12/6/22

Grâce au talent de conteur de John Holt, on comprend intimement comment il s'est rendu compte qu'enseigner ne pouvait qu'être inefficace et dommageable, même dans les classes conviviales qu'il avait mises en place : l'école est structurellement inadaptée pour apprendre. La réflexion de John Holt le mènera à sa conception du unschooling. Grâce à des récits précis et pleins de vie issus de son observation de l'apprentissage en cours (ou pas) dans ses classes, on voit comment le penseur majeur du unschooling des années 1970 et 1980 en est arrivé à l'idée qu'au lieu d'écoles alternatives, il valait mieux proposer des alternatives à l'école. De plus en plus de gens cherchent aujourd'hui à se défaire de la vision centrée sur l'école de la société, et c'est stimulant de lire les fondements de la pensée de John Holt. Ce livre sera utile aux parents qui hésitent encore à déscolariser un enfant en souffrance à l'école, ils comprendront pourquoi ce sera mieux pour lui, même si ce choix demande des aménagements familiaux compliqués. Il intéressera ceux qui veulent en savoir plus sur l'histoire de la pédagogie : on assiste en direct à la prise de conscience par Holt de l'impossibilité intrinsèque de la forme scolaire de transmettre quoi que ce soit à un enfant - en dehors de la soumission et de la dévalorisation de sa propre expérience.

Holt's first book Is primarily a collection of his notes from his early years at teaching, primarily at the Colorado Mountain School. A private school for rich "progressives."

The copy I read was a later re-issue. It was certainly a different way of doing an updated revision. Normally when I read such its the exact same book with only a few paragraphs re-edited due to some new information, or updated references, since the original publishing. However This one kept the entire original in tact and the added additional commentary where the author had changed his mind since the original publishing, marked as such. I'm not clear if I really liked that or not, but it certainly made for a significantly longer book.

Holt argues that children fail because school is set up in a way that most kids are too afraid to actually learn. They need or want the right answer, but cramming for tests only ensures they don't actually know what they are being taught.

I lot of focus on math and the wildly disconnected "ideas" children have about it. ( )

schools make children fail by making them afraid to try

Pretty interesting book about Holt's experiences in the classroom. I really liked the notebook-esque format as well as the later commentary. As I was thinking about my own frustrations with work at the time, this seemed to also be a useful book about company management.

A few takeaways:
- "children fail because they are afraid, confused, and bored:" this seems like a pretty helpful framework, not only for thinking about the circumstances in which children disengage, but also for thinking about how adults lose motivation.
- the idea of "producers" vs. "thinkers." I see "producer" behavior frequently, even among adults, where people freeze up and stop thinking when they feel pressure to give the right answer. I do think that framing it as behaviors instead of character traits might be more helpful.
- John Holt's journey from "how can I make school work for these kids?" to "School sucks, kids need to learn in self-directed ways" is fascinating to follow. ( )