Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, or Quintilian (c. A.D. 35-c. 95), in his celebrated Institutio Oratoria wrote extensively and wisely about the education of children. A sampling of his ideas cited below will show that they remain as timely today as they were two thousand years ago.
Above all things we must take care that the child, who is not yet old enough to love his studies, does not come to hate them and dread the bitterness which he has once tasted, even when the years of infancy are left behind. His studies must be made an amusement.1
Study depends on the good will of the student, a quality that cannot be secured by compulsion.2
I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.3