It is the worst kind of tactical and psychological error to try to combat the people who are debasing and corrupting our country and the flag, by trying to demean the flag itself. No, we ought to carry our own flag, display it in every way we can, especially in conjunction with other symbols we believe in.

“...I have an odd feeling that whatever we do in environments we share with children, we ought to do because they seem like the most sensible, interesting, and humane things to do in the here and now, without hoping or expecting too much of this or that will cause the children to grow up to be this or that kind of person, or do this or that or the other thing.”—John Holt

John Holt sometimes used his Sony Walkman cassette recorder to tape his public talks, and this one, on April 29, 1985, turned out to be his last. The sound quality deteriorated a lot on this tape, so I had it remastered successfully and I hope you enjoy the audio. John was dealing with cancer during this talk and he died on Sept. 14, 1985. Nonetheless, John continued to share and explain his ideas about education in an amiable manner at this event, enjoying his interactions with the children and adults, and making some off-hand comments about Shakespeare and other educational topics that will infuriate some and tickle others.

There have always been some conventional and alternative schoolteachers who view John Holt’s work as a hopeful path for education. I hope that more will follow as declining enrollments, absenteeism, and public malaise about education have not been staunched by increasing standards, intensive instruction, and longer school days.

The fundamental educational problem of our time is to find ways to help children grow into adults who have no wish to do harm. We must recognize that traditional education, far from having ever solved this problem, has never tried to solve it. Indeed, its efforts have, if anything, been in exactly the opposite direction …

This video is a tribute to the groundbreaking work of John Holt, celebrating his amazing book "Learning All The Time."

Supporting a child’s learning takes time, observation, and empathy, all things that are lacking in most schools. This is largely due to institutional practices and schedules, but this obstacle is not necessary in one’s home, if one is attuned to their children’s natural growth rather than a planned curriculum.

So sensitive are we to the possibility of child labor in the exploitative sense that we’ve made it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for children to work at all, even when they want or need to. The following piece of unpublished writing by John Holt may help clarify some of these issues.

Before the words homeschooling and unschooling existed, the word “deschooling” filled their space. What is that all about?

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis wrote in Schooling in Capitalist America in 1976, ‘“In less than a decade, liberal preeminence in the field of educational theory and policy has been shattered. . . . Today, much of the free school rhetoric has been absorbed into the mainstream of educational thinking as a new wrinkle on how to get kids to work harder.”