Locke: Task

Some Thoughts Concerning Education - by John Locke, 1693

§ 75 Task. Though it be past doubt, that the fittest time for children to learn anything is when their minds are in tune; and well disposed to it; when neither flagging of spirit, nor intentness of thought upon something else, makes them awkward and averse; yet two things are to be taken care of: 1. That these seasons either not being warily observed and laid hold on as often as they return; or else not returning as often as they should (as always happens in the ordinary method and discipline of education, when blows and compulsion have raised an aversion in the child to the thing he is to learn), the improvement of the child be not thereby neglected, and so he be let grow into a habitual idleness, and confirmed in this indisposition. 2. That though other things are ill learned when the mind is either indisposed, or otherwise taken up; yet it is a great matter, and worth our endeavours to teach the mind to get the mastery over itself; and to be able, upon choice, to take itself off from the hot pursuit of one thing, and set itself upon another with facility and delight; or at any time to shake off its sluggishness, and vigorously employ itself about what reason, or the advice of another, shall direct. This is to be done in children, by trying them sometimes, when they are by laziness unbent: or by avocation bent another way, and endeavouring to make them buckle to the thing proposed. If by this means the mind can get a habitual dominion over it self, lay by ideas or business, as occasion requires, and betake itself to new and less acceptable employments, without reluctancy or discomposure, it will be an advantage of more consequence than Latin, or logic, or most of those things children are usually required to learn.