The importance of attention for education is almost proverbial. Who has not seen the stereotype of a student staring out the window, while the teacher drones on? Movies and TV shows are filled with it. Everybody knows that a wandering attention and a lack of interest hamper a student’s learning. But we haven’t always paid good attention to the dynamics of focus.
Michael Hobbiss, a researcher from the UK on attention, distraction and cognitive control in adolescents, remarked in an interview on the Learning Scientists website, that there’s been too much focus among educators on how to grab students’ attention, and not enough on how the attentional systems actually work.
Of course, we’ve all heard of the rising diagnoses of ADD/ADHD (66% increase from 2000 to 2010!). Perhaps that fact is simply a function growing popular awareness of the problem, and therefore more doctor visits for a diagnosis. But Daniel Goleman, the bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, hypothesizes that we’re recognizing it more because it’s becoming more of a problem, even for us adults.
In his book Focus Goleman memorably tells the story of a conversation with a doctor, who recounted how professionals are beginning to self-medicate for attentional issues and narcolepsy. One lawyer was even complaining that he couldn’t write contracts without such drugs, many of which would have required a prescription just a few short years ago (8-9).
A possible cause for our crisis of attention in the modern world is our addiction to the new media and screen time. Those glowing orbs in our hands and on our desks are powerful brain manipulators. I’ve heard the attention-grabbing industry estimated at $6 trillion; that’s a lot of money, time and effort from experts focused at diverting our attention. And perhaps by the law of habit the industry’s power—and our giving into it—is turning us and our students into less focused people.
The upshot to these dire pronouncements is that there is a rich tradition of reflection on the human faculty or habit of attention. Those familiar with Charlotte Mason’s work will recognize it as a theme that she keeps coming back to. Yet Charlotte Mason wasn’t the first educational theorist to spend some focused thought on the attention, and she wasn’t the last.
So in this article, we’re going to explore the practical recommendations for training the attention that Charlotte Mason had in common with one of her predecessors, the famous British Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, followed by a slightly younger contemporary, the American educator John Milton Gregory, known in classical education circles for his book The Seven Laws of Teaching.
Then we will link up with modern cognitive psychology and neuroscience for how they support and confirm this tradition. This research will provide some greater clarity as to what’s going on in our brains and why Locke, Mason and Gregory’s sage advice still stands today. That will take us through the science of attention then and now.
The Science of Attention Then
John Locke on Attention
More than a century before Charlotte Mason, John Locke anticipated her in many of his ideas about education, including his reflections on the nature of young children and the importance of gentle training in habit. The habit of attention, proper accommodations for children, and the need for training in focus are some of those areas of substantial agreement.
In his treatise on education John Locke begins his reflections by considering the nature of children:
The natural temper of children disposes their minds to wander. Novelty alone takes them…. They quickly grow weary of the same thing, and so have almost their whole delight in change and variety. It is a contradiction to the natural state of childhood for them to fix their fleeting thoughts. (Some Thoughts Concerning Education 124)
Unlike many thinkers of his day and earlier, Locke’s reflections on children’s inattentiveness do not lead him to despise children, but instead to accost parents and tutors for their unrealistic expectations. It is absurd to expect a child to have the developed faculty of attention of a grown scholar, and taxing a student far beyond their capacity is, to him, simply an exercise in frustration.
He briefly wonders why children might naturally have a short attention span, as a 17th century medical practitioner might be expected to do, before concluding that whatever the cause it is surely the case:
Whether this be owing to the temper of their brains or the quickness and instability of their animal spirits, over which the mind has not yet got a full command, this is visible, that it is a pain to children to keep their thoughts steady to anything. (124)
Next he moves on to propose the same type of gracious treatment and training that Charlotte Mason enthusiasts have come to appreciate from her:
A lasting continued attention is one of the hardest tasks [that] can be imposed on them; and therefore he that requires their application should endeavor to make what he proposes as grateful and agreeable as possible; at least, he ought to take care not to join any displeasing or frightful idea with it. (124)
John Locke thus recommends a tactic of accommodation and understanding toward students’ challenges with wandering attention. This is in great contrast to the usual methods of his day, which employed frequent “rebukes and corrections, if they find them ever so little wandering” (124). Locke finds these methods ineffective and more likely to stifle attention than develop it.
These ideas might make Locke seem like a softy, but he has a place for rigor and aims definitely at a student’s growing excellence in learning. He has just shifted the method of ensuring students’ attention from negative to positive tactics. As he concludes later,
The great skill of a teacher is to get and keep the attention of his scholar; whilst he has that, he is sure to advance as fast as the learner’s abilities will carry him; and without that, all his bustle and pother will be to little or no purpose. (125)
Locke recognizes the necessity of a focused attention for learning and recommends a “certain tenderness” in the teacher to “make the child sensible that he loves him and designs nothing but his good” as the surest way to inspire the child to “hearken to his lessons and relish what he teachers him” (125). This no doubt develops out of his Christian view of children as made in the image of God, a trust to be nurtured and cherished, and not harshly accosted for weaknesses they can’t help.
Charlotte Mason on Attention
Similar to Locke, Charlotte Mason focuses on attention as a habit, and a chief educational virtue at that. A student’s learning and abilities depend upon it, because it makes them possible. As she explains in Home Education,
First, we put the habit of Attention, because the highest intellectual gifts depend for their value upon the measure in which their owner has cultivated the habit of attention. (97)
Developing on Locke’s reflections about the natural state of childhood, Charlotte Mason recommended short lessons for younger children and variety in books and subjects; she famously quipped that “a change is as good as a rest.” In this, like Locke, she accommodates the attention of young students, while at the same time recommending a positive program designed to improve and develop students’ attention over time.
Her reflections on the nature of the attention are a little more up-to-date than Locke’s “animal spirits,” as she grapples with the faculty theory of her day and attempts to articulate an integrated and interconnected view of the mind:
Attention is hardly even an operation of the mind, but is simply the act by which the whole mental force is applied to the subject in hand. This act, of bringing the whole mind to bear, may be trained into a habit at the will of the parent or teacher, who attracts and holds the child’s attention by means of a sufficient motive. (102)
Here too she focuses on the parent or teacher providing the proper motive for attention in a way that attracts the child. Of course, the highest intellectual motive is that of curiosity, which should be aroused and cultivated in any way possible. (John Locke had said much the same thing, and came back to the theme of curiosity again and again in his treatise, which is another reason I suspect him as a source for Charlotte Mason’s reflections.) But other motives (like a sense of duty or achievement) are acceptable and sometimes necessary, as long as students are not nourished too intensely on one natural desire such that it ventures into the arena manipulation or unhealthy influence.
But perhaps the most important tactic for Charlotte Mason in the cultivation of the habit of attention is that students be expected to know and tell after only one reading or exposure. The practice of narration is the supreme way of inducing in the child that habit of attention which will make a scholar of him. The expectation that one will have to tell gives the mind the necessary energy to attend fully and completely to the content at hand. This practice, when regularly followed, is of supreme value for moving students along the path of learning just as quickly as their natural abilities will allow them.
John Milton Gregory on Attention
It is a wonder to see so many theorists speaking with one voice on the science of attention. John Milton Gregory’s second law of teaching says just what we could expect from Locke or Mason:
“The learner must attend with interest to the fact or truth to be learned.” (The Seven Laws of Teaching, Canon Press, 37)
Gregory admits the commonsensical nature of this assertion, but bemoans how often teachers break its principles in practice.
“However much teacher may neglect it in practice, they readily admit in theory that without attention the pupil can learn nothing. One may as well talk to the deaf or the dead as to teach a child who is wholly inattentive.” (40)
Like Mason, he prefers to describe the attention as more than an isolated faculty of the mind, latching onto the word “attitude” as a helpful word-picture:
“Avoiding as much as possible all metaphysical discussion, we may describe the attention as a mental attitude—the attitude in which the thought-power is actively bent toward, or fastened upon, some object of thought or perception. It is an attitude, not of ease and repose, but of effort and exertion.” (38)
The same activity of the student that we would expect from Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is here recommended by Gregory. The student must engage in the effort and exertion and the teacher’s job is to entice her to do so.
Like Locke, Gregory believes that the method of rebukes and harsh punishments for inattentiveness is counterproductive. But he explains why by making a distinction between compelled and attracted attention:
“Compelled attention is short-lived and easily exhausted. Its very painfulness wearies the powers of body and mind…. Attracted attention, on the other hand, is full of power and endurance. Its felt interest calls dormant energies into play, and the pleasure given by its efforts seems to refresh rather than weary the mind.” (39)
Clearly we are to prefer attracting attention whenever possible, and compelled attention should only be used when necessary to gather the class back together from some distraction, before attracting their attention again by interesting content or, in Charlotte Mason’s words, “a sufficient motive.”
A few of Gregory’s practical instructions connect so well with the spirit of Locke and Mason that they are worth reproducing in full:
- “Never exhaust wholly the pupil’s power of attention. Stop when signs of weariness appear, and either dismiss the class or change the subject to kindle fresh attention.
- “Fit the length of the exercise to the ages of the class: the younger the pupils the briefer the lesson.
- “Arouse, and when needful rest, the attention by a pleasing variety, but avoid distraction. Keep the real lesson in view.
- “Present those aspects of the lesson, and use such illustrations, as fit the ages, character, and attainments of the class.” (48)
Locke, Mason and Gregory seem to speak with one voice on the subject of attention. They discuss its over-arching importance for learning and attaining excellence. They recommend against negative methods and for the positive and caring influence of the teacher. Their goal is to accommodate a child’s natural state, while also developing the focus ability of a scholar in him. The process should involve the slow, faithful inducement of the child to attend as long as he can, but no longer, followed by change and variety. Over the years, the attention of the child will grow with practice, and the love of learning and curiosity will flourish in him, leading him to a willing and settled intellectual excellence.
Now let’s turn to modern neuroscience and cognitive psychology to see these recommendations confirmed and explained.
Modern Learning Science on Attention
What have we learned about the science of attention since the days of Locke, Mason and Gregory? Research confirms that the ability to focus directly correlates with accomplishment in virtually any domain of learning or life. As bestselling author Daniel Goleman puts it in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence,
In very recent years the science of attention has blossomed far beyond vigilance. That science tells us these skills determine how well we perform any task. If they are stunted, we do poorly; if muscular, we can excel. Our very nimbleness in life depends on this subtle faculty. While the link between attention and excellence remains hidden most of the time, it ripples through almost everything we seek to accomplish. (2-3)
Attention is the overarching mental “faculty” that traditional educational theorists described it as. It’s a “subtle faculty” that hides under our radar and yet is always operating, having far-reaching effects on every activity or task we engage in, especially those involving learning.
But why is attention so important for learning and skill development to take place? First, it’s worth mentioning that modern neuroscience has discovered that there are at least two different modes of attention, what Barbara Oakley in A Mind for Numbers calls the focused mode and the diffuse mode. The focused mode is the experience we normally think of as focusing or attending closely to something. The diffuse mode, on the other hand, is when we are relaxed and letting our mind wander.
Dr. Daniel Levitin, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University, nicknames the diffuse mode the “mid-wandering mode” (The Organized Mind 41). He remarks that the discovery of this mode as “a special brain network… was one of the biggest neuroscientific discoveries of the last twenty years” (38). One of its features is that it continuously seeks to monopolize your consciousness: “it eagerly shifts the brain into mind-wandering when you’re not engaged in a task, and it hijacks your consciousness if the task you’re doing gets boring” (38). Here we have a fuller explanation for Locke’s remark that the natural state of children’s minds is to wander. In fact, it’s a natural human brain state.
Dr. Levitin goes on to explain that it is a zero-sum game between these two modes:
“When one is active the other is not. During demanding tasks, the central executive kicks in. The more the mind-wandering network is suppressed, the greater the accuracy of performance on the task at hand” (39).
Daniel Goleman describes these two attention systems as top-down and bottom-up, drawing from research in cognitive science. The subcortical brain machinery (bottom-up) is much quicker in brain time, more impulsive, emotional and intuitive, and manages our habitual ways of engaging with the world, as we would say, without really thinking about it. The top-down focused mode is slower, more logical, voluntary, and based in the seat of self-control, the pre-frontal cortex (Focus 25-26).
Because of this we know that too much effort to stay in the focused mode, without the training up of habits of attentive focus, will deplete the brain’s reserves of willpower. At this point the brain will automatically switch into diffuse mode to find the needed rest and recreation. This explains the insight from our traditional educators of the fruitlessness of stern corrections for inattentiveness. If a child has reached her limit of attentive focus, the willpower system needs time to refresh; of course, it’s possible to light up the fear and pain centers of the child’s brain, but those will not induce attentiveness to linguistic or abstract learning.
The growing body of literature on elite performance has also illuminated how integral focus is to the development of complex skills, from liberal arts like deep reading, to world-class sports or musicianship. Attention is a necessary requirement of what has been variously called deliberate practice (Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers) or deep practice (Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code).
For instance, in his book Deep Work Cal Newport mentions two core components of deliberate practice, drawing from the research of Anders Ericsson:
- your attention is focused tightly on a specific skill you’re trying to improve or an idea you’re trying to master;
- you receive feedback so you can correct your approach to keep your attention exactly where it’s most productive.
Both of these components, the uninterrupted focus on the skill or idea and the feedback, require the focused mode of attention in order to optimize skill development or learning. Like Locke explained, when a student’s attention is focused, that student is sure to progress just as quickly as natural ability will allow. But without this focus the time is almost wasted.
Cal Newport goes on to explain the role of myelination of neural circuits in this process:
By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits—effectively cementing the skill. The reason, therefore, why it’s important to focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction is because this is the only way to isolate the relevant neural circuit enough to trigger useful myelination. By contrast, if you’re trying to learn a complex new skill (say, SQL database management) in a state of low concentration (perhaps you also have your Facebook feed open), you’re firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly to isolate the group of neurons you actually want to strengthen. (Deep Work 36-37)
The modern crisis of attention is explained! The problem is that our brains are receiving too much stimulation from our glowing orbs, and so our ability to learn and develop is hampered. Myelination requires focus of mind and avoidance of distractions.
There are few experiences this reminds me more of that the peaceful experience of standing in a classroom with a group of attentive students, who are under the thrall of an engaging book. As I or a student finishes reading, I quietly ask a student called at random to begin telling back for the class, and he narrates what was just read with graphic language, fitting details and a faithful account of the sequence of thought. Other students then add a detail or two and we proceed to discuss the deeper meaning and relevance of the text. This is Charlotte Mason’s practice of narration, and its powerful sequence trains students in the habit of attention.
In my previous role as Academic Dean of Clapham School, I’ve discussed the topic of attention before in a series of articles. I was also interviewed in a webinar for parents. I’ve listed these below in case you’re interested in going further in this topic.
- A Call for Focus in Learning: Part 1, Traditional Views of Attention
- Part 2, The Science of Attention
- Part 3, Practicing Attention
- Webinar: Attention, Please! Tips for Keeping Your Child Focused
If you’re interested in learning more about a method for training in habits generally, check out Patrick’s “A Guide to Implementing Habit Training”.
