John Holt

For the Lord Chief Justice of England, see John Holt (Lord Chief Justice).

John Caldwell Holt (April 14, 1923 – September 14, 1985) was an American author and educator, a proponent of homeschooling and, specifically, the unschooling approach, and a pioneer in youth rights theory.

Quotes

• The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do
  • How Children Fail (1964).

• The idea of painless, non-threatening coercion is an illusion. Fear is the inseparable companion of coercion, and its inescapable consequence. If you think it your duty to make children do what you want, whether they will or not, then it follows inexorably that you must make them afraid of what will happen to them if they don’t do what you want.
  • How Children Fail (1964).

• All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words: Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.
  • How Children Learn (1967).

• The anxiety children feel at constantly being tested, their fear of failure, punishment, and disgrace, severely reduces their ability both to perceive and to remember, and drives them away from the material being studied into strategies for fooling teachers into thinking they know what they really don't know.
  • How Children Learn (1967).

• No one is more truly helpless, more completely a victim, than he who can neither choose nor change nor escape his protectors.
  • Escape from Childhood (1974).

• The most important thing any teacher has to learn, not to be learned in any school of education I ever heard of, can be expressed in seven words: Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.
  • Growing Without Schooling magazine, no. 40 (1984).

• It is not just power, but impotence, that corrupts people. It gives them the mind and soul of slaves. It makes them indifferent, lazy, cynical, irresponsible, and, above all, stupid.
  • Escape from Childhood (1974).