Wise words on teaching the young

"We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty rewards – in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else."

John Holt (1923-1985)

I've quoted John Holt on here a number of times before. He was a highly influential writer on the practice of education and one of the only truly inspiring figures that I can acknowledge as having shaped the development of my own thinking. I stumbled across this online the other day (almost certainly a rediscovery, since I read just about everything he ever wrote when I was a teenager) and couldn't resist sharing it.

Bon mot for the week

"The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do."

John Holt  (1923-1985)

It was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon this familiar name during my online meanderings a couple of weeks ago. I discovered Holt's books in my local branch of the W.H. Smith's newsagent's/bookshop when I was in my early teens (there was a brief period of my life when, for some reason I now forget, I was going home from school by bus every day; but, facing a wait of nearly an hour, I consumed entire books while browsing the shelves in Smith's). His How Children Fail and How Children Learn left a particularly deep impression, and may well have had a decisive influence on my becoming a schoolteacher after university.

Bon mot for the week

"A gardener does not 'grow' flowers; he tries to give them what he thinks they need and they grow by themselves."

John Holt (1923-1985)

We've heard from Mr Holt in this series before (here and here), and we might again. He was a pioneering educator whose writing became a major influence on me in my childhood and in my early teaching career. Here, of course, he was thinking of gardening as a metaphor for teaching.

Bon mot for the week

"It is the duty of a citizen in a free country not to fit into society, but to make society."

John Holt (1923-1985)

And in a non-free country, come to that...