; weary his attention with experiments of
which the event has been long registered; and waste in attempts,
which have already succeeded or miscarried, that time which might
have been spent with usefulness and honour upon new
undertakings."
Johnson: Rambler #154 (September 7, 1751)
Link
