This Fall marks Teach Your Own’s 40th anniversary in print and my 40th anniversary working in the homeschooling/alternative education movement. Read more about the latest edition of Teach Your Own: The Indispensable Guide to Living and Learning with Children at Home.
Read MoreAugust 28, 2018, is the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Though not present, John Holt supported the students and was highly critical of the police. John adds some thoughtful commentary and advice about being careful not to turn just anger into blind hate in this previously unpublished piece.
Read MoreToday’s vision of education isn’t about morals, citizenship, personal development, or social cohesion: it’s about sorting the winners and losers in a race for jobs. Here are more life-affirming visions of education than social Darwinism.
Read MoreHolt's most political book, Freedom and Beyond is also a very practical and useful book for parents and anyone who works with children because it explores in detail many of the tensions caused by giving freedom. Partners who argue over the value of self-directed learning, who worry about discipline, and so on will find that Holt presents both sides of these tensions and notes they will never go away . . .
Read MoreFrom John Holt's reply to Dr. Jerome Bruner's letter to the NY Review of Books: "The proper business of the intellectual is to make complicated ideas more simple, not simple ideas more complicated; to make the real world more comprehensible, not less so." Read more about this sharp exchange . . .
Read MoreSeptember 14, 2015, marks the 30th anniversary of John Holt’s death and I’ve been conflicted as to what to write about it . . . As I thought about this anniversary I went through various books and files for inspiration and I came across the documentary slide show we created for the Growing Without Schooling 20th anniversary conference in 1997 . . .
Read MoreMany educators grasp the importance of letting children learn through their own joy and passions, but almost none recommend that unschooling can be a sound way to do so. Even fewer dare to be education heretics and question why we need to box children into schools and how else they might learn and grow in today's world . . .
Read MoreThe role of the teacher is different when the child decides when, where, how, and from whom to learn, and the context and purposes of teaching are radically different in this configuration . . .
Read More"You don’t learn to love freedom by being a slave." This and many other juicy quotes by John Holt and author/psychologist Richard Farson are in this interview from 1974 about children's rights. Read about the interview and listen to it here . . .
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