{"author":"John Holt","author_id":"John+Holt","total_quotes":25,"quotes":[{"text":"What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children's growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn't a school at all.","author":"John Holt","tags":["education","homeschool","homeschooling"],"id":8028,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"It is hard not to feel that there must be something very wrong with much of what we do in school, if we feel the need to worry so much about what many people call 'motivation'. A child has no stronger desire than to make sense of the world, to move freely in it, to do the things that he sees bigger people doing.","author":"John Holt","tags":["education","homeschool","homeschooling","learning"],"id":18824,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"Children learn from anything and everything they see. They learn wherever they are, not just in special learning places.","author":"John Holt","tags":["education","educational-philosophy","homeschool","homeschooling","learning-by-doing","unschooling"],"id":30187,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"It's a most serious mistake to think that learning is an activity separate from the rest of life, that people do it best when they are not doing anything else and best of all in places where nothing else is done. P.278.","author":"John Holt","tags":["education","learning","school-system"],"id":46742,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow up, to learn to take responsibility for his life and acts. Most important of all, we should not assume that having to yield to the threat of our superior force is good for the child's character. It is never good for anyone's character.","author":"John Holt","tags":["children","education"],"id":73547,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"Schools assume that children are not interested in learning and are not much good at it, that they will not learn unless made to, that they cannot learn unless shown how, and that the way to make them learn is to divide up the prescribed material into a sequence of tiny tasks to be mastered one at a time, each with it's approrpriate 'morsel' and 'shock.' And when this method doesn't work, the schools assume there is something wrong with the children -- something they must try to diagnose and treat.","author":"John Holt","tags":["children","education","teaching"],"id":77898,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. 'Leadership qualities' are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.","author":"John Holt","tags":["education","homeschooling","leadership","unschooling"],"id":84181,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"If I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued.","author":"John Holt","tags":["education","parenting"],"id":126982,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"Over the years, I have noticed that the child who learns quickly is adventurous. She's ready to run risks. She approaches life with arms outspread. She wants to take it all in. She still has the desire of the very young child to make sense out of things. She's not concerned with concealing her ignorance or protecting herself. She's ready to expose herself to disappointment and defeat. She has a certain confidence. She expects to make sense out of things sooner or later. She has a kind of trust.","author":"John Holt","tags":["children","education","learning","teaching"],"id":156309,"author_id":"John+Holt"},{"text":"Books ... Rarely  if ever  talk about what children can make of themselves  about the powers that from the day or moment of birth are present in every child.","author":"John Holt","tags":["children","childhood"],"id":156734,"author_id":"John+Holt"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":25,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}