I admit it: I am in love with John Holt. I realize that he's deceased, and I am happily married, but it's ok because my husband is falling in love with him too. We are both sad that we didn't get an opportunity to hear him speak when he was alive. Thank God he wrote so many books.
We started by reading "How Children Learn," and then moved on to "How Children Fail," at which point we decided to read everything this man has ever written. We're working on it.
"Learning All the Time" is a fascinating book. In it, John Holt, a former schoolteacher and eventual homeschooling advocate, discusses how kids learn and how adults relate to them. Most of us adults don't give kids enough credit for how much they want to learn and how much they CAN learn, at earlier ages than we would have dreamed possible. He challenges everything we've been taught about the allegedly short attention span of very young children, and, since we have the privilege of observing such children in our home on a daily basis, we can see that he is right!
His philosophy involves making interesting learning materials available to kids and avoiding the two extremes of (a) frustrating them by pushing them into areas where they don't have aptitude or interest; and (b) limiting them by underestimating just how much they can learn, and how fast. Basically, he really LIKES children and respects them as human beings.
John Holt was trained as, and worked as, a teacher in the 1950's and 1960's. The more time he spent in the classroom, the more he came to believe that traditional methods of teaching were wasting a lot of children's potential and failing to keep their attention.
He has a tremendous respect for children. He has a lot of insight into the fact that many adults don't understand, respect, or, quite frankly, even like children.
We have applied his philosophy with our own young children, with delightful results. For example, neither of us are fluent in Spanish, but my two-year-old and I are learning it together. I resist the urge to "play teacher" in favor of learning alongside my child, and I am amazed at how much she is able to learn and retain. We have also used his approach towards potty training. When we resisted pushing, our daughter took ownership of the process. Sooner than we would have thought she would, she announced to us that she was a big girl and didn't want to wear diapers. A few weeks later (we expected that it would be many months), she announced that she would not be wearing diapers at night either. She has been true to her word! These are just small examples of how we have asked ourselves, with a little irony but in a mostly serious fashion, "What would John Holt do?" Generally, the answer is to be real with our kids, offer as many learning opportunities as we reasonably can, and pay attention to what they are learning -- and marvel at them.
In the book, he gives concrete examples of kids who could easily have been considered failures in a "cookie cutter" classroom situation. In Holt's opinion, even many kids who are considered learning disabled would do just fine (or at least much better) if they were allowed to reach their potential without an excess of testing and time-wasting "learning" activities.
Holt's writing has influenced us to seriously consider homeschooling our children. Even if we don't, I think that our parenting is being enriched by his approach, and I would recommend this book to any parent or educator.
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Top reviews from other countries
Luirinka
Great ideas but many miss typed words..
Reviewed in Germany on January 1, 2019M S Reddy
Must read for all Parents, Teachers and Educators.
Reviewed in India on December 22, 2016
