John Caldwell Holt
Do you know who John Holt was? Are you familiar with this name?
It seems a little strange in some ways that someone can come up with an idea and share it with other people and have the idea take on life and flesh of its own, independent of the person, to the extent that it is no longer associated with the one who gave it birth. These days I speak to educators and unschoolers who have never read one of John Holt’s books, and some who do not have any idea who he was. And yet he was such a great foundation-laying influence in what they now do. We use electricity, but do not necessarily remember who invented it, or who made it possible for us to enjoy it in our homes. And yet, when you pick up one of John’s books and read it, you are changed. It is just not possible that so generous, so loving and so imminently sensible a man could ever be forgotten.
I for one will never forget, and in my mind the words ‘unschooling’ and ‘John Holt’ are synonymous. It is my privilege to own - and to have read - all the published works of John Holt. His books are amongst my most treasured possessions. In those courageous unschooling years there was scarcely a day that passed in which I did not thank God for His gracious kindness in leading my stumbling footsteps across the writings of this wonderful person. I deeply love and respect the heart of the person that comes through in the pages of his books. And I am forever indebted to him for his rich insights about children, insights that had a profound influence on how Craig and I tried to raise our children.
As a young man John taught in a small school. He kept diaries of his classroom experiences and observations which grew into 2 books – How Children Learn (1967; revised 1983, 50th Anniversary Edition 2017), and How Children Fail (1964; revised 1982). With time, he began to question what he saw in schools, and he wrote down the questions he was asking and the conclusions he was drawing. His original, idealistic hope was for school reform. With time he concluded that this would not happen and he began encouraging parents to educate their children outside of school. But he never gave up on his hope of influencing the system, writing and speaking on education for the rest of his life. Over and over again his plea was a simple one: treat children with the same respect you would give to an adult. Respect their boundaries and their personhood and their choices and their unique capacity to learn in their own way.
I was a young mum, home educating 4 children and pregnant with my 5th when I read John’s first two books. I found myself in tears over and over again as I realized what my heart already knew. The call to go further, deeper, was loud. Change takes us into such vulnerability, and the books were a mirror, showing me where and how I had to change.
Craig and I had kept our children home from school because we did not agree with the values, norms, socialization, ethics, agenda methodologies and curricula of schools. Now we were being challenged to release educational control to the children; to be a good parental authority in their lives by drawing and enforcing clear boundary lines, but giving them all the freedom there is to run and play; like lambs, to enjoy the lovely green pasture within those boundaries. They needed us to be their mum and dad, to share life with them, to be their champion and to guard that freedom. But they did not need us to direct the traffic. It was challenging. Clearly there was a tension between just letting them run wild and ‘training them up in the way they should go’ as the Bible says. Where was the line? What were the limits? Were there any? One by one we explored previously held conceptions of what it meant to be a parent. Some we kept. Some we discarded. All of this was done on the job. There wasn’t any time off. The children were growing up, right in front of us. In many ways though, this was useful. We learned to take feedback from the way the children responded to our actions. We made a lot of mistakes, and looking back there are many things we would have done differently. But there was a beauty and a joy and above all, a release. It was such a relief to trust the children, and to see that John was right.
Dear John Holt. I am sure that he and I would have debated many matters pertaining to a philosophy of education if we had ever been given opportunity to do so. And how I wish we could have had that opportunity. I would have loved to have had him as a friend. Through the medium of his books he certainly feels like one. I know he would have been a candle to my thinking, showing up incongruence and errors, challenging concepts and perceptions, but also delighting in where my explorations led me. I think, deep down inside, that he would have liked what he would have seen in my children, and that it would have made a small contribution to his feeling that the struggles he had gone through in defining unschooling had been worthwhile. Even sick and dying, just a few weeks before he left, he was still saying the same things he had said all his life. But there was a grief in him, because he knew that not enough people were listening.
The foundation in what he said — and said over and over and over again in all sorts of different ways — is that learning is to humans what swimming is to fish; something we do naturally, without even thinking, all the time. We do not need to be taught in order to learn. We do not need to be in a specially prepared environment in order to learn. We do not need the intervention of others in order to learn. What a freeing idea, if one could just grab hold of it! So often parents, teachers and carers of children think that it is all up to them, as if the child was some piece of clay to mould, or an empty container waiting to be filled.
Of course this does not mean that learning cannot be facilitated. A rich learning environment, and assistance from others can be very useful indeed. But so much of what is done in the guise of helping is actually a hindrance. One’s beginning point makes all the difference. Do I get involved in someone's learning experience with respect and sensitivity, understanding that the mind of the learner is fully equipped to learn and that I am merely there as a support person? Or do I perceive myself as some sort of Superhero, flying in to make all the difference as the learner passively and expectantly waits for my wisdom? My conviction on this will determine everything that follows.
Because learning is natural to humans, the child must have REAL, first-person, hands-on contact with the world and its wonders; not static, stationary interpretations of that world via pre-prepared external curricula and learning outcome goals. Mary Griffith, in the Unschooling Handbook, speaks of ‘using the whole world as your child’s classroom’.
Life is beautiful. Years ago we saw a beautiful film with that name. It was about a father, who against all odds, and in the most difficult of circumstances, still managed to convey that message to his son. Life is beautiful. It is wonderful. It is a gift. And so I am left asking questions: In my busy life, with all its hidden pressures and expectations, am I telling my children this? Am I infusing them with joy and hope and possibility? Am I encouraging them to go out and take hold of life for themselves? Or am I confining them within the limitations of my own experience and discoveries, my own fears and anxieties? Have I stopped to consider that this child is not only in my life to receive my wisdom, but also to impart wisdom to me? That there are things they, in their innocence and their naivety and their simplicity, know better than me? Why else did Jesus show the crowd a child as an example, saying we had to become like little children to enter the Kingdom of God?
The writings of John Holt free each of us to learn alongside our children, helping us understand that we are embarked together on a rich adventure of discovery that ultimately brings us so much closer to one another and to our God, the Creator of all.