How Children Fail

I just finished my latest John Holt book called How Children Fail and I thoroughly enjoyed it. After years of teaching in my own classroom, I related to SO MUCH of what he had to say. One thought that was new to me was the idea that school can actually lead to misunderstanding, more confusion, less confidence in your own ability to reason, the slow destruction of common sense.

Of course I always knew that school lumbers along at a slow and boring pace, that it's disjointed and interrupted and disconnected from "real life". But I hadn't really considered how damaging it can be - not just to one's self esteem, but to one's ability to learn. I think that I've always assumed that the really confused kids just weren't very bright. Now I wonder how much school and teachers and all the nonsensical busywork impacted their confusion.

The other thing that I'll take from this book is how powerful it is to be a careful observer of learning and of misunderstanding. I think Holt refers to it as plumbing the depths of their misunderstanding - something that teachers rarely, if ever, have time to do for individual students.

And finally, what made me laugh was that this book was written in the 1960's! It could've been written today. It's all still completely relevant.