576940a10f9a0-e1u1f1kg2g8My second hand copy of John Holt‘s How Children Fail was remaindered by Wakefield College library having last been loaned out on 26th November 2002. This suggests that books like this are no longer in great demand; a great pity because Holt has some vital things to say about the education system.

The book was first published in the USA in 1964 and my Penguin paperback was a 1982 revised edition in which Holt leaves the original text intact but adds a number of afterthoughts made 3 years before his death aged 62. It is written in the form of diary entries drawn many from his experience as a high school maths teacher from February 13th 1958 to June 15th 1961.

It is hard to imagine a more damning indictment of the educational system than Holt’s. His is a passionate and convincingly argued critique that shows that children fail because teachers repeatedly fail to respond to their needs.

John Holt

John Holt shows how knowledge, learning and understanding are taught as if they are linear skills to be memorised with little, or no, attempt being  made to put the curriculum into the context of the real world . All this runs counter to his belief that “the best rules are the ones that learners make out of their own experience”.

The root cause of the systematic failure of schools is that the overriding concern is focussed on “manipulating and controlling children rather than understanding them”. He observes that most children wind up being scared most of the time and making them even more fearful, which is what most teachers (and parents) do, serves no purpose.

Holt has very definite, and logical, views on what constitutes intelligence. He writes, for example, that “the good thinker can take his time, because he can tolerate uncertainty, he can stand not knowing. The poor thinker can’t stand not knowing; it drives him crazy”

One example which proves how schools fail learners is the case of a boy who, at school, was regarded as a slow learner. A teacher happened to see him doing a part time job at a local bowling alley  keeping the official score in a bowling league and was struck by how quickly and accurately the boy performed these tasks. Back in school, he showed no such ability and this leads Holt to conclude that school is a place where children learn to be stupid :   “The dumb kids might be smart in the world but as soon as they stepped into the school they became dumb again. It was the school itself, boring, threatening, cut off from any real experiences or serious purpose, that made them dumb”.

He argues that teachers need to be kind, patient, caring ,fallible, fair and broad-minded and that the only way to encourage children to behave more intelligently  is to “do away with the conditions that make them act stupidly”.  This means :

  • avoiding dull, repetitive tasks
  • setting demanding yet rewarding activities.
  • abandoning the relentless diet of tests that ultimately prove nothing.
  • recognising that children learn at different speeds and cannot be made to learn.
  • thinking more in terms of effort and adventure than success or failure.
  • stimulating creative thinking rather than rewarding blind obedience.

If all this sounds like a tall order, then you won’t be surprised to learn that Holt ends up being pessimistic. He doubts that schools as they stand will ever have the capacity to meet the challenges required.  Ultimately, he suggests that only homeschooling can hope to provide such conditions.

His conclusion is unambiguous : “Very little of what is taught in school is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered and very little of what is remembered is used”.

Not exactly a reassuring message, but  one that teachers ignore at their peril.

Related Articles