John Holt (educator)

John Caldwell Holt ( * April 14, 1923, † 19 September 1985) was an American author and educator. He published several books on self-directed learning and children's rights and published the magazine Growing Without Schooling.

After the Second World War, Holt worked in New York at the United World Federalists and became managing director of its New York office, but left that organization in 1952.

He then worked as a teacher in Colorado, and later worked in Boston. Together with Bill Hull, he began a project in which they mutually taught and observed the lesson. Holt case went to the question of why children in the school over time lose interest in learning. He came to the conclusion that this is because the students are afraid to give wrong answers and to be ridiculed by teachers and classmates and not being good enough. This will further aggravated by the fact that students are forced to learn things that they do not necessarily care about.

On the basis of these observations, John Holt published the books How Children Fail ( 1964) and How Children Learn ( 1967). Together they have sold over two million copies and been translated into 14 languages. For two books published in 1982 an extended annotated edition reflects the recent years in the Holt and passages rated differently.

In his 1974 published children's rights book Escape from Childhood, he called for the right of children to have control over their own learning, ie, to decide for themselves what, when, where, how, how much, how fast and with what help they want to learn, and the right to decide whether they want to go to a school to learn, and if so, which ones and for how long. He justified this by saying that the freedom of learning is part of freedom of thought and this is even more fundamental than the freedom of expression. He also spoke out in Escape from Childhood for the children of suffrage, and the right to enter into contracts.

After John Holt had worked for years in the school system and trying to reform schools, he came to believe that the school system can not be reformed. He was worried about how children can learn without conventional schools. So he became proponents of homeschooling and established its direction as Unschooling become known. In 1977, Holt Growing Without Schooling the first homeschooling magazine of the United States.

Bibliography

John Holt's works have been published several times in Germany under various titles for various publishers.

  • How Children Fail, Pitman Publishing, New York, 1964 expanded and annotated edition, Delacorte Press, New York, 1982, ISBN 0-14-013556-1
  • German: from clever children are students. From what is forgotten at school, Beltz, Weinheim, 2004, ISBN 3-407-22132-0
  • German: How children learn Beltz 1971, ISBN 3-407-28133-1
  • German: How children think, Weinheim and Basel 1979
  • Like little children are smart - Independent learning in everyday life, BELTZ -Verlag, Weinheim, 2003, ISBN 3-407-22855-4
  • Expanded and annotated edition, Delacorte Press, New York, 1982, ISBN 0-201-48404-8
  • German: Why bother School, Otto Maier Verlag, Ravensburg, 1975, ISBN 3-473-60403-8?
  • German: children learn independently, or not ( s ), BELTZ -Verlag, Weinheim, 1999, ISBN 3- 407-22009 -X
  • German: Freedom is more: the limits of formal education, Maier, Ravensburg, 1974, ISBN 3-473-41024-1
  • German: To hell with childhood, publishing Pandora's box, Wetzlar, 1978, ISBN 3-88178-014-9
  • German: Learning in Freedom, Genius Verlag, Bremen, 2009, ISBN 978-3-934719-29-3
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