a book
How Children Learn
John Holt · 1967 · 197 pages
From the preface by Deborah Meier: "We have a long way to go to make John Holt's dream available to all children. But his books make it possible and easier for many of us to join him in the journey." In this enduring classic, rich with deep, original insight into the nature of early learning, John Holt was the first to make clear that, for small children, "learning is as natural as breathing." In his delightful book he observes how children actually learn to talk, to read, to count, and to reason, and how, as adults, we can best encourage these natural abilities in our children.
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Michael Moore
“I read this book and its companion, How Children Fail, when I was in my early 20’s. I was elected to the school board when I was 18, and I had been doing a lot of thinking about how we educate people. Both books present incredible insight in terms of how to treat children and how to educate them. I went to hear Holt speak once. He was a fairly elderly man at that point. He came out on the stage with a cello, which he played. He said he took up the cello when he was 40 because he wanted to examine why it is that as we get older we don’t want to learn new things. He had decided that he wasn’t going to let that happen, and that education was going to be a lifelong experience, not something confined to 12 or 16 years in a classroom. I loved that. I think his books are great for teachers to read.”↗