About John Holt
"I have come to believe that a person's schooling is as much a part of his private business as his politics or religion, and that no one should be required to answer questions about it. May I say instead that most of what I know I did not learn in school, and indeed was not even 'taught.'"
— John Holt
The quote above appeared at the top of John’s biographical information sheet from at least 1977. See the timeline below for more details.
Timeline of John Holt
Additional Info
Combined sales of How Children Fail and How Children Learn exceed two million copies. Both books have been in print since they were first published over 50 years ago, and both were revised by John Holt in the early 1980s to incorporate his latest thinking based on his work with homeschoolers in Growing Without Schooling magazine. Holt’s books have been translated into over 45 languages.
Articles and reviews by John Holt were published in: N.Y. Review of Books, N.Y. Times Magazine, Book Week, Harper's, The Atlantic, Redbook, Parents Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, Look, Saturday Review, Psychology Today, USA Today, and numerous other publications.
Interviews and articles about John were printed in Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, nationwide dailies, and many other publications. Here are two articles we particularly enjoy: an in-depth biographical sketch in Yankee Magazine, Dec. 1981, and an interview with Holt about homeschooling by The Mother Earth News in 1980.
John Holt Obituaries
These are scans of Holt's obituaries as they appeared in the New York Times, Time magazine, and the Boston Globe.
The Legacy of John Holt
The Legacy of John Holt: A Man Who Genuinely Understood, Respected, and Trusted Children contains sixteen essays by friends, colleagues, and children (now adults) who personally knew and were influenced by Holt. A deep appreciation for Holt’s wide-ranging intellect, humor, and his ability to work with, not on, children emerge from these portraits. People who knew Holt when he was young write about his personal journey from conventional school teacher to unschooler, while pioneer homeschoolers write about the school, social, court room, and legislative battles Holt helped them negotiate at a time when the right to homeschool was often challenged.
"It's not that I feel that school is a good idea gone wrong, but a wrong idea from the word go. It's a nutty notion that we can have a place where nothing but learning happens, cut off from the rest of life."
— John Holt
Photographs of John
Interviews With John
A collection of interviews with John Holt. The collection includes an Interview with Teri Gross on Fresh Air, 1983, National Public Radio, an Interview about A Nation At Risk on WBOS, Boston, and John Holt interviewed by David Freudberg for Kindred Spirits Radio, April 11, 1985.
For the David Freudberg recording, this is the raw interview tape that Holt owned, not the final broadcast version. It covers lots of political and educational reform ground about homeschooling, including Holt's thoughts about the influence of the religious right wing, are homeschoolers abandoning schools, unqualified parents teaching their own, and much more.