Sublime

With some beautiful insights, Holt said what many already knew instinctively about school, merely by having passed through it themselves. His method was to reflect upon his own experience of teaching in his Boston classroom, by giving vignettes—diary entries of his work with children. He mused on the things children said and did in response to his

doctor. If schools ceased to be compulsory, teachers who find their satisfaction in the exercise of pedagogical authority in the classroom would be left only with pupils who were attracted by their style.

Barbara Sarnecka, an associate professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California, Irvine, told Lenore that today “adults are saying: ‘Here’s the environment. I’ve already mapped it. Stop exploring.’ But that’s the opposite of what childhood is.”

Dans The Year of Learning Dangerously, Quinn Cummings raconte comment elle a instruit sa fille Alice à la maison : « Avec son père, nous connaissions Alice mieux que personne et nous ne pouvions plus ignorer qu’elle ne faisait pas grand-chose à l’école. Comme l’on dit lorsqu’on est à court d’euphémismes pour parler de “relâchement”, notre fille

Émile (or On Education), published in 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau used the fictional example of a boy called Émile to argue that a child can learn everything he needs to without interference from adults.

In recent years, psychologists studying differences in educational achievement have been paying more attention to the question of ‘non-cognitive traits’, by which they mean something like personality, or character. It’s now recognised that the attitude students take towards the learning process, and the habits they practise, have a bigger impact on

JOHN HOLT author of How Children Fail