John Holt summarizes perfectly the problem with contemporary education: it emphasizes right answers rather than learning, production rather than thinking. Read this book to understand this problem and its results, as seen through his experience as a collaborative teacher and thoughtful observer. The rewards for "right answers" over thinking even persists at higher education levels. "What would happen at Harvard or Yale if a prof gave a surprise test in March on work covered in October? Everyone knows what would happen; that's why they don't do it." (p. 232)

He advocates for schooling at home (and in the world) as the best method of education. "People teaching their children at home consistently do a good job because they have the time - and the desire - to know their children, their interest, the signs by which they show and express their feelings." (p. 36) Four key principles: 1. Children do not need to be "taught" in order to learn, and they often learn best when not taught, 2. Children are very interested in the adult world, 3. Children learn best when the subject is "embedded in the context of real life," 4. "Children learn best when their learning is connected with an immediate and serious purpose."

Holt blames the current system, pointing out that if a system consistently fails, the problem is with it, not its inputs or participants. In the summary section, he forcefully points out the negative effects of the current system - low self-esteem, ignorance about how to learn, and a mind trained not to want to do so. ( )

So far, one of the great quotations I've found is:"It used to puzzle me that the students who made the most mistakes and got the worst marks were so often the first ones to hand in their papers. I used to say, 'If you finish early, take time to check your work, do some problems again.' Typical teacher's advice; I might as well have told them to flap their arms and fly. When the paper was in, the tension was ended. Their fate was in the lap of the gods. They might still worry about flunking the paper, but it was a fatalistic kind of worry.... Worrying about whether you did the right thing, while painful enough, is less painful than worrying about the right thing to do." (74-75) This about sums up (1) the whole reason I was so bad at math when I was in grammar school and (2) why I am much better at revising work that I make up for myself than at revising work where it actually matters. My psychology is still that of a schoolchild.All this said, it feels a little dated: people are trying different things in their classrooms now, although (to be fair) change hasn't come terribly quickly. ( )

So far, one of the great quotations I've found is:"It used to puzzle me that the students who made the most mistakes and got the worst marks were so often the first ones to hand in their papers. I used to say, 'If you finish early, take time to check your work, do some problems again.' Typical teacher's advice; I might as well have told them to flap their arms and fly. When the paper was in, the tension was ended. Their fate was in the lap of the gods. They might still worry about flunking the paper, but it was a fatalistic kind of worry.... Worrying about whether you did the right thing, while painful enough, is less painful than worrying about the right thing to do." (74-75) This about sums up (1) the whole reason I was so bad at math when I was in grammar school and (2) why I am much better at revising work that I make up for myself than at revising work where it actually matters. My psychology is still that of a schoolchild.All this said, it feels a little dated: people are trying different things in their classrooms now, although (to be fair) change hasn't come terribly quickly. ( )

John Holt's How Children Fail is one of those books that seems like something of a cultural artifact of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The book's premise is that schools are places that essentially set kids up to fail and drain their enthusiasm for learning. The kids find ways to manipulate the system and are driven by fear to obey but not learn in any meaningful ways. Holt's treatise reads like a clarion call for the rebellion of the 1960s and all of the excesses of that era. And yet there's a lot more here than cultural critics might believe.

How Children Fail, for me at least, reveals some truths that have existed in American education for decades, if not centuries. His assessment of the system seems pretty reasonable to me. My experience backs up his observations of kids who come to hate learning as a direct result of their experiences in school.

Now this might be seen as a defense of the overly permissive excesses of the 1960s, but I don't think so. There were certainly excesses, but was the basic premise of educational reformers really all that far off the mark? Holt's book calls for kids to be more engaged in what they do; for educators to link education to the world we live in without creating an artificial and ultimately sterile "academic environment".

As a piece of writing, How Children Fail isn't great literature and much of the text seem pretty disjointed. But there is a lot of wisdom contained in these pages. As we move into the age of connectivity, the singularity, web 2.0, and all that kind of stuff, I think Holt's ideas are going to become a lot more feasible than they were 40 years ago. I remember reading Rousseau's Emile in graduate school and thinking that the ideas were good, but no society could ever produce the 1 on 1 teacher/student relationship outlined in the book. Technology doesn't quite get us there, but it gets us awfully close. Likewise, Holt's call for homeschooling seemed far-fetched at the time, but hasn't technological change made it too far more likely? ( )

On a visit to the Indianapolis Children's Museum in Jan. 2008, I saw a quote attributed to William Hull (Educator). "If we taught children to talk they would never learn." An internet search of the quote found this book. The author and Mr. Hull shared a 5th grade classroom. The book is a series of observational memos from Mr. Holt to Mr. Hull. The author intricately describes the communication gap between the school system and the child. Children want and need to learn. School systems want to teach. But the lessons often never meet in the middle. ( )