Locke: Compulsion

Some Thoughts Concerning Education - by John Locke, 1693

§ 128 Compulsion. We formerly observed, that variety and freedom was that that delighted children, and recommended their plays to them; and that therefore their book, or anything we would have them learn, should not be enjoined them as business. This their parents, tutors, and teachers are apt to forget; and their impatience to have them busied in what is fit for them to do suffers them not to deceive them into it: but by the repeated injunctions they meet with, children quickly distinguish between what is required of them and what not. When this mistake has once made his book uneasy to him, the cure is to be applied at the other end. And since it will be then too late to endeavour to make it a play to him, you must take the contrary course; observe what play he is most delighted with; enjoin that and make him play so many hours every day, not as a punishment for playing, but as if it were the business required of him. This, if I mistake not, will in a few days, make him so weary of his most beloved sport, that he will prefer his book, or any thing to it, especially if it may redeem him from any part of the task of play that is set him; and he may be suffered to employ some part of the time destined to his task of play in his book, or such other exercise as is really useful to him. This I at least think a better cure than that forbidding (which usually increases the desire) or any other punishment that should be made use of to remedy it. For when you have once glutted his appetite (which may safely be done in all things but eating and drinking), and made him surfeit of what you would have him avoid, you have put into him a principle of aversion, and you need not so much fear afterwards his longing for the same thing again.

§ 129 This, I think, is sufficiently evident, that children generally hate to be idle. All the care then is, that their busy hamour should be constantly employed in something of use to them; which if you will attain, you must make what you would have them do a recreation to them, and not a business. The way to do this, so that they may not perceive you have any hand in it is this proposed here, viz. to make them weary of that which you would not have them do, by enjoining and making them, under some pretence or other, do it till they are surfeited. For example: Does your son play at top and scourge too much? Enjoin him to play so many hours every day, and look that he do it; and you shall see he will quickly be sick of it and willing to leave it. By this means, making the recreations you dislike a business to him, he will of himself with delight betake himself to those things you would have him do, especially if they be proposed as rewards for having performed his task in that play which is commanded him. For, if he be ordered every day to whip his top so long as to make him sufficiently weary, do you not think he will apply himself with eagerness to his book, and wish for it if you promise it him as a reward of having whipped his top lustily, quite out all the time that is set in him? Children, in the things they do, if they comport with their age, find little difference, so they may the esteem they have for one thing above another, they borrow from others; so that what those about them make to be a reward to them, will really be so. By this art, it is in their governor's choice, whether scotch-hoppers shall reward their dancing, or dancing their scotch-hoppers whether peg-top, or reading, playing at trap, or studying the globes, shall he more acceptable and pleasing to them; all that they desire being to be busy, and busy, as they imagine, in things of their own choice, and which they receive as favours from their parents, or others for whom they have respect, and with whom they would be in credit. A set of children thus ordered, and kept from the ill example of others, would all of them, I suppose, with as much earnestness and delight, learn to read, write, and what else one would have them, as others do their ordinary plays: and the eldest being thus entered, and this made the fashion of the place, it would be as impossible to hinder them from learning the one, as it is ordinarily to keep them from the other.