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John Holt - Homeschooling Pioneer
John Holt: Biography OverviewBefore 1952 During the war he came to the conclusion that nuclear weapons were the world's greatest danger, and only a world government could prevent nuclear war. After his three-year tour of duty, he got a job with the New York branch of the United World Federalis. Starting in the mail room, he became the executive director of the New York branch within six years. However, he became frustrated with the group's ineffectiveness, and he left the organization in 1952. In the class room
At the urging of his sister, Holt became a fifth grade teacher. After several years of teaching in Colorado, he moved to Boston. It was here that he met Bill Hull, a fellow teacher, and they decided to start a classroom observation project; one would teach, while the other would watch. The notes and journal entries Holt accumulated during his first eleven years of teaching formed the core of two of his most popular books
These three books detailed the foundational ideas of Holt's philosophy of education. He held that the primary reason children did not learn in schools was fear:
John Holt published his first book, How Children Fail in 1964. In this book, Holt asserted that the academic failure of schoolchildren was not in spite of the efforts of the schools, but actually because of the schools. Not surprisingly, How Children Fail ignited a firestorm of controversy. Holt was catapulted into the American national consciousness to the extent that he made appearances on major TV talk shows, wrote book reviews for Life magazine, and was a guest on the To Tell The Truth TV game show. In his follow-up work, How Children Learn (published in 1967) he tried to demonstrate the learning process of children and why he believed school short circuits this process. In neither of his books had he suggested any alternative to institutional schooling; he had hoped to initiate a profound rethinking of education to make schools friendlier toward children. As the years passed he became convinced that the way schools were was what society wanted, and that a serious re-examination was not going to happen in his lifetime. The homeschooling concept takes root Then, in 1976, he published Instead of Education; Ways to Help People Do Things Better. In its conclusion he called for a "Children's Underground Railroad" to help children escape compulsory schooling. In response, Holt was contacted by families from around the U.S. to tell him that they were educating their children at home.
"... the human animal is a learning animal; we like to learn; we are good at it; we don't need to be shown how or made to do it. What kills the processes are the people interfering with it or trying to regulate it or control it." It was no great leap from there to arrive at homeschooling, and Holt later said, in 1980, Homeschooling Holt believed that children did not need to be coerced into learning; they would do so naturally if given the freedom to follow their own interests and a rich assortment of resources. This line of thought became known as unschooling Holt's Growing Without Schooling (GWS), founded in 1977, was the nation's first home education newsletter. He also set up John Holt's Bookstore which made selected books available by mail-order; this brought in additional revenue that helped sustain the newsletter, which carried only minimal advertising. In 1981, Holt's sole book on homeschooling, Teach Your Own, was published, and quickly became the Bible of the early homeschooling movement. In addition to favoring home schooling, Holt also espoused many of the principles now taken up by the Youth rights movement, including eliminating the voting age and allowing young people to sign contracts and obtain employment.Effects on education
In 1985, John Holt died of cancer at the age of 62, having written 10 books that were very influential in the development of the homeschooling and unschooling movements. Learning is the product of the activity of learners." The information in the above article was gleaned and adapted from Wikipedia: John HoltSlide back from "John Holt" to "Approaches to Homeschooling"
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