You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the importance of engaging personally with others, especially in teaching and relationships.
Samuel Johnson's quote highlights a common oversight in parenting and education: while one may impart knowledge or skills, such as teaching daughters about the planets, it is equally vital to foster personal connections. It suggests that if the relationship lacks warmth and engagement, the recipients of this knowledge may not appreciate or enjoy the company of the teacher, regardless of the information shared.
In practice
In a school presentation on the importance of emotional connections, I quoted Samuel Johnson.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
Children must receive music instruction as naturally as food, with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game, and this must happen from the beginning of their lives.
I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms.
We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)
Every lecture should state one main point and repeat it over and over, like a theme with variations. An audience is like a herd of cows, moving slowly in the direction they are being driven towards. If we make one point, we have a good chance that the audience will take the right direction; if we make several points, then the cows will scatter all over the field. The audience will lose interest and everyone will go back to the thoughts they interrupted in order to come to our lecture.
I'm a firm believer that there's no way that a six-year-old should have a helmet on and learn a tackling drill.
All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes β morals, behaviour, everything. Absolute trust in some one else is the essence of education.
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