# Some Thoughts Concerning Education — Character guide

> Key figures in Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke.

- [Children](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/children.md): In Locke's treatise, children are not abstractions but the living test of every method he proposes — the boy sweating over a theme on a Latin tag he cannot understand, the pupil forced to versify who has no poetic vein, 
- [Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): The narrator is a philosopher writing privately to Edward Clarke, whose papers were pressed into print by friends who thought them too useful to stay dormant. He admits the meanness of his own offering, distrusts his abi
- [A Child](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/a_child.md): This child stands in for every young learner whose curiosity might be fed with useful knowledge of the sensible world rather than stuffed with grammatical scraps. Locke warns that whatever you teach, you must not make an
- [Your Son](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/your_son.md): Locke addresses the father through this son, urging him to insist that the boy not be set to making declamations or verses, since the design is merely to understand a Latin author, not to breed an orator or poet. The son
- [His Son](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/his_son.md): This son appears in Locke's sharpest aside: if a father wishes his boy a poet, he should consider what company and places a successful rhymer frequents, and how seldom anyone mines gold from Parnassus. The tension is bet
- [My Young Master](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/my_young_master.md): My young master is the boy Locke has actually taught, the one whose good temper and love of his book he cites as evidence that his method works. The tension is between the ordinary disciplining of children and the gentle
- [Tully](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/tully.md): Cicero, Roman orator and writer, quoted on rhetoric and virtue.
- [Paradise](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/paradise.md): Biblical paradise used as a metaphor for ideal education.
- [People Strangers to Business](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/people_strangers_to_business.md): Generic group contrasted with those worn by labor, used in argument.
- [The Great Masters](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/the_great_masters.md): Renowned teachers or authors cited as authorities.
- [Aesop](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/some_thoughts_concerning_education_se/characters/aesop.md): Greek fabulist recommended for children's reading.

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