by Missy Bell

Created on: December 15, 2010

A baby smiles, crawls, pulls up, begins to walk, says her first word - parents rejoice at these milestones and are excited at how much their children are learning. 

Children begin to eat with a fork, speak in complete sentences, hold a crayon - parents clap and encourage - again, ecstatic at their child's capacity for learning. 

And then, they send them to school.

Suddenly, once a child reaches the ages of three to five, parents decide that school is necessary in order for them to take the next steps in their development.

But why?

The child has learned to smile, talk, crawl, stand, walk, eat, build with blocks, color with crayons, and literally thousands of other skills without the aid of teacher or classroom.  All of these magnificent things that we croon over and snatch up the camera to capture - all of these things are skills learned at home - learned by the sheer will of the child and his curiosity about the world around him.  Why now that the child has reached a particular age do parents suddenly feel it is time for them to "get down to business" or "become more serious" about their learning?  Were they not serious about learning to crawl?  To walk?  To climb?  How is it different to learn to read?

Educational psychologist and philosopher, John Holt, thought it was not so different.  He decided to conduct a series of tests to see if children would learn to read, write, and complete mathematical equations as a part of a natural progression if provided with the materials necessary to do so and an available adult to go to with questions. 

What he found was astounding.

In his book, Learning All the Time, Holt tells of a room filled with books and a few adults whose soul job was to sit in the room and answer any questions children might have - to answer only that questions, and not to offer any additional information.  Children were brought to the room and shown the library filled with books and told that the adults were there to help them if they needed help.  The adults were never to ask a child to "sound it out", but if a child asked what a word was, the adult was to read it for them.  The average child learned to read in about thirty hours - total - in this manner, without direct instruction.  Without reading groups or reading workbooks or pushing or prodding.  They learned to read ON THEIR OWN and through their own curiosity. 

The parents of unschoolers are those who understand

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