Instead of Education Quotes

“A life worth living, and work worth doing - that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better

“Much of what we call History is the success stories of madmen.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better

“Only to the degree that people have what they need, that they are healthy and unafraid, that their lives are varied, interesting, meaningful, productive, joyous, can we begin to judge, or even guess, their nature. Few people, adults or children, now live such lives.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better

“Japanese gardeners, over many centuries, have learned to do things to trees, to clip their roots or trim their branches, to limit their supply of water, air, or sun, so that they live, and for a long time, but only in tiny, shrunken, twisted shapes. Such trees may please us, or they may not. But what could they tell us about the nature of trees? If a tree can be deformed and shrunk, is this, then, its nature? The nature of these trees, given enough of the sun, air, water, soil, and food they need, is to grow like trees, tall and straight. People can be more easily deformed, and worse deformed, even than trees—and more than trees, they feel it, it hurts. But”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“If s-chools, doing places for children, are honest, active, and interesting enough, they will not need to be compulsory; as long as they are compulsory, they don't need to be good, and most of them will not be. To say that schools must be compulsory because someday they might all be good, is to say in effect that they must be compulsory no matter how bad they are. I”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“I don't wish to give the impression that the cruelty of S-chools is a kind of bad or careless habit of which they might be cured, if people really wanted to cure them. Compulsory and competitive schools are cruel by their very nature.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“The danger of letting people ask, "Is this the best way to do this job?" is that after a while they may ask, "Is this job worth doing?”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“For the most part, the schools are what they have always been. If anything, they are worse, in many ways and for many reasons. As in the past, they are often mentally and physically cruel to most of the children in them, and most of all to the poor, the nonwhite, the unusual, and the brave and independent”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“What can those people do who feel as I do about them, but have children stuck in them? On the whole, there seem to me three possibilities: (1) Help the child to cope with S-chool. (2) Help him to escape it. (3) Give him an alternative.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“Despite all the talk about the technological demands of modern society, or the great need of education to enable people to meet these demands, the fact is that most modern work is moronic. It needs almost nothing in training, skill, intelligence, or judgment. During World War II we found that even the most highly skilled industrial jobs, jobs that people supposedly had to spend years learning, could be learned from scratch by most people of average intelligence in a few months.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“we can trust children to find out about the world, and that when trusted, they do find out.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“There are very severe penalties for being a bad student but no penalties at all for being a bad teacher." The”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“intellectual activity, begins with someone asking a question. That is, someone wondering, puzzled, confused. S-chool books, textbooks, rarely help us to see this. They tell us right answers, but very rarely the questions that first led people to look for those answers. So”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“No one can say, "Here is Biology, here Mathematics, here Philosophy." No one can point to Physics, or show us Chemistry. In reality no dotted lines divide History from Geography or Physics from Chemistry, or Philosophy from Linguistics, and so on. These”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“They take much more of children's time, and more all the time. They give children less and less time to live their own lives, pursue their own interests, or perhaps find ways outside of school to make up for the failures, fears, and boredom of school. Far more than they used to, they control and limit children's futures. There are fewer and fewer paths into life that do not lead through the school. Degrees, diplomas, and certificates are needed for more and more kinds of work. The struggle for the few winner slots in society begins earlier and earlier in life; in”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means, the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons' experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“John Holt was a conventional fifth-grade private school teacher during the fifties, but, to paraphrase him, he kept wondering, "I teach, but the kids aren't learning. What's going on?" Eventually Holt finds his answer and describes it at length in his first and most popular book, How Children Fail. Holt determines that he, as a teacher, is more often than not getting in the way of children's learning.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“But of course, the most important trick in beating the S-chool game is to know that it is a game, as abstract, unreal, and useless as chess, and that beating it is a trick. The game is important only because (as with chess) there are rewards for playing it well, and (unlike chess) penalties for playing it badly. This is something that almost all successful students know, almost by instinct. I sensed it at ten, and knew it thoroughly and consciously by the time I was thirteen.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“Why should all people be taxed to support a system from which the children of the rich and affluent gain the most? What kind of race are the S-chools running, that poor children always seem to lose and rich children to win?”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“The first message that S-chools, like any other compulsory institution, send to the people who attend them is a message of distrust and contempt: If we didn't make you come here you wouldn't learn anything, you'd just waste your time, spend the whole day playing basketball or watching TV or making trouble, you'd hang out on the streets, never do anything worthwhile, grow up to be a bum. Along”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“one reason why schooling is so seldom helpful to children, and almost always deeply harmful, is that they have no reality of encounter with their teachers. The teachers are not themselves, but players of roles. They”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better

“This is a book in favor of doing—self-directed, purposeful, meaningful life and work—and against "education"—learning cut off from active life and done under pressure of bribe or threat, greed and fear.”
― John Holt, Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better: Way to Help People Do Things Better