John Holt books...

[Kyles Mom]

Hello everyone

I came across this marvelous author, John Holt. Have any one else heard of him and read his books? I am finishing How Children Learn and its wonderful book for all the parents to read from pregnancy days. He also has another book I want to read, How Children Fail. In addition he has many more books, those homeschoolers would definitely love more like Escape from childhood, Freedom and beyond, What do I do on Monday and so many more.

Here's a short review of the book by Jeremy Solomon at www.educationreformbooks.net

John Holt’s: How Children Learn
 
Reviewed by Jeremy Solomon
 
Rather than give an overarching theory of how children learn, John Holt, the father of the modern home school movement, uses anecdotal observations that question assumptions about how children acquire knowledge and learning skills.
 
Holt rejects the idea that children are "monsters of evil" who must be beaten into submission or computers whom "we can program into geniuses."  Neither are they the passive receptacles of knowledge that can only learn in a schoolroom.  Instead, he calls upon parents and educators to "trust children."       
 
First and foremost, Holt believes that children are born learners and that there is a curiosity in all children that begins at birth, not when they are put in school.  His observations of young children reveal that their brains are trying to make sense of the world.

Children want to solve problems; they like to think.  The problem is that parents and educators get in the way of this natural process by placing children in large, impersonal schools, and by teaching a meaningless curriculum in an industrial factory setting.

Holt rejects knowledge that is entirely taught in an abstract manner.  He uses the example of teaching fractions as an anesthetic experience with little real world application.  Similarly, he is disgusted by children’s primers and picture books with their “dumb” and simple vocabularies.  Rather, Holt believes in exposing children to real world problems of increasing complexity.  For example, he encourages parents to expose their children to newspapers, letters, warranties, the yellow pages - anything tangible and visceral to promote their curiosity about the world.

Staying with the theme of promoting real problems for children, Holt is nostalgic for a time when children observed their parents at work, indeed, when parents and children worked side by side.  He believes childhood observation of parental work would accelerate learning on the part of their children, rather than just having information disseminated from the classroom. This is one reason why Holt is so receptive to home-schooling or as he calls it. "unschooling."

Holt is full of ire against teachers and educational institutions, whom he believes actually serve as a hindrance to acquiring knowledge and learning skills.  If the aim of education is to create independent thinkers, then educators must learn to refrain from “unasked teaching,” which he argues only frustrates children into believing that they are not smart enough to learn.  This destructive process to Holt shatters their self esteem and extinguishes their confidence in their ability to learn for themselves and, at worst, turn them away from learning forever. 
      Teachers, rather, should be more passive, be willing to take a step back, and give direction only when students need - and ask for, help.  Teachers make the mistake of believing that they are essential to the learning process and that students can not work without them.

Holt maintains that the best results can be gained
when a student is given time to figure things out and to develop hunches that become more and more sophisticated with experience.  For Holt, there are no stupid mistakes as children develop their cognitive skills.

The concept of self esteem is the second fundamental belief that Holt espouses.  Self confidence is the key to a child’s learning.  Overbearing teachers and parents, coercive educational institutions, the rote drudgery of learning and endless testing - all serve to create a sense of anxiety, of
crushing curiosity, of making learning a painful rather than a natural and pleasurable act.  Over time students come to believe that they are failures.  Indeed, Holt asserts that stammering and stuttering are the consequences for some children of destroyed self esteem.

Fear of failure, punishment and disgrace, along the with the anxiety of constant testing, severely reduces students’ ability to perceive and remember, and, thus, drive them away from learning.  Holt, with his trust children philosophy, believes, perhaps naively, that they have a strong sense of what is right and have an innate self correcting mechanism that will help them to (eventually) solve a problem.  Most instruction, especially reading, Holt argues, is self taught anyway, so why the need for overbearing teachers and parents?   Holt believes that learning can be pleasurable and that learning in the form of games can be the first step in having children embrace a lifetime of learning.

[DadDude]

I've read only Teach Your Own, in an effort to discover why people are so taken with Unschooling.  No offense...ascending soapbox...and maybe the book you read is better, but I found Teach Your Own to be annoying, badly argued (when there was any argument at all), and not especially persuasive.

"Holt rejects knowledge that is entirely taught in an abstract manner" sez the review.

Right.  And the obvious question is whether a student can learn everything he ought to learn about a subject through experiences, projects, relevant work, and whatnot.  I greatly doubt it; in fact, I think it is almost certain that the answer is "No."  So, this very basic claim is quite extreme, and extreme claims require extreme evidence.  What evidence does Holt offer?  In Teach Your Own, it was all anecdotal, and rarely relevant to my skeptical worries.  Basically, there were lots of stories of parents who supported their children's efforts to learn to be ace plumbers and farmers, or whatever, and they ended up becoming precociously brilliant in their chosen careers, and later big successes in life.  Grand.  Lots of traditionally schooled kids end up being big successes in life, too, so this proves nothing.  The question in my mind is (surprise!) whether they became educated.  I find that if you press an unschooler on this question, they want to argue about the nature and value of "education."  Being a philosopher, I'd be only too happy to have that argument.  But rarely do I find evidence that unschooled kids who do nothing but projects and field trips and work study, etc., develop a particularly strong scholarly mind.  I get the sense, both from what he says and from his style of "scholarship," that Holt does really care about developing academic ability.  Well, I do.

I think the whole issue of the value of academic or "formal" learning is completely orthogonal to the value of educating children at home.  Philosophically, I probably have more in common with a good Catholic or private school pedagogy than I would with someone who didn't care what children learned, so long as they themselves chose to learn it...

Descending soapbox... 

[Kyles Mom]

Erm, usually I guess we choose what we follow cos we believe in it thus it is always hard to show the other side of the coin to a firm believer.

I was a schooled person and my son is so far not schooled. From my comparison I say my son knows far more and is more open and eager and easily learning than any other kid I have met so far, alhamdulillah. And I say my son so far is more educated than other kids 2years his senior. But then again its all cos the curriculum in our country is too low as well. Also I saw a point, I should work on from our post; the idea of competing will not be infiltrated in an unschooled child. But then again, I guess competitive mind can be let loose till he grows older. For now, the fact he doesnt understand what an exam is helps. Cos he will not sit with anxious kids waiting for the exam for a long time. and by that time, he can most probably build a confidence if I can work on it.

Anyways, I prefer homeschooling over schooling for the mere fact my son will move in his own individual speed and he wont have to mix with bullies and other misbehaved kids whose influence I'd spare as much as I can.


PS. I dont understand ascending descending soapbox thing :$, also I am a huge fan of ur files...

[DadDude]

Fair play to you, and thanks.  But I'd have to know more about how you actually help your child learn before I would agree that he is "unschooled" or not.  Do you pick out books?  Do you pick out the books that you read to him?  Do you make suggestions?  Do you have any actual requirements?  Etc., etc.  I try to let my son choose the books we read, give me as much input as possible into what topics and specific books he wants to tackle, and if he resists anything strongly, I rarely insist and often think of something else to suggest.  We also don't have a specific "curriculum" outside of math and Latin.  None of this makes me an unschooler, though, I think.  If he were unschooled, he would have the option of not studying certain subjects which I insist that he learn, including math, writing and penmanship, Latin, and chapter book reading to himself (at least, as long as I think he is happy enough; if I really thought he were miserable learning Latin with Rosetta Stone, then we would stop; but he is usually pretty happy with it and with all of these subjects, once he gets going).

I understand if people don't want to "force" their children to learn (something I never started doing with H. until this year, when I thought he could really understand what is going on with his education).  The argument seems to be that "forcing" will turn children off from learning.  Well, not necessarily.  There are many traditionally educated children who are very enthusiastic about learning, who would probably not study nearly as much if they were not actually forced to study.  I think at bottom that Unschoolers are wrong or confused about human motivation: the fact that we resist doing something difficult does not mean that we cannot be led to like doing it.  This is true especially of children, who have difficulty thinking ahead and being motivated by future or abstract rewards.  They would rather play with toys, which might teach them something, but not as efficiently or as much as things like reading books and doing sums.  But as everyone knows and has at least some experience with, children can also come to like something that they originally resist, and we insist that they learn (or do or eat etc.) it, not least because we know there is at least a very good chance that they will come to like it.

Ultimately, the important question is what method one employs in teaching something to a child.  Sometimes, I am sure, children will learn as much as they possibly can learn by picking the books, the exercises, and so forth, all completely by themselves.  But far more often, I am also sure, children will not learn as much as they possibly can by choosing their own methods, and they'll learn more and become better educated by the best possible methods as chosen by their parents or teachers, especially if the methods are chosen to appeal to the particular child and are designed to maximize the child's motivation to study.

A soapbox was the platform on which ordinary people would get up to speak in front of other folks, especially on contentious issues (usually political).

[Kyles Mom]

Ok, I am in total agreement with you on the last post. Yes my son chooses most of the books but I choose the subjects, in addition whenever he choose anything as his new obsession, like for instance now its cheetah, I make sure he is given a slideshow with all kinds of information I can gather on it. But yes, he cant opt out on math, though I may give him a break when he's not interested. like penmanship, he was writing letter before 3 years and i made the mistake of teaching him how to write the way I see people do it and he lost interest. He started writing again at almost 4yrs.
For me being unschooled means he's not taken to a school with a specific curriculum where he has to go with the flow. He need not have to learn wearing a specific uniform. He need not mix with a specific group for a long time. And most importantly he will learn with interest rather than having to learn cos I will know best than a teacher on how to teach my son

[Krista G]

I have heard of John Holt and read 50 pages of How Children Fail many years ago.  I rarely leave a book unfinished, but I just didn't get anything out of what I read.  I was expecting a lot more due to the rave reviews people give him.  I thought perhaps that I had maybe chosen one of his lesser books.  Perhaps I should check out How Children Learn.

[DadDude]

@Kyles Mom: verrry interesting...

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