How Children Learn (Classics in Child Development)

by John C. Holt

backwards. We think in terms of getting a skill first, and then finding useful and interesting things to do with it. The sensible way, the best way, is to start with something worth doing, and then, moved by a strong desire to do it, get whatever skills are needed.

If we begin by helping children feel that writing and reading are ways of talking to and reaching other

people, we will not have to bribe and bully them into acquiring the skills; they will want them...

Little children want to be able to do what bigger children can do and do.

for serious instruction. His plan was to hold her in

Their curiosity grows by what it feeds on. Our task is to keep it well supplied with food.

Children use fantasy not to get out of, but to get into, the real world.

They want to be able to do what the bigger people around them do—read, write, go places, use tools and machines. Above all, they want, like the big people, to control their immediate physical lives, to stand, sit, walk, eat, and sleep where and when they want.

We must clear them of preconceived notions, we must suspend

judgment, we must open ourselves to the situation, take in as much data as we can, and wait patiently for some kind of order to appear out of the chaos. In short, we must think like a little child.

Most of the time, explaining does not increase understanding, and may even lessen it.

Anyway, I didn’t know enough to know what questions to ask. The only thing to do was to turn off the questions and watch—like a child. Take it all in. See everything, worry about nothing. This is what I did. When the voice inside began to yammer, I silenced it. At half time I seemed to know no more than at the start.

I have discovered, after hearing many concerts and records, that the best way to listen to strange and unfamiliar music, to keep your attention focused sharply on it, is to try to reproduce the music in your mind—instant imitation.

In talking, reading, writing, and many other things they do, children are perfectly able, if not hurried or made ashamed or fearful, to notice and correct most of their own mistakes.

What is essential is to realize that children learn independently, not in bunches; that they learn out of interest and curiosity, not to please or appease the adults in power; and that they ought to be in control of their own learning, deciding for themselves what they want to learn and how they want to learn

What I urge is that a child be free to explore and make sense of that culture in his own way.

What have I learned from all this? That children love learning and are extremely good at it. On this matter I have no more doubts.