How Children Learn

by John C. Holt

From the preface by Deborah Meier:

"We have a long way to go to make John Holt's dream available to all children. But his books make it possible and easier for many of us to join him in the journey."

In this enduring classic, rich with deep, original insight into the nature of early learning, John Holt was the first to make clear that, for small children, "learning is as natural as breathing." In his delightful book he observes how children actually learn to talk, to read, to count, and to reason, and how, as adults, we can best encourage these natural abilities in our children.

Genres: Parenting, Education, Nonfiction, Psychology, Childrens, Teaching, Audiobook

Audiobook

First published October 18, 1967

About the author

After teaching in private schools for many years John Caldwell Holt wrote his first two books, How Children Fail, and How Children Learn. He became a vocal advocate for school reforms, and wrote several more books about education theory and practice, including alternative forms and many social issues relating to the education system. Eventually he decided school reform was impossible, and changed his focus to homeschooling. He started America's first magazine dedicated to the subject, Growing Without Schooling, in 1977.

Reviews

[James Swenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

tl;dr: Teachers, parents, and students might like to read How Children Learn and think about it, or even use it to jump-start a discussion with their peers.

***

Because I'm a college math professor, How Children Learn is a hard book for me to deal with.

Today, I spent the day grading final exams. The students' performance was tremendously discouraging. Many problems were left completely blank; in many other cases, the students wrote things that were not even false – just meaningless – or otherwise failed to address the exam questions at all. It is hard to escape the feeling that the students and I have largely wasted the last four months. The worst thing is that, for the most part, the students are smart, and they like math: most of them are pursuing degrees in engineering.

This is depressing, but it is completely routine. When teachers get together, we complain about students: they do not know how to work, how to budget their time, how to take responsibility, how to study, how to think. And, as I recall, when students get together, they complain about teachers: we are mean, we are unfair, we set up unreasonable expectations, we are boring, we have no idea how to teach. No, this is not the whole story of anyone's education, but it is perfectly common: familiar to everyone. I do not think my school is any worse than the rest.

It should not have to be this way – and John Holt has set out to rub my nose in the fact. But I have known for a while, anyway, because I'm a parent of two kids, and anyone who spends a lot of time with little children must be amazed by their ability to learn, and their love of learning. They are intelligent, curious, and persistent. Usually, I describe the phenomenon wistfully: “If I could learn mathematics the way a one-year-old learns everything, I would be unstoppable.” Holt's colleague, Bill Hull, put it more mordantly: “If we taught children to speak, they'd never learn.” (p. 56)

Holt's thesis is that formal schooling systematically destroys children's love of learning and molds them into ineffective thinkers who are crippled by the fear of failure. Today, I feel like I've seen a lot of strong evidence to support this. More evidence, some of which is very moving, is collected in Holt's earlier, excellent book How Children Fail.

So let's stipulate that I agree completely with everything Holt wrote here. What I really need to know is how I can change, to do my job better. Mostly, Holt avoids this question. “To discuss this in any detail would take a book in itself.” (p. 185) His primary conclusion is that children “ought to be in control of their own learning, deciding for themselves what they want to learn and how they want to learn it.” (p. 185) He adds, “My aim... is not primarily to persuade educators and psychologists to swap new doctrines for old, but to persuade them to look at children, patiently, repeatedly, respectfully, and to hold off making theories and judgments about them until they have in their minds what most of them do not now have – a reasonably accurate model of what children are like.” (p. 173)

Reading this, I feel the urge to stand up and cheer, because I feel Holt is taking my side against the professors who taught my (few) education classes, which were worse than useless. It is less comfortable to identify myself as one of the “educators” in question.

I do not think that Holt is offering me direct advice that will help me to teach better. Maybe he would even identify the job of a college professor as different in kind from that of an elementary-school teacher. My students may not have grown into their final, mature personalities, but they are not children. Also, by choosing a college, selecting a major program of study, and registering for classes, they have exercised a certain amount of control over what they are to learn. Finally, they have typically been students for three quarters of their lives: they have developed strongly fixed patterns of behavior which they use in reaction to new intellectual challenges, surely including some behaviors that are specific to mathematics classes.

More to the point, I think Holt is writing about systemic reform: minimally, one school at a time. In How Children Fail, Holt makes a big claim in this direction: “...[W]e could well afford to throw out most of what we teach in school because the children throw out almost all of it anyway.” (p. 175) Maybe this is true, but it's not a tenable option for an individual teacher.

***

From my perspective, the fundamental (implicit) promise that I make to my students at the start of each semester is that I will provide them with an opportunity to learn the information and develop the skills named by the course title and described in the syllabus. These things may, or may not, be useful to them in future classes, or in later life, but they are intrinsically valuable. The students, if they take full advantage of this opportunity, will leave the class as better people than they were when they registered.

My students (to generalize) focus on a different aspect of the bargain: I, the teacher, will credential them by awarding them a certain number of credits, along with a letter grade, if they will do most of what I tell them to do. If they do this often enough, they will become eligible to apply for certain jobs that are preferable to the ones they could have gotten before.

All of this is true: The student is entirely correct, and so am I. The problem is that our different emphases make it hard for us to work together.

You can recognize the problem by thinking about a short conversation that I've had over and over again in the past two weeks. [Many other examples would do equally well, but this one is on my mind right now.] The student begins by asking, “What do I need to get on the final to get a C in the class?” I check the online gradebook for the necessary data, then solve a linear equation in one variable to get a numerical answer. I suppose it's not obvious why this conversation makes me angry, but I will try to explain what goes through my head while I'm answering the question.

The first point is that the student should not need to rely on me for the answer to this question. The student has all of his/her grades, via the online gradebook – the same place I get them. The system by which the letter grade is derived from the raw scores is also on the website, in the syllabus. The process by which I figure out the answer to the student's question is taught in our remedial math courses, so the student is certainly expected to have mastered it before registering for my class. In fact, I've been relying all semester on the (generally correct) assumption that the student can do this perfectly well. Thus, asking this question is a small way in which the student rejects responsibility for his/her own education.

The second point is that it is useless to know the answer to the question. I expect and hope that the student will spend the two hour examination period doing his/her best to solve the problems on the exam: they would be ill advised to answer only 50 points' worth of questions, even if 50 points would be sufficient to ensure the desired C.

Finally, why is the student focused on the C grade, specifically? [Yes, this is essentially always the case.] The student's primary goal for the course is to get a C, because this is the prerequisite for the third semester of calculus. And there is no problem with wanting to satisfy the prerequisite, unless that is your primary goal. If so, you should be asking why the school does not allow students to register for Calc 3 unless they've been at least somewhat successful in Calc 2. Correct answer: no one else is equipped to learn Calc 3. Instead, your primary goal should be to develop the knowledge and skills that make up second-semester calculus. This, and not the grade, nor even the diploma, is the reason to attend a university.

None of this would matter, except that the goals one sets tend to determine one's behavior. When you're assigned to do a homework problem, do you skim the relevant section of the textbook hoping to find an extremely similar example? Do you copy someone else's solution from Cramster (the Internet's patron saint of academic dishonesty)? Do you skip it, and hope that it won't be graded? These things could help you get an OK homework grade without doing much work. None of them is much help, though, if your goal is to learn something. In this case, you'll have to look at the homework problem as a puzzle to be solved, and take an interest in it. You have to build a model of the problem in your mind; make a plan and follow through. You have to care about the problem! Ironically, people who act this way get the best grades, with the least amount of effort and anxiety, especially around exam time. Learning the hard way is hard, but it's easier than the easy way. (I believe I'm quoting Granny Weatherwax, from Lords and Ladies.) This ground has been covered thoroughly in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, which is among other things a very insightful exposition of how to learn.

It is very difficult, though, for me to tell my students any of these things, because (continuing to generalize) they are thinking of me as a judge, not as a guide. They're not wrong: I play both roles. But they distrust my advice, because they think of our class as a game they're playing against me. This also makes it very difficult for them to ask me questions, or to reveal anything to me about the way they're thinking, in case they might be mistaken. In short, they are afraid.

Holt has a lot to say about the prevalence of fear, and how it makes smart people act stupidly, especially in school. [This is the heart of How Children Fail; it is less central here.] He calls us to recognize how much children are afraid in school, and argues (I think) that empowering students is the only viable solution, because their fear is a function of their lack of power in the classroom. I think he's mainly right about this, except that I think the power differential is intrinsic, at least as long as schools retain the credentialling mission that my students primarily value. Once again, Holt brings me to a place where I'm both dissatisfied with the status quo and convinced that, ultimately, it cannot be corrected.

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was energized as an educator after reading this book. Imagine my delight when I learned my own father read this book when it was first published in my childhood. That explains a lot. (I come from a family where none of us have ever moved off the educational path.) We all love to learn!

John Holt recommends: let learners have the freedom to explore their own tastes. This is particularly important with children. Holt points out that children yearn to do real things with real facts now (see page 288). He desired to change the child’s perception of education from “being made to go to a place called school, and there being made to learn something they don’t much want to learn under the threat that bad things will be done to them if they don’t” to “the game of trying to find out how the world works” (page 34). As with any game, learning should be accompanied by enthusiasm and enjoyment. In this way the natural appetite to learn can be savored. This is my goal as a home educator.

Our family experienced a paradigm shift in applying one of Holt's principles. In our history studies, we had been quizzing our then nine-year-old son with review questions after reading each section of history. We changed our approach after reading Holt’s view of “answer pulling” where “the teacher asks a series of pointed questions, aimed at getting students to give an answer that he has decided beforehand is right. . . . This kind of fake, directed conversation is worse than none at all ” (page 123). Rather than asking our son pointed questions, we began to merely open a discussion where each of us shared, among other things, what we found most interesting and most important about each segment of history. These discussions are far more meaningful as we are able to relate the historical events to current policies and practices, thus increasing their significance in our minds. Equally important, our son began to feel better about his contributions in our discussions and more positive about his learning. After about a week of our new discussion method he said, “Aren’t you so happy with me? I’ve been getting all the answers right!” He sensed that his responses were valued even though he hadn’t realized we were no longer asking questions requiring one specific correct answer.

To the degree we work with our children's interests, we see the sparks flare up into a burning passion to learn.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although John Holt is best known as a "founding father" of the homeschool movement, this remarkable book is a simple but profound collection of his observations about how children learn. It is a much-needed reminder for most "grown-ups" to open their eyes to view the world as children do, if only to better understand the young ones in their life and be a more patient, enthusiastic, warm and empathetic parent/friend/mentor. Most of all, Holt believes that children learn best when they learn at their own pace and pursue their own interests--learning should never be forced or uniform, but spontaneous and dynamic. Children don't need to be "taught" -- they simply need to be given opportunites to LEARN. Holt's good-heartendess, warmth, wisdom and genuine appreciation of children is not to be missed.

[Razzberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was first given copies of John Holt's "How Children Fail" and "How Children Learn", I was loath to give them more than a scant perusal. I had read a few articles by and about the man who was probably the first to coin the term "unschooling" and generally considered one of the early instigators and champions of the homeschool movement, but I had, for the most part, distanced myself from reading his works in depth.

Born, raised and schooled in Singapore, I had had a rigid and rigorous education. As an adult, I had enough of the adventurer (rebel?) in me to wish for an alternative for my children, but still product enough of my youth to feel unsettled and unnerved with the ideas of the father of unschooling. Let my child have carte blanche over what, when, where, how and how much they want to learn? Come on!

It didn't sit well with me though, this prejudice. The very reason why I had always wanted to homeschool was because I wanted my children to have a more generous and fulfilling education than the one I had had - one that I had become disillusioned with. Why then was I so afraid of reading Holt's works? Was it because I had been so conditioned that I could not entertain anything less than complete structure in learning and teaching? I finally decided to give "How Children Learn" a good read and I have no qualms in admitting that it was a long time coming - the book is nothing short of remarkable and enlightening, not to mention totally in line with my aspirations for my children.

Holt's book is a profound collection of his observations about how children learn. He watched with fascination as they tinkered with various equipments; he played with them patiently as they created their own games and rules and he celebrated their every achievement with delight.

He was absorbed by 16-month-old Lisa's experiments with a portable electric typewriter - she was curious as to the machine's inner workings and learnt how to make it work and what to do when the keys became stuck. Most parents would do one of two things - we might put the typewriter out of reach so as to stop a baby from destroying it or we would give the child explicit instructions as to how to use it. Holt, on the other hand, recommended neither.

He maintained that it is better to teach children how to treat things carefully and respectfully rather than to rob them of an exercise in curiosity. As Holt rightly pointed out, "One of Maria Montessori's many valuable contributions to education was that she showed that very little children could easily be taught to move, not just exuberantly, but also deftly, precisely, gently."

He strongly advocated allowing children to experiment, struggle and improvise with little interference. Lisa's younger brother Tommy, when about 3 or 4, for example, "hated to be taught" the alphabets. Danny, aged 2-and-a-half, tore down the models that his father and Holt had built out of Cuisenaire rods. Holt concluded that when instruction and help is unasked for, the underlying message given to children is that they are not smart enough to learn something on their own. Competence models can sometimes undermine their self-esteem for it emphasises the divide between their abilities and that of adults'. How many times have we heard children say frustratedly, "You know so much and I don't!"?

Holt believed that children learn best when the lessons and work are meaningful. Reading can be facilitated by good literature rather than simplistic (and thus, insulting) books. Art can be pleasurable with quality materials. Numerous practical skills can be better acquired by working alongside adults.

Holt's book should not entail a leap of faith - we as parents and educators should already have faith in our children. They will learn, God willing, if we give them the opportunity to do so without fear. They will try, God willing, and succeed if we learn to recognise their strengths and do not despair. Holt gave the example of a supposed "hopeless" student who became a successful commercial photographer when grown up - when she first took up serious photography at about age 14, she “learned in a few months, because she needed it, all the arithmetic she had never been able to learn in ten years of schoolâ€. Holt advised patience and loving guidance alongside this trust - when children are frustrated, we need to know when to "draw back, take off the pressure, reassure them, console them, give them time to regain - as in time they will - enough energy and courage to go back to the task".

Holt presented many examples of children working in various settings - some readers have told me that they found this a little dry, but I think it speaks a great deal of the deep interest he had in making learning truly fulfilling for children. What shines through in his detailed and painstaking recordings is the genuine appreciation and respect that he had for children, despite not having had any of his own.

This enchantment he had, I believe, is something many of us harried and anxious parents seem to have lost in our pursuit to give our children the best in terms of learning. We hustle them along, exhort them to work harder, convinced they can do better and in the end, lose track of our initial good intentions. We don't see them for the passionate and imaginative people they are and instead, worry about their future economic worth. Holt reminded us that children learn best when we understand our roles as gentle facilitators and when they are free to make mistakes without having their self-worth squashed.

I came away from Holt's "How Children Learn" with a deeper love for and trust in my children. Trust indeed is what John Holt reiterated in his book. I leave you with a powerful quote from his book. I think it totally sums up how children really learn:

In my mind's ear, I can hear the anxious voices of a hundred teachers asking me, "How can you tell, how can you be sure what the children are learning, or even that they are learning anything?" The answer is simple. We can't tell. We can't be sure. What I am trying to say about education rests on a belief that, though there is much evidence to support it, I cannot prove, and that may never be proved. Call it a faith. This faith is that man is by nature a learning animal. Birds fly, fish swim, man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to "motivate" children into learning, by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and the classroom; give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest.

[Malbadeen · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Holt's basic premise is that "teaching" children anything is unproductive at best. He believes that children will direct their own learning guided by curiosity, need and exposure.
He has an, often recalled, bit on his daughter discovering and becoming enthralled with his type writer.
It's a lovely theory and possibly highly applicable for those with resources and patience to provide a plethora of objects/experiences. What it lacks (and admittedly isn't attempting to propose to offer), is what to do with the children that are not as fortunate to exist in such an environment.
Once upon a time I liked this book, then my brother started teaching and then he started calling me EVERY DAY (sometimes as early as 6:30a.m.) sucking me into conversation after conversation about educational philosophy which usually digresses into him insisting that nothing can be taught and everything can be discovered.
I find myself challenging him to "learn" knitting on his own, I threaten to drop off needles and yarn and say stuff like, "and how about cutting an onion?! why the hell shouldn't I tell you how to cut an onion"?! and then I realize, it's happened AGAIN! I've been sucked into Joshua's latest obsessive thought processes and I have to remind myself, I DONT CARE!!!!!
I don't care about education, I don't care about Catholicism, I don't care about philosophy, I don't care about this artist vs. that...I just DONT CARE, so why do I always get sucked in?!
But mostly it brings me great joy to post this book, because he just bought it, not knowing I had it (until I sold it to Powell's yesterday). HA SUCKA! that's what you get for stealing my David Foster Wallace book and letting it get water warped!

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Holt has some really fascinating observations from working with children that really reflect my own experiences with my kids. Children learn through games and play. They seem to learn spontaneously without being taught (like Holt makes the point...if we taught kids to speak how we teach them to read, they would never learn!)

I learned it's important to sort of "watch myself" and not interfere with my kids learning process. I need to let go and let them discover on their own or gently guide them on a path to self-discovery.

Holt points out that many children have learned to read without being taught by phonics or whatever "piecemeal" method. In fact, many children "teach themselves" just by being read to. If they ask a question, it's better to just tell them the answer without a big long lecture. I never knew this before, and was worried I wasn't "teaching" my daughter enough; but this approach seems to make so much sense for us.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Follow up to Mr. Holt's first book, with much the same subject matter. However, this time the emphasis is not on the learning that takes place in the classroom, but rather on how infants and very young children go about learning about their world. Mr. Holt is an interesting writer, so the book was a pleasure to read, but its conclusions seemed much more forced than in the first book. It felt as if Mr. Holt started out trying to prove that children learn perfectly well on their own, without any adult interference, and that he then collected anecdotes that prove exactly this point. This makes the book a little repetitive, and not as convincing, since its hard to believe that every observation of a child would provide evidence of Mr. Holt's theories, while none would provide any evidence to the contrary.

Still, the philosophical argument that underpins the book is worth thinking about. Whether in the end you believe wholeheartedly in Mr. Holt's theories, its certainly worthwhile to be faced with such a strong, well-reasoned argument in favor of them. Any thought about the education of the young that does not give strong consideration to the ideas put forward in these books is, in my view, incomplete.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by my husband, a former school teacher.The author, was originally a math and french teacher, but after spending a lot time studying children and education and writing a couple of books went on contribute a great deal to the home school movement. Between reading this and How Children Fail, homeschooling is something that I am contemplating. And if nothing else I will very closely monitor what and how my children are learning. I strongly recommend this book to parents teachers and anyone who works with children. It is longer than How Children Fail, slow to get into, and a lot to digest, but it has so many enlightening points. I feel like this quote from the book summarizes Holt's philosophy pretty well:
"The child is curious. He wants to make sense out of things, find out how things work, gain competence and control over himself and his environment, do what he can see other people doing. He is open, receptive, and perceptive. He does not shut himself off from the strange, confused, complicated world around him. He observes it closely and sharply, tries to take it all in. He is experimental. He does not merely observe the world around him, but tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how reality works, he works on it. He is bold. He is not afraid of making mistakes. And he is patient. He can tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance and suspense. He does not have to have instant meaning in any new situation. He is willing and able to wait for meaning to come to him- even if it comes slowly, which it usually does."
Children are smart. They often know more than we give them credit for. And they can often handle more than we give them credit for too. Imagine the world from the eyes of a child. There is so much that doesn't make sense to one so new to the world, yet despite the confusion they move on mastering one thing at a time. As they do and try they notice their own mistakes and eventually fix them. To learn and to grow children have to trust and they have to feel accepted. They have to know that the mistakes that they make, don't matter. That they are loved and valued regardless, that someone believes that they can grow and learn anyway. And it is important that we play games with them, not because we believe it will develop their mind and get them into college, but because we love them.
Children have to learn things in an order that is relevant to them if they are going to hold on to it. We can support and encourage this, but not force. If we let them study dinosaurs because that is what interests them, from there they will improve reading skills, learn earth science, biology and history and may very well branch to other fields of study as their interests take them that way. If we force them to learn what we feel is important they will learn and quiz and test them along the way, they will often become defensive. Even if they don't instead of thinking that learning is about how things work they think that learning is about finding answers to please grown-ups. As children learn, we must talk to them like regular people, not stupid midgets or minions. Children can tell the difference. "If we think that every time we talk to a child we must teach her something, our talk may become calculated and fake and may lead children to think, like so many of today's young people, that all talk is a lie and a cheat." If we show children sincere love and interest their confidence will grow, as will their love of learning. "There is no time in all of a child's growing up, when he will not be seriously hurt if he feels that we adults are not interested in what he is trying to say."
One slow afternoon, I was reading this book at work. One of the pediatricians asked me "So how do children learn?" "They learn by doing and trying and failing and trying again. They don't learn by being corrected and humiliated, tested and forced." "Funny, that's exactly how God is with us. He lets us grow by trying, failing and trying again. And he doesn't force us to do or be anything." There's a lot of truth in that. Can you imagine that if every time we made a mistake an all-powerful God came down to tell us we were wrong? Would we be afraid to try, afraid to learn? Absolutely. I imagine that to some small children their parents and teachers seem very much like that. Someone very powerful and intimidating telling them that they are wrong. But God doesn't work like that. He's loving and patient and usually lets us learn from our own mistakes.

[Andrea Balfour · Rating 1 out of 5]

John Holt was an intelligent man writing about his studies of childrens' learning styles and education. His writing, however, is difficult to process, convoluted with high level science and low level observation, and mixed between anecdotes and quotes from others. I found it very hard to follow. Additionally, his main subject in the beginning hundred pages is Lisa. She is an obstinate, stubborn child who seemingly mandates how she wants things to be done, starting at 18 months old. This seems to me to be a product of the 60s when parents started to believe that children should have a larger say in their upbringing. I disagree. While I'm reading this book to understand child - led learning, I am still the parent and will guide them appropriately while listening to their interests. Reading about Lisa's behavior and some of the other children he undertakes to study make me cringe when I hear them disrespecting him and he assigning it to a strong character of the child to which he needs to adapt. In any case, almost halfway through the book, I only then found some useful material since my children are older and this book travels chronologically from birth to 5 or 6. He makes examples of his 5th grade class but doesn't go far with it. The largest point I learned was to let them explore without interjecting our own predisposed notions, and in my case that will involve a certain level of deschooling. My largest concern with Holt is that he was never a parent and further not a homeschooler so his books are based solely on observation without formal training. I don't disagree they are insightful but I don't think his books should hold too much importance and should be taken as they are, one teacher's observations.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first book by Holt. I'm aware he has a large following. I can understand why. The man has a gift for understanding children and how they learn and navigate the world. The genus of this book is it's timelessness. Written in the 60's the book is still accurate today.

Holt said that children do not need to be taught because learning is human nature for children and they have their own unique way of doing it. I'm a believer. My son taught himself to read and do simple math at a young age with no intervention from myself other than to give him time, space and the tools (books) should he care to use them. What's particularly sad is how traditional schools are moving in the opposite direction. Even back then, he sees the dangers in mass testing, large classrooms and instruction that provides little room for improvisation and creativity. Highly recommended for all parents or anyone who cares about future generations.

[Private Account · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I am already a very relaxed mom--not by nature, by nature I am like the Tiger Mom, but I have read enough and understand enough at this point to take a very relaxed approach to parenting--this book helped me relax into that relaxing, if that makes any sense. If a book can help you have faith in your children and life, this is it! I have understood for a long time the high self-esteem children get from being raised from babyhood with great respect. This book helped me to see the sense-of-life connection, that the first time a child "falls in love" with something (like trains or cars) how I respond to it is crucial. I have always been supportive but a little cool (and uncomfortable) with what Anders loves, always wanting him to focus on more important tasks. It is now very clear to me that following what we love, being supported and encouraged to follow our love IS how we connect our lives to joy and develop a benevolent sense of life.

I will never understand how terrible parenting books full of terrible advice sell a million copies and this book has been out for thirty years and is not nearly famous enough.

I liked how John Holt goes through and comments on his original book over a decade later, talking about how even he has lightened up as a parent. Every time I thought, "Well that wasn't a very respectful thing to do" the next paragraph would be "looking back I regret doing that."

I have read a lot of Montessori books and her philosophy is incredible, though she has her limits. This book showed me that how her philosophy is applied is... wrong. The application of her ideas (controlling how a child uses an object) is terrible! It's largely the opposite of what she talks about. Or maybe she starts with the right idea but she can't take it all the way because she had no "normal" children to work with. She took a big step in the right direction and paved the way, perhaps, for later thinkers. John Holt, however, fails to assuage me enough that he has paid attention to her messages about real life. His chapter on fantasy is not really about fantasy, it's about love. As in, I completely agree with his ideas about fantasy but he doesn't address the concerns I have about adult-invented fantasy that confuses children. At this point I wonder if a child with high self-esteem and a benevolent sense of life would actually suffer from the confusions created by (for example) Disney movies. I still wouldn't expose Anders to their powerful and wrong sense of morality and examples of how to act like an asshole but I do feel less afraid of him having a Thomas the Train. Still think he would be confused, just think it wouldn't destroy his self-esteem to be confused.

[Margret · Rating 4 out of 5]

After plugging away at reading this book over the course of an entire year, I forgot much of the details but left with great ideas and a deeper understanding of a child's process in learning.
I enjoyed how Holt observed children and their learning styles within their natural environments of home, outings, and school. (With school being admittedly the least natural of the three). He helps you see the child through the eyes of the child. He helps an adult relearn the process and difficulty of learning what we feel is instinctive but for a child is laborious.
Highlights for me to remember:
--A child learning to read doesn't mess up a word read properly on purpose but because each encounter with the word is as if it is new to them. They are not developmentally struggling but merely working through the process of learning.
--When a child ventures forth into new territory, they exert a built up reservoir of courage. When that reservoir is depleted, they come back into a "safe" place in the arms of a mother or father to "recharge" and prepare for another forward sally into the enemy territory. (Holt used the example of a child learning to swim and the juxtaposition of a parent impatiently pushing them into the unknown where they remain uncertain vs a parent who patiently holds a child that can swim and splash whenever they return to more activities that are known to be easy for them.) I have seen this with my own daughter as she explores new skills and constantly seeks reassurance from her adventures in my lap.
--Try to see the world the way the child sees it. When I try to see things as they do, my patience is increased.
--Try to relearn how to learn as children do. As adults we often miss and remove the magic of everyday adventures because we aren't open or are more scripted into our ways of doing things.
--When presenting a child with a new material to learn, allow them to freely explore it before placing the barriers of adult rules or reasoning. They will learn the proper reasoning better if they are able to have some freedom of play.
--Pretend play for a child is a way to enter into and understand the real world on their own level, not a means of escape.

Again, there were so many great nuggets of thought and understanding. I'm sure many were missed but I hope that many also found their way into the gestalt of my mind and mothering.

[Nicholas Karpuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

People as a whole are only as smart as a society is comfortable with.

In prose style "How Children Learn" reminds me a lot of "The Omnivore's Dilemma", in that both present some pretty depressing news with a great deal of compassion and hope. John Holt wrote this in the 60's and revised it in the 80's a few years before his death, and it's alarming how many of his criticisms of education are still applicable decades later. But it never comes off as polemic or divisive, just concerned for the minds of children and the adults they become.

His overarching conclusion is that children don't need us to learn most of the time. Presented with an interesting problem, a little kid wants to solve it. The issue is adult meddling and often good-hearted attempts to help kill this impulse. Past a certain age kids give up on trying to learn anything that isn't necessary to succeed.

The logic behind school is that it's supposed to turn people in to well-rounded, intelligent human beings. The trouble with that is that no one agrees on what it takes to be well-rounded. Most of us aren't and never will be. Most cultures with public education aren't overrun with renaissance men. People specialize, it's part of what civilizations are built on, so much of what's learned in school is water off a duck's back.

What he says early on and pushes through the whole book is to trust kids. Lack of trust can erode entire civilizations, and in kids it corrupts their ability to work things out themselves. The problem he even acknowledges is that giving kids the respect and trust to figure out problems on their own is intensely frightening at times.

Apparently being a parent who raises a bright, self-motivated, intelligent kid is a combination of being really easy and incredibly terrifying. Oh well, it's scary regardless.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is kind of a sequel to How Children Fail. In this book, Holt examines how very young children (infants to toddlers) learn, and what that has to tell us about how humans are hard-wired to learn. Holt doesn't spend as much time in this book talking about the specific failings of the educational establishment, but he doesn't need to: the indictment is clear when one considers how humans naturally learn, and then contrasts that with how schools attempt to teach. Holt's theory is that schools, if we are to have them, should move away from concentrating so much on clever methods for teaching and instead focus on how people learn and facilitate it. This, of course, would require educators to check their egos, which isn't likely to happen soon. (Any educator can tell stories of going to conferences and such and hearing a steady stream of thinly-veiled bragging in the context of, "Well, here's what *I* do in the classroom.")
This is a really fascinating, eye-opening book, and I would recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in what real learning is, and how we should attempt to educate in light of it. Be warned, though: the problems in education that Holt addresses in the 60s (and in his 1980s comments on his own work and writing) are still alive and well; in fact, they are for the most part a lot worse now, and seem to confirm some of the theories Holt expressed here about where education was headed if we didn't make some changes.

[Rachyl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I've been recently learning about the idea of unschooling and other various learning philosophies, and so I had to try one of Holt's books. And while I didn't really agree with everything he said I found a lot of his stories really enlightening.

This book is largely filled with anecdotal evidence and he doesn't mess around with statistics and studies (if he did, those would probably be very outdated by this point anyway). But I learned a lot from the stories he told and was really surprised at times with what he was saying. I also found the anecdotes valuable over raw stats because I was able to really easily see the context in which many of these philosophies could be applied.

Holt largely uses different stories in various subject areas and environments to reiterate the same few points. But though it was a little repetitive in that sense it didn't seem to bug me. I was so interested in the learning of children in all these different ways that I loved seeing the methods work time and time again.

This book really gave me a lot to think about and I would definitely recommend it if you're interested in learning about alternate education paths.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential read for parents, especially homeschoolers.

My favorite section was the Art, Math & Other Things Section. I have a highly capable kid who bristles at math and I'm on a mission to change this.

This quote felt like a sucker punch:

"The children begin to feel, after a while, that there was no time for art, that it was not serious. They show a parent or teacher a picture, and the adult says, in a perfunctory voice, "How nice, dear." Then they take home some idiot workbook, whose blanks they have dutifully filled in, and their parents show real joy and excitement. Soon the pictures get shoved aside by the workbooks, even though there is more real learning in a good picture than in twenty workbooks."

Ugh, guilty. I absolutely celebrate my children's creativity, but I do put too much emphasis on rote learning. I'm working on this.

I wish schools gave teachers the space to teach how they want to. I truly believe most teachers see the problems, they are just unable to do anything different.

We need an education revolution in this country and it has to start with the parents.

[Afton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a while to get through, but so so good. One part that really stuck with me and represented the main ideas of the book: "They need to build up a mental model of the territory before they start trying to talk about it. We teachers like to think that we can transplant our own mental models into the minds of children by means of explanations. It cant be done" (222). The whole book gave me a lot to think about as a parent.

[Nick Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating reading. This non-fiction book discusses John Holt's views as a teacher and educational pioneer about how children (more particularly young children) learn to make sense of the world in which they are growing up, and in doing to start to pick up understanding and competency in tasks.

Written in the late sixties, it makes an interesting counterpoint and comparison with more modern educational practices - Holt does sometimes come over slightly liberal and (from my point of view as an ex secondary school teacher) I was left wondering about the applicability of his views on letting children explore and removing formal syllabuses to education - particularly post their first decade - but nevertheless it did make for an intriguing read for what it says about how unwittingly parents may stifle learning in babies and toddlers by adding too much formality to play and learning.

From the point of view of a half-century old insight in to someone's considered opinions on the subject, I certainly found it a very interesting start to my project of reading a large box of fifty old Pelican paperbacks I'd recently purchased.

[Varsha Sastry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book for anyone, especially teachers and parents to read. It definitely gives us some wonderful insights into the world of children. Being around and having taught different kids myself, I can relate to the observations made in the book. It also talks about our current system of education and offers a new perspective on what education should ideally be like.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original and insightful. Some great points - and good reminders - on respecting and taking children seriously as small (yet very smart) people, trusting their love of and instinct for learning (and not rushing it), and valuing play as important work, to name a few. Also, some fun first-hand observations of children playing and learning!

[Ioana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book so much! I think this is a compulsory read for anyone (parent, teacher etc) interested in children education.

[Kirstin · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the strongest arguments for homeschooling/learning at a individual child's pace that I've ever seen. Holt includes theory on learning literacy, mathematics, science and life skills. A fascinating read.

"The one thing we can be sure of, or surest of, is that children have a passionate desire to understand as much of the world as they can, even what they cannot see and touch, and as far as possible to acquire some kind of skill, competence, and control in it and over it. Now this desire, this need to understand the world and be able to do things in it, the things the big people do, is so strong that we could properly call it biological. It is every bit as strong as the need for food, for warmth, for shelter, for comfort, for sleep, for love. In fact, I think a strong case could be made that it might be stronger than any of these."

"We can best help children to learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions--if they have any--and helping them explore the things they are most interested in."

[Alex Railean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book could have been shorter if all the key ideas were distilled into a list. However, if we focus on the value I got out of it and its influence on my thought-process - it is a great book. It is useful not only to a parent, but also to a teacher.

Some of the points remind me of Frank Drake's interpretation of the images on Voyager's disk, which may one day be received by an alien civilization. The way they perceive things can be very different from ours, so we need to think in a really-out-of-the-box way if we want the message to be clear, or at least more likely to be interpreted correctly. The same applies to children - they might perceive things in a very different way in the beginning.
Here's Frank Drake commenting the pictures on the Voyager disk: https://youtu.be/qUzSYkJ_Yl4?t=2552 Enjoy!



# My notes for personal use

Fear-driven learning doesn't work in the long run.

Left/right brain dichotomy not supported by new evidence

## costs of damage
Whenever you are about to get angry because something got broken by a child - consider the cost of the item relative to the learning experience.
And even if there's nothing to learn, consider whether any form of tension is worth it.

## games and experiments
- make them up as you go
- - anything can become a game


## unasked teaching
- Many children resist being taught (without asking for it first)
- - but they remain open to exploring it on their own



## misc
- stumble upon a sound and repeat it because you like the feeling it produces
- - similarity = a difference that doesn't make any difference


When you don't understand what a child is saying, don't give up. Keep asking "do you mean this?", let them show you, etc. If you have a slightly older child around - ask them to interpret (-:
It is very likely that the child has a coherent idea, they just cannot express it.

Give children time to notice their own mistakes and self-correct. The earlier they start and the more often they do it, the better they get at it. By the time they're in school, they're experts in introspection and self-correction.



If a child repeatedly breaks a tower you're building, consider what the cause might be. Perhaps, instead of rebuilding it you can let them play with the blocks in their own way.
If you show them the "right way" to do X while they cannot do X themselves, they might give up learning to do X. They're aware of their own limitation - you don't have to rub salt onto their wound, just let them explore on their own.

Similar example: a baby that completely stopped tinkering with a flute-like toy after their parent showed them how to play it correctly.


When children learn to read - it is not easy for them to recognize words they've seen before or words that occur more often in the text.
As an exercise - try handling a text written in an alphabet other than your own, are you able to identify the same strings without effort and with confidence?


Parents expecting their children to be smart puts pressure on the kids. Example: the child who didn't meet expectations was eventually taken to an "intelligence research center" and given a series of tests. One of them was a puzzle that was clearly labeled as "for age 3" (the child was 5). After trying several times he said in desperation "I can't do it, I can't do it!".

Children should be left to work things out on their own, provide support only when asked, and don't provide it by giving the right answer straight away.

When children learn they develop hunches about the subject at hand. After N iterations they gain confidence and the hunch turns into an "I know that I know" form of awareness. If you keep probing their knowledge by asking test questions while they're still in the process of refining the hunch (as if you are in "teacher mode"), you're potentially probing too early. Their inner voice which processes the hunch begins to doubt it (am I being asked because it is an easy thing? But I still don't have a certain answer), and the mental process is stressed too much at a time when the structure isn't solid yet.



Perception of books and reading:
- from the perspective of a child, it could very well be the case that the parent is just looking at the pictures and telling the story from memory
- - after all, the child can easily memorize the narration on a page even though they cannot read
- thus, why would I learn how to deal with the letters, if I can already accomplish what I need with my current skills?
Consider switching to books without pictures - in this case the child focuses on the text and it is clear that what the reader is saying must come from the letters. (note: actually it can also come from memory, but it definitely doesn't come from pictures :-)



A related example, concerning writing. Let's say you want to write a "do not enter" sign. The child might perceive that as: you come up with some scribbles and agree that from now on that arbitrary representation means "do not enter". Like pictograms :-)




Skill vs application, what should come first? In a world where you first acquire a skill and then find a use for it, you are less motivated to put the energy into acquiring it.
However, if you already have a problem that you need to solve - you'll be more enthusiastic when you go through the process of acquiring the skill.
Unfortunately, many of the processes we go through in school are decoupled from a real need, hence they're not as efficient as they could have been.




Learn to read with your own data: the child makes an audio recording of themselves making up a story. The parent then listens, types and prints it. The child then practices reading by going through their own input data, so they're more interested in the process.



**Messing about**: Before giving children a task to do something with a set of materials, give them some time to spent handling the materials on their own. This then makes it less of a chore for them, because they won't be working on "your problem", but they'll be working with something they've gotten used to a bit.

[Kristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first time I've read a John Holt book, and it was definitley worth it. I'm looking forward to reading How Children Fail next. There was much I marked, and many pages I dog-earned to return to in the future, but I will at least share his ending comment: "What we need to do, and all we need to do, is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and th eclassroom: give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest.
That may sound idealistic or to simple, but after reading his experiences and what he has learned, you may change your mind.

[Basirat Atif · Rating 4 out of 5]

I give this book a 4 star. As a teacher, this book really helped me understand children better and I have tried a different approach in class room after reading this book and did get some positive result. The whole point of the book boils down to; trust and appreciate a child and he will do wonders.
Even as grown ups, we don't like to be forced into learning or believing something so how can we expect children to do that.
The only little problem I had with the book was it sometime leaves you with many more questions. But over all, I loved it a lot. I would definitely recommend it to all parents and new teachers. Children do learn best when they are appreciated.

[Kitty Gia Ngan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved every minute of this book. It was well-written, insightful, and heartfelt. Holt's intelligence gave me a delightful read and my life is definitely different in some big ways having read it.

I was wrong about education, about learning, about small children, and I'm glad that I was proven wrong. Although after having read it now, most knowledge seems to be common sense. We miss all the points and clues because we don't look at kids deeply, but with a blindfold called 'culture'.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the sort of book that, if you read it properly, has a permanent effect on the way you think. For me, a reread, so not quite so shocking and fundamental, which is perhaps why I've only given it four stars. It feels impossible to argue with most of what he says.
Really, anyone with a youngish child should read this and How Children Fail, and should keep it in their heads when they talk to their children.

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has had the greatest influence on me and my family. My husband and I are striving to stop correcting the kids and have a renewed respect of their ability to learn. No book I have ever read has given me a better direction to provide an environment for learning. Watch out!! Be aware of the "Teacher Devil" in you!

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a tutor, i am always awared of how over-pampering we have on our child nowadays. The book uses some year long research echoes my hunge. I remind myself the value of keeping a child's pride and dignity in learning, more importantly their spirit of independence in Learning. Our school, esp asian schools, are destroying it.

[Celeste Batchelor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh how I wish I had read this book when my children were young! I would have done things very differently. A must read for home educators.