Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Contents

1. Epistle Dedicatory 6 min 6

   Locke dedicates the book to Edward Clarke of Chipley, for whose son the letters it grew from were written. He explains that friends pressed him to publish, that so many parents had consulted him about breeding their children, and that errors in education are the hardest to mend later. He asks for a better treatise “suited to our English Gentry” if anyone can write one, and argues that the gentleman’s calling deserves most care, since a rightly educated upper class will bring the rest into order.

2. §§ 1–30 Health 52 min 20

   Locke opens with the claim that education makes nine parts in ten of what men are, then deals with the body. A gentleman’s son should be raised like a yeoman’s: lightly clothed, feet washed in cold water and shoes that leak, much in the open air, loosely dressed, fed plain food with little meat and much bread, given small beer and no strong drink, limited fruit, plenty of sleep on a hard bed, and trained to regular stools. Physic is to be avoided. Throughout, custom settled by gentle degrees is the means.

3. §§ 31–42 The Mind: Self-Denial and the Parents’ Authority 21 min 6

   Turning to the mind, Locke places the foundation of virtue in the power to deny one’s desires when reason forbids. Parents ruin children by indulging them when small and then complaining when they grow up wilful; they teach violence, vanity, lying and gluttony outright. Children should never get what they cry for. Authority must be established early, through awe, and then relaxed as reason grows, so that the father who was an absolute governor becomes his grown son’s friend, holding him by love rather than fear of disinheritance.

4. §§ 43–87 Rewards and Punishments 1 h 39 min 21

   Locke sets out his discipline. Beating breeds either a slavish temper or a broken spirit, and bribes with sweets or finery feed the appetites they should master. The true incentives are esteem and disgrace, reinforced by the whole household. Habits should be settled by practice, not rules; manners come from example and good company. He weighs school against home and prefers a tutor at home, keeping the child from servants. Learning should never be a task. Only obstinacy deserves the rod; children should be reasoned with at their own level and taught by example.

5. §§ 88–94 The Tutor 32 min 5

   Locke describes the tutor or governor. He must be respected by the family, set a good example, and be chosen with more care than money, since a good one is rare and worth more than added land. Learning and Latin matter less than breeding, which sets off every other quality, and knowledge of the world: the tutor should show his pupil the vices and tricks of the age by degrees, so he is not ruined on leaving supervision. Scholastic logic is useless; a gentleman needs the knowledge of a man of business.

6. §§ 95–133 Managing the Child: Tempers and Faults 1 h 40 min 13

   Locke completes his general method. As the son grows, the father’s early awe should relax into friendship and consultation, though the father keeps the estate. Parents must study each child’s inborn temper, and curb the two early roots of injustice, the love of dominion and of possession, by refusing wants of “fancy,” rewarding liberality and correcting the least injustice. He treats crying, cowardice and hardiness, cruelty to animals and servants, curiosity and its honest answering, sauntering, toys, lying and excuses. Blows are kept for obstinacy alone; esteem, shame and habit do the rest.

7. §§ 134–146 Virtue, Wisdom and Breeding 34 min 12

   Locke names the four things a gentleman wants for his son besides an estate: virtue, wisdom, breeding and learning, in that order. Virtue rests on a simple notion of God, freedom from servants’ tales of goblins, truthfulness and good nature. Wisdom, the able management of affairs, cannot be taught to children, but cunning can be prevented. Breeding avoids both bashfulness and contempt; its faults are roughness, contempt, censoriousness (including raillery and contradiction), captiousness, excessive ceremony and interrupting. Manners, and even most moral and religious opinions, are taken from company, so a child’s company matters more than any instruction.

8. §§ 147–177 Learning: Reading, Writing and Languages 1 h 14 min 11

   Learning comes last and least. Reading should be a game, taught with lettered dice and pleasant books such as Aesop, never as a task; the Bible should not be read through by chapters. Writing, drawing and shorthand follow. French, then Latin, should be learned by conversation or interlinear translation, not grammar rules; grammar belongs to adults polishing their own tongue, above all English. Teachers must keep pupils calm and attentive, since fear blots out learning. Locke attacks Latin themes, verse-making and rote memorising, and insists the tutor value virtue above languages.

9. §§ 178–195 Learning: Geography, History and the Sciences 46 min 13

   Alongside French and Latin the boy learns geography, arithmetic, astronomy on the globes, a little Euclid, chronology and history, read in easy Latin authors. Ethics comes from the Bible and Cicero, then the natural-law writers Pufendorf and Grotius, and an English gentleman must know his country’s law and constitution. Logic and rhetoric are to be skimmed; disputation is harmful, while plain narrative, letters and good English are neglected. Natural philosophy cannot be a science, but a Bible history should teach spirits before matter; Boyle and Newton are recommended. A quotation from La Bruyère closes with advice on method.

10. §§ 196–217 Accomplishments, a Trade, Travel; the Conclusion 36 min 16

    Locke turns to accomplishments: dancing early, music last, riding for health, fencing with suspicion because it breeds duels. He proposes that a gentleman learn a manual trade, chiefly gardening or carpentry, as healthy recreation instead of cards and dice, together with merchants’ accounts to preserve his estate. Travel is usually undertaken at the worst age, between sixteen and twenty-one, and young men return little improved; the custom persists because the heir must marry at twenty-one. The conclusion admits the book’s limits and its address to a gentleman’s son, “white Paper, or Wax.”