An Excerpt from How Children Fail (1964): To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid. A dismal thought, but hard to escape. Infants are not stupid. Children of one, two, or even three throw the whole of themselves into everything they do. They embrace life, and devour it; it is why they learn so fast and are such good company. Listlessness, boredom, and apathy--these all come later. Children come to school curious; within a few years most of that curiosity is dead, or at least silent. Open a first or third grade to questions, and you will be deluged; fifth-graders say nothing. They either have no questions or will not ask them. They think, Whats this leading up to? Whats the catch? Last year, thinking that self-consciousness and embarrassment might be silencing the children, I put a question box in the classroom, and said that I would answer any questions they put into it. In four months I got one question--How long does a bear live? While I was talking about the life span of bears and other creatures, one child said impatiently, Come on, get to the point. The expressions on the childrens faces seemed to say, Youve got us here in school; now make us do whatever it is that you want us to do. Curiosity, questions, and speculation--these are for outside school, not inside. Reprinted with permission of HoltGWS LLC. For more information on John Holts work please visit johnholtgws/
Posted on: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 13:05:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015