John Holt Quotes

19 quotes in 439 categories

• People should be free to find or make for themselves the kinds of educational experience they want their children to have.
• No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention…
• Since we can't know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we…
• We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty…
• To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves...and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.
• A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow…
• 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…
• If I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be wary of saying or doing anything…
• 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,…
• To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid.
• The idea of painless, nonthreatening coercion is an illusion. Fear is the inseparable companion of coercion, and its inescapable consequence. If you think it your…
• What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better…
• It is hard not to feel that there must be something very wrong with much of what we do in school, if we feel the…
• Over the years, I have noticed that the child who learns quickly is adventurous. She's ready to run risks. She approaches life with arms outspread.…
• It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion…
• Schools assume that children are not interested in learning and are not much good at it, that they will not learn unless made to, that…
• By now I have come to feel that the fact of being a child, of being wholly subservient and dependent, of being seen by older…
• We who believe that children want to learn about the world, are good at it, and can be trusted to do it with very little…
• The biggest enemy to learning is the talking teacher.

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