In the face of worldwide declining births, shouldn’t we be thinking about ways to structure society so it makes having children desirable? The surprising increase of homeschooled children in recent years is also an indicator that more parents want something that society is not providing: not more time in school, but more family time.

John Holt: “I have met some fine teachers who have told me that for as long as twenty years or more they have been working in this or that school or system to bring about some of the kinds of changes I am urging, and with no success at all. I can admire their courage but not their tactical judgment. Not only have they wasted their time, skill, and devotion; they have given them to an institu­tion that has made bad use of them.”

All of those complaints are valid, and I’m certainly someone who, with four children, does a lot of driving to activities in the course of a week. We’re all really happy with those activities that the children are involved in, but it certainly does involve a lot of car time. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about that car time, and about the positive side of it. 

“Are your parents teachers?” “Do you have any friends?” and on and on. It’s come to the point where I feel like saying, “It’s really none of your business.” I don’t say that, of course. …

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.

Most educators would not recommend learning how to care for farm animals, raise food, mend fences, and so on as a well-rounded education. Nonetheless, this is not an uncommon theme in the pages of Growing Without Schooling magazine.

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 …

The conference opened with a panel discussion, “What’s the growth potential of emerging models?” The bottom line is the growth potential is strong, especially from the growing number of parents and educators seeking alternatives to conventional schooling, with the recent strong rise in the number of homeschoolers leading the list of “education consumers” these schools and businesses seek.

Students give U.S. schools middling to poor grades, and the majority of parents are dissatisfied with their schools. Yet school continues to offer its one-size-fits-all approach as the way to fix things.