Formal Summary: "School is Bad for Children"

Summary of School is bad for Children
In “School is Bad for Children”, John Holt makes very bold statements about the education system and how it doesn’t teach children. Holt states that a child enters school with more willingness to learn and desire to figure things out for themselves than they will ever be at school. Holt also states that children do not learn own their own anymore, their learning is done for them, passively. Also, Holt states that children realize at school to be wrong or unsure is not acceptable. The school only desires the right answers and the student has to make ways to “pry the answers out of the teacher.” Holt states that children are taught to not learn from each other, to ignore other students and to focus only on the teacher. Another controversial part of this essay by Holt is that he states that children learn from school how to shut their brains off, and that eventually leads them to drug use. Then Holt gets so bold as to suggest to abolish mandatory school attendance because that would cause the children not to be forced to go to school but to want to go to school. Furthermore, he offers many strategies to fix the school problem, including: remove children from schools and bring them out to the real world, take them to meet adults besides their parents and teaches, let children work together, and let children grade themselves. His final suggestion is to abolish curriculum altogether. Then he closes with “children’s only desires are to make sense of the world and other human beings.” He believes that the best place for this would be a job or whatever way works best for them.