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 any thing 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 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 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.
强迫 | 我们以前评论说，孩子喜欢变化与自由，我们向他们推荐游戏；所以他们的书本，或者我们想让他们学习的任何东西，都不能作为任务强加给他们。他们的父母、导师与教师惯于忘记这一点；他们总是急于让小孩忙着做他们该做的事情，而不是设法诱导他们去做；但是通过他们受到的重复命令，小孩很快就能区分什么是对他们的要求，什么不是。一旦错误已经造成，小孩不再喜欢读书，你要用反面的方法来矫治。因为让他把读书当作游戏已经为时过晚，你必须用相反的处理方式：看看他最喜欢什么游戏；让他每天玩很多小时的那种游戏，不是作为游玩的惩罚，而是作为一种任务要求他玩。假如我没有弄错的话，这样过不了几天他就会厌恶他最喜爱的游戏，他会宁愿去读书或做任何别的事情，特别是如果他能够从被要求的游戏任务中解放出来，他可以把游戏任务的一部分时间用在书本，或者其它真正对他有益的事情上。我认为这至少比禁止的方法好(禁止常常增加他的欲望)，或者比任何用来矫治它的惩罚方法好；因为一旦你使他的欲望得到过度满足(除了吃喝以外，一切欲望都可以这样安全地处理)，并且使他对你想让他避免的事情做得过多而生厌，你在他心中建立了厌弃的原则，你就不需要担心他以后会再渴望同样的事情了。
This I think is sufficiently evident, that children generally hate to be idle. All the care then is, that their busy humour 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 him? Children, in the things they do, if they comport with their age, find little difference so they may be doing: 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 scotchhoppers shall reward their dancing, or dancing their scotchhoppers; whether peg-top, or reading; playing at trap, or studying the globes, shall be 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.
我认为很明显，小孩一般是憎恶无事可做的。那么要注意的只是他们的好动性情应该用在对他们有用的事情上；如果你想遂你所愿，你必须把你想让他们做的事情作为他们的一种休闲娱乐，而不是作为一种工作任务。为了不让他们感觉你在插手其间，这里建议的方法是，找一些借口或别的人来强迫他们做那你不愿意他们做的事情，直到他们做得过多，使他们因此厌倦那事情。例如，你的儿子是否太喜欢抽陀螺？命令他每天玩很多小时，并且要看着他玩；你很快会发现他厌倦它，甘愿不玩了。通过这种方法，把你不喜欢的娱乐当作工作让他做，他会自己高高兴兴地去做你想让他做的事情，特别是这些事情是作为他完成吩咐他做的游戏任务的奖励。因为如果他每天被命令去抽陀螺，不到疲倦不让他停止，假如你答应读书作为他用力抽打陀螺的时间之外奖励，你难道不认为他会热心读书，希望读书吗？小孩做的事情，只要适合他们的年纪，他们做什么事情是没有多少差别的：他们所以看重某件事情高于另一件事，他们是从别人那里学来的；所以他们周围的人奖励他们的事情，就会真正成为奖励。通过这种技巧，导师可以选择，是把跳房作为跳舞的奖励，还是把跳舞作为跳房的奖励；是让他们玩陀螺，还是让他们阅读；是让他们喜欢玩射球游戏，还是让他们喜欢学习地理；他们所要的只是忙碌，忙他们以为他们自己选择的事，和从他们父母或他们所尊重、所愿得到好评的人那里接受的作为恩惠的事情。我想，这样安排并且不受坏榜样影响的小孩，他们都会热忱快乐地去学习读书、写作以及你愿意他们学的别的东西，就像其他人玩他们通常的游戏一样：而且年纪最大的孩子这样做，形成了风气以后，那就很难阻止他们不学着这样做，就像通常不能防止他们玩游戏一样。
摘自Some Thoughts Concerning Education (English-Chinese Edition)(ISBN-10: 1537479857)
