Belinda Moore

John Holt

“Why do people take or keep their children out of school? Mostly for three reasons: they think that raising their children is their business not the government’s; they enjoy being with their children and watching and helping them learn, and don’t want to give that up to others; they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically, and spiritually.” John Holt

I first heard of John Holt when our eldest daughter was around 4 years old. There was a John Holt bookstore having a sale in Sydney, and I bought a few titles and immersed myself in his wisdom. As often occurs when we are trying to absorb new information, it wasn’t the best timing and I made excuses for why Holt’s ideas were not for us… We have since trialled different methods of home education and I can now more easily grasp Holt’s message of respect and freedom. Re-reading books such as Learning All the Time and Teach Your Own has allowed me to trust my children’s capacity for learning and creating. This is not to say that we are radical unschoolers, rejecting all “teaching” and book work (not that there’s anything wrong with that – child-led natural learning has produced some incredible results)… There is room for John Holt’s philosophies in any home school. We are eclectic learners – using some basic structure and a variety of resources. Holt’s influence on me, as a parent of home educated children, is more to do with attitude than methods.

John Holt lived from 1923 to 1985. He was a writer, educator, lecturer and amateur musician. His ten published books are: How Children Fail, How Children Learn, The Underachieving School, What Do I Do Monday?, Freedom and Beyond, Escape from Childhood, Instead of Education, Never Too Late, Teach Your Own and Learning All the Time. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. For years, Holt was a leading figure in school reform. His interests later focused on learning outside the system and he founded Growing Without Schooling magazine. In 1990, Susannah Sheffer published A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters of John Holt, through Ohio State University Press.

Some of John Holt’s books are available through libraries in Australia. You may be able to borrow them through the inter-library service in your state. Many are also readily available for purchase - both new and second-hand.

To discover more about John Holt’s philosophies, read this interview.

To read how John Holt’s philosophies live on, you may be interested in Growing Without Schooling magazine.
Selected quotes of John Holt:

“We learn to do something by doing it. There is no other way.”

“We can best help children 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.”

“…the homeschooling movement… is growing and will continue to grow… because it makes sense, and because it works.”

*This article was written over five years ago for Stepping Stones magazine.

More of my Philosophy of Education articles -

John Taylor Gatto

Ivan Illich