Wisdom from John Holt's How Children Learn

If, like me, you find this book boring at first, jump ahead and start where you find something interesting, and then after staying up half the night to finish the book, come back to the beginning. In How Children Learn John Holt presents his understanding of what processes children use to learn and process things they encounter in their lives, and how they naturally learn very efficiently. The new edition ends with a chapter called "Learning and love". In it, Holt writes: "What have I learned from all this? {being an unschooling advocate} That children love learning and are extremely good at it. On this matter I have no more doubts." 

The book is an unschooling classic originally published in the 1960s, but it is constantly valid and I think, important for anyone who is interested in children or learning. Holt has taken a lot of time to hang out and play with children, and to acutely observe how they go about learning. 

One of the most important undercurrents in the book is the assertion that what adults do to supposedly help children's learning usually only means to hinder it. (Another title for the book could be "how adults fail children", I think.) No teaching of any kind is necessary for children to learn: instead, children perceive our efforts to teach, even if ever so slightly, as manipulation.  

Children need testing and a lot of direct feedback (not the fake kind administered through grades and correction) to be able to learn something; Holt explains that we all learn through "hunches". For example, we might have a vague idea about the letter K, and we need many experiences that reinforce our idea to finally be "sure about" what it means. The adult focus on getting things correct immediately stops the flow of natural learning. If we drill the child for a quick answer (in school, for instance) we only serve to destroy the hunch, and make the child unsure of his learning (and ruin his confidence). Also, pointing out mistakes in e.g. a child's use of language (or even repeating a mispronounced word carefully back to the child) means that a child's self-correcting processes are stopped. S/he would learn more and faster left to her own devices. Another reason not to demand perfect command of language from children is to let the child feel that they are important, and that other people want to understand them. AND to really understand them, of course! (It's sad how that eludes some parents and other adults.) Sharing things and being together is what communication, speech, listening, writing and reading, really are about.  

Holt manages to question importan tenets of school-centered idea of learning, such as "learning is for the future" etc. Doing things and being alive are what prepares us for life, not "studying" vague irrelevant "facts". An important component of children's learning is that they want to make meaning of the world around them. That is the driving force behind genuine learning: what is served in school is disjointed information that has no relevance to most children's presence. Also, Holt notes, at school it is the teacher who does the talking, not the children who need to "practice" it. 

This is a fantastic book, and the changes it proposes are nothing short of radical. Holt's attitude of careful inquiry and compassion is enchanting, and after reading this I came out with the same conclusions as him, that meaningful learning will happen all the time, if children are not prevented from it.