Coercion in John Stuart Mill's childhood education

[jrmu <jrmu@xxxxxxxxxx>]

https://raise.substack.com/p/7-homegrown-genius-educating-john

[John Stuart] Mill’s dad started him learning Greek at age three. He gave the
boy lists of common Greek words to memorize and wrote out their meanings in
English on cards. (Mill doesn’t describe how he learned to read English.) In
addition to vocabulary, wee John learned some basic Greek grammar and soon
began translating Aesop’s Fables, which was the first Greek book he read. His
second was Anabasis, by Xenophon, the account of a military expedition into
Persia.  By the time he was eight, John had read most of the well-known Greek
prose writers -- well-known, that is, to educated Brits in the early 19th
century.

Some of the readings, Mill confesses, were beyond him at this early age. “But
in all his teachings,” he writes, “my father demanded of me not only the utmost
that I could do but much that I could not possibly have done.”

Up to age eight, in addition to Greek, Mill learned arithmetic, receiving
nightly lessons from his father, which he found “disagreeable.” He also read
great numbers of books in English, some prescribed by his father, others chosen
on his own. Mostly, he read histories—Greek, Roman, and English.

-- 
Aaron Lin
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