John Holt...one of my heroes...

In my second journal entry, I casually mentioned John Holt, who was at the time (a couple of decades ago) still well known and influential. He was one of the heroes of the modern homeschooling movement and certainly one of my personal heroes. However, it's been so long since he's been gone (he died of cancer in 1985), that I'm sure the name is vague-bordering-on-meaningless to many homeschooling parents today.

John Holt was a teacher who really cared about teaching—that is, he really cared about communicating with kids, watching kids, imparting knowledge to kids, learning from and with kids. His early books, particularly How Children Fail (1964) and How Children Learn (1967), helped motivate an education reform movement that urged open, multi-grade classrooms, portfolios and written evaluations rather than “objective” tests and letter grades, and cross-curricular, hands-on learning centers rather than sterile worksheets. Free schools and alternative schools such as Summerhill were tried by some; schools-within-a-school were developed by others.

However, the bulk of the school system barely swerved in the direction of the much-discussed reforms, and indeed rather quickly spun off into a backlash of sorts—more testing, under the guise of more “accountability;” more homework, under the guise of keeping up with Japanese students; and “fundamental schools” that emphasized reading, writing, and arithmetic rather than what was seen as either hippie classes or frills (you know, things like art and music, Women's Studies and Ecology).

John Holt gave up on trying to change schools and instead began to suggest that parents who want alternative education teach their own children. He began a very non-slick newsletter called Growing Without Schooling in 1977, and he continued to write books as well. Feeling that the public schools were fundamentally flawed, Holt did not recommend recreating a classroom at home, but rather unschooling.

John Holt's clear thinking and transparent writing influenced me greatly. I had my first taste of his ideas at age 13, when I read How Children Fail. I read each new book as he wrote it, and I studied in college to be a teacher partly because of the exciting education reforms Holt and others suggested. I could see that the best ideas weren't getting wide acceptance, but I wanted to help make it happen. However, by the time Holt had decided to drop the idea of changing the system from within, I had my first teaching job and, like Holt, had decided that the system was too broken to work with. Career-wise, I switched from teaching in a public school to writing and editing educational materials. On a personal level, I decided that, if I ever had kids, I would homeschool them—or, rather, I would UNschool them.

You can see that John Holt was a true hero to me.

Meeting my hero I was lucky enough to meet John Holt. I didn't have children at the time (circa 1980), and therefore I wasn't a homeschooler of any sort, but I'd heard about a homeschooling conference in Redlands, and I decided to go. I was lucky enough to be one of three women who picked up Holt at the airport and drove him to the house where he would be hosted for the weekend. What a thrill, to get to actually interact with this man who had wielded such a great influence over my own ideas and educational philosophy (and even my career and life)! It was reeeallly interesting!

First, John Holt was terribly unassuming (even shy, perhaps), and he quite refused to be an object of hero worship.
The other two women on the airport run did a certain amount of fawning over him, but his brief answers to their compliments short-circuited the conversation long enough for me to ask if he had read Douglas Hofstadter's book Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid. (His answer: no, but he'd heard about it. Did I recommend it? We had a nice discussion.) When we got to the house where he was to stay, there was an enthusiastic group of people waiting to chat up the guest of honor. He smiled, said hello, thanked them for the reception, but begged exhaustion and the need to practice his beloved cello and almost immediately retired for the night. At the conference, more people lined up to fawn over him. They had read all his books. They had adopted all his ideas. They had named their homeschool after him, one couple said. (He looked pretty alarmed by that.) Instead of reveling in the discussion of his own wonderfulness, Holt spent most of the potluck dinner with a university student who also played cello.

Second, he loved kids.
At the airport, while we were waiting for Holt's luggage to appear, and while the women were beginning the adulation-and-adoration session, Holt was playing a game-at-a-distance with a toddler. Peek-a-boo stuff. I wouldn't say that Holt was being rude, exactly, to the adults, but he saw that the adoration squad could carry on without him, and his attention was very naturally captured by the alert sparkle in a little kid's eyes. Later, as he was speaking at the conference, Holt was interrupted by a crying baby. He carried on for perhaps 15 seconds, but as the baby continued to scream, he stopped his speech and looked around for the source of disturbance. I imagine that many of us felt that he didn't like being interrupted, but he expressed, instead, a mild hope that everything was okay and that someone could help the child. He just seemed a lot more interested in the child's well-being than anything else at that moment. John Holt never married and had no children of his own, although apparently he was a very good uncle.

Third, he reminded me just a bit of my father.
One of my favorite moments at the conference had to do with the potluck dinner we all participated in. I had made an enchilada casserole that didn't last long enough for me (somewhere in the mid-back section of the line) to taste. By the time I got to my casserole dish, all that was left was a few sauce-and-cheese-encrusted bits of tortilla that had stuck to it. John Holt, as the #1 VIP of the conference, had been very first in line, of course, and as I was getting my food, I was surprised to see him get up from his table with his empty plate and make a beeline for MY casserole dish. He said something to the effect of, “Oh, it's gone. Well, it was good.” I was busy being totally thrilled that my hero had not only eaten something I had made, but had enjoyed it, when he picked up the serving spoon and worked hard to scrape those little crusty bits onto his plate. I don't know if anyone thought that was a bit gauche, or not—but I was struck by the fact that this was just exactly what my dad did every time I made that casserole! All I can say is, I was doubly, triply thrilled!

An analogy
I would definitely recommend John Holt's books to anyone who hasn't tried them. I will leave you with an analogy he made that is one of my favorites:

We know the things that people need in order to learn, and they do not include constant tests and evaluation. Testing and grading retards rather than enhances learning.

In the same way, we know what carrots need in order to grow. A gardener spends his time preparing and enriching the soil, planting the carrot seeds properly, weeding the area, and most of all providing water and sunshine. A gardener does not spend time digging up all the tiny carrot plants and measuring the teeny roots (and then of course replanting them) each day! A gardener who feels terribly insecure about whether or not the carrots are growing—instead of trusting that what has always worked in the past with carrots will, in fact, work again—and who digs up his or her carrots every week, every day, or even multiple times a day, will NOT grow better, healthier, straighter carrots. Instead, the insecure gardener will weaken or damage his or her crop.

Basically, Holt's message was that humans are learning “machines.” We should of course supply interesting environments and our own support, but we should trust our little learners to learn.