John Holt (1923-1985)
Excellent teacher for 14 years fired for advocating children’s rights, author of the“Homeschooling Bible,” Teach Your Own, visiting lecturer at U. C. Berkeley and Harvard Graduate School, school system consultant; John Holt came to believe that the US school systems were failing and becoming only places "where children learn to be stupid,” focus on avoiding ridicule rather than learning, become only “teacher-pleasers, and lose their love of discovery. He blamed grades, tests, and ranking students for undermining their confidence, inspiration, and joy; and advocated “unschooling” as a kind of Lao Tzu-ian Wu Wei, natural approach to opening the doors of enthusiasm, freedom, and creativity.
Lineages
American (USA)
“a good student is careful not to forget what he studied until after the test is taken”
from Teach Your Own
Chapters:
3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones
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“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.”
from Teach Your Own
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“To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid.”
from Teach Your Own
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“It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life.”
from Teach Your Own
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“Be wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued.”
from Teach Your Own
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“So many people have said to me, ‘If we didn't make children do things, they wouldn't do anything.’ Even worse, they say, ‘If I weren't made to do things, I wouldn't do anything.’ It is the creed of a slave.”
from How Children Fail
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“Much of what we call History is the success stories of madmen.”
from How Children Fail
Chapters:
41. Distilled Life
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“The biggest enemy to learning is the talking teacher.”
from How Children Fail
Chapters:
48. Unlearning
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“We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.”
from How Children Fail
Chapters:
38. Fruit Over Flowers
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“We destroy the love of learning… by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards… A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists, or Phi Beta Kappa keys, in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else.”
Chapters:
66. Go Low
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