by Sara Mcgrath

Created on: February 13, 2009

We unschooling parents love John Holt. He coined the term "unschooling." You will find his quotes all over our websites.

Holt began his career as a private school teacher, became a school and education reform advocate, and then a homeschooling and youth rights advocate. In 1977, he started a magazine titled Growing Without Schooling, which ran until 2001.

John Holt wrote a number of books on education and learning, beginning with How Children Fail (Pitman 1964) and How Children Learn (Pitman 1967). Subsequent titles that give an impression of Holt's message include The Underachieving School, Escape from Childhood, Instead of Education, Teach Your Own, Learning All the Time, and A Life Worth Living.

The concept of "learning all the time" exemplifies Holt's philosophy. He wrote:

About Learning:

"There is no difference between living and learning."

About Teaching:

"Children are born passionately eager to make as much sense as they can of things around them. If we attempt to control, manipulate, or divert this process . . . the independent scientist in the child disappears."

About Education:

"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 should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn whatever needs to be learned."

About Schooling:

"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 that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life."

Together these quotes outline Holt's philosophy. Holt believed that modern schooling inhibits learning. In other words, it does more harm than good. He believed that children learn what they are interested in learning when they are interested in learning it. He believed that they cannot be caused to learn. In other words, they cannot be taught.

Unschoolers, John Holt's breed of homeschoolers, learn according to personal motivations. They learn from life during the normal course of it. There is no separation between learning activities and any other. Families live and learn together. The share passions wherever those may lead. Individuality and creativity enjoy free expression.

Holt's philosophy goes way beyond schooling and education. It's an attempt at life reform. He saw the possibility for a happier future.

The number of homeschooled children continues to grow and the number of unschoolers among them continue to grow. John Holt started an educational reform movement that drew many, many parents to completely remove their children from schooling. These children are growing up without schooling, following their passions, and living lives worth living.

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