The Legacy of John Holt: A Man Who Genuinely Understood, Respected, and Trusted Children contains sixteen essays by friends, colleagues, and children (now adults) who personally knew and were influenced by Holt. A deep appreciation for Holt’s wide-ranging intellect, humor, and his ability to work with, not on, children emerge from these portraits. People who knew Holt when he was young write about his personal journey from conventional school teacher to unschooler, while pioneer homeschoolers write about the school, social, court room, and legislative battles Holt helped them negotiate at a time when the right to homeschool was often challenged.

Holt was far ahead of his time with his ideas about teaching and optimal environments for learning. Kirsten Olson, author of Wounded by School, notes in her introduction, “Holt’s observations and thoughts on the importance of pleasure while learning, how teaching can interfere with learning, and the psychosocial means through which teacher beliefs about pupils predict and create performance, are truths about human cognition now being proven in learning labs around the world.”

John Holt gained fame in the 1960s as an insightful school critic with his books How Children Fail and How Children Learn, both of which are still in print, been translated into over 40 languages, and combined have sold nearly 2 million copies. Frustrated by the slow pace of change in schools, Holt became one of the founders of the homeschooling movement in 1977, when he published the first magazine about learning outside school, Growing Without Schooling.