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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: --for Johnson's great mind _was_ lamed--by learning his lessons. None
of my schoolmasters really cared a rap (or perhaps it would be fairer
to them to say that their employers did not care a rap and therefore
did not give them the necessary caning powers) whether I learnt my
lessons or not, provided my father paid my schooling bill, the
collection of which was the real object of the school. Consequently I
did not learn my school lessons, having much more important ones in
hand, with the result that I have not wasted my life trifling with
literary fools in taverns as Johnson did when he should have been
shaking England with the thunder of his spirit. My schooling did me a
great deal of harm and no good whatever: it was simply dragging a
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