Learning All the Time

I admit it: I am in love with John Holt. I realize that he's deceased, and I am happily married, but it's ok because my husband is falling in love with him too. We are both sad that we didn't get an opportunity to hear him speak when he was alive. Thank God he wrote so many books. We started by reading "How Children Learn," and then moved on to "How Children Fail," at which point we decided to read everything this man has ever written. We're working on it. "Learning All the Time" is a fascinating book. In it, John Holt, a former schoolteacher and eventual homeschooling advocate, discusses how kids learn and how adults relate to them. Most of us adults don't give kids enough credit for how much they want to learn and how much they CAN learn, at earlier ages than we would have dreamed possible. He challenges everything we've been taught about the allegedly short attention span of very young children, and, since we have the privilege of observing such children in our home on a daily basis, we can see that he is right! His philosophy involves making interesting learning materials available to kids and avoiding the two extremes of (a) frustrating them by pushing them into areas where they don't have aptitude or interest; and (b) limiting them by underestimating just how much they can learn, and how fast. Basically, he really LIKES children and respects them as human beings. John Holt was trained as, and worked as, a teacher in the 1950's and 1960's. The more time he spent in the classroom, the more he came to believe that traditional methods of teaching were wasting a lot of children's potential and failing to keep their attention. He has a tremendous respect for children. He has a lot of insight into the fact that many adults don't understand, respect, or, quite frankly, even like children. We have applied his philosophy with our own young children, with delightful results. For example, neither of us are fluent in Spanish, but my two-year-old and I are learning it together. I resist the urge to "play teacher" in favor of learning alongside my child, and I am amazed at how much she is able to learn and retain. We have also used his approach towards potty training. When we resisted pushing, our daughter took ownership of the process. Sooner than we would have thought she would, she announced to us that she was a big girl and didn't want to wear diapers. A few weeks later (we expected that it would be many months), she announced that she would not be wearing diapers at night either. She has been true to her word! These are just small examples of how we have asked ourselves, with a little irony but in a mostly serious fashion, "What would John Holt do?" Generally, the answer is to be real with our kids, offer as many learning opportunities as we reasonably can, and pay attention to what they are learning -- and marvel at them. In the book, he gives concrete examples of kids who could easily have been considered failures in a "cookie cutter" classroom situation. In Holt's opinion, even many kids who are considered learning disabled would do just fine (or at least much better) if they were allowed to reach their potential without an excess of testing and time-wasting "learning" activities. Holt's writing has influenced us to seriously consider homeschooling our children. Even if we don't, I think that our parenting is being enriched by his approach, and I would recommend this book to any parent or educator.

I would rather spend my free time getting lost in a fictional character, but I do force myself to read as much as I can about education, teaching my children, and homeschooling, often just skimming pages or chapters that seem to be interesting or relevant to me. But, reviews of John Holt's books drew me to read this one. As with a thriller or a mystery novel, I couldn't put it down, and I have begun reading another of his books, "How Children Learn". Holt's observations throughout his years as an educator are spot on and so pertinent to the education (or lack of) that children receive today in organized, educational institutions. Even though his work was during the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, his observations and recommendations are pertinent today. I shudder to think what he would have observed in our 21st century schools. I am taking many of his ideas and incorporating them into my lessons with my children, in the hopes that they will learn quickly and effectively and that they will develop a love of life-long learning. I wish I had read this book when my children were babies, but this book is informational for any parent (or grandparent) with children under the age of 10 or so, whether you are homeschooling or not.

All time best seller

I love John Holt's books and am very glad that more of them are becoming available as e-books. This one, his last and posthumously published work, is full of useful ideas and perspectives, practical suggestions for children's learning. Unfortunately this Kindle version contains many typos, often several per page. One of the good things about the Kindle is that it makes it easy to take notes while reading, so I'm noting all the errors and will collect them to send to the publisher in hopes that a corrected edition will become available.

"Wow! This book was so enlightening to me about the way children learn, which is contrary to what is taught in schools and in society at large. I had to keep putting it down to digest and mull over what I was reading. This should be a must-read for parents and teachers everywhere. Would definitely recommend." This was the first John Holt book I read and I wrote that brief review above back in 2009, at the beginning of our homeschooling adventures, when my oldest was six. Here we are, twelve years later, my oldest off to college after being homeschooled all but her kindergarten year, and I realize what a help John Holt was to reshaping my mindset about the purpose and practice of education. If you are thinking about homeschooling, you need to read John Holt's books and have your mind expanded.

I usually love John Holt, but this one was pretty preachy. It seems like he wrote this in his 'frustrated period.' I got the point of the book pretty quickly, which I do agree with, but then he hammered it home for the rest. If you're looking for a better Holt read, start with 'How Children Learn'

This is one of the books that makes you think for a long time. I think its concept is quite like Montesorri's, encourages that the kids in one class should be of different ages ranging from 3 to 6. In this way, the older ones learn to take care of the younger, the younger ones learn easily from the big kids. This reduces a lot learning barriers that coming from the traditional school class. I love it. I am from China that adopts one-child policy, which created a lot of problems. Kid as the only attention focus for the whole family does not have the opportunity to learn from their bothers and sisters. The key point of this book is, it told you that "learning" is not a big and heavy yet boring task that you can only fulfill at school. Keep the learning and open attitude, everything in life will become a much better teaching tool for your kids. This is an inspiring book for parents that have kids from new born to 6 years old. Myself is also the translator of its Chinese edition. This book was published in China, and sold well.

I first picked this up at the library, searching for homeschool information. It was the ONLY book by John Holt there (what a pity), and I remembered reading a thing or two about him and being interested. He was an amazing man, someone who was a true pioneer in the thoughts of children as being their own teachers, we need to just be their helpers and providers. The truth to everything he says, and the warm way he loved children is such an inspiration. I quickly set to reading everything he ever wrote, all of his books equally inspiring. This was my first, and I loved it!

Amazing book. A must read for all parents and teachers.

The book is severely overpriced for the quality I received. It looks like a pirated paper back version. Very underwhelmed.

Loved this book - it gets you thinking about children's education in a totally different way!

Très terre-à-terre, pratique et humain

Very interesting ideas. Some of them i can remember from my soviet childhood. The only one thing that bothers me about the book, is so many mistyped word and errors. Sometimes its not so easy to understand the meaning because of that.. It would be nice if the book would be reviewed and edited.