How Children Fail is a non-fiction book by John Holt, published in 1964 and republished in 1982 in a revised edition. It has sold over a million copies.[1] In this book he cites personal teaching and research experiences that led him to the belief that traditional schooling does more harm than good to a child's ability and desire to truly learn.
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[edit]Synopsis
In How Children Fail John Holt states his belief that children love to learn, but hate to be taught. His experiences in the classroom as ateacher and researcher brought him to the conclusion that all children are intelligent. They become unintelligent because they are accustomed by teachers and schools to strive only for teacher approval and for the “right” answers, and to forget all else. In this system, children see no value in thinking and discovery, but see it only in playing the game of school.
Children believe that they must please the teacher, the adults, at all costs. They learn how to manipulate teachers to gain clues about what the teacher really wants. Through the teacher’s body language, facial expressions and other clues, they learn what might be the right answer. They mumble, straddle the answer, get the teacher to answer their own question, and take wild guesses while waiting to see what happens- all in order to increase the chances for a right answer.
When children are very young, they have natural curiosity about the world, trying diligently to figure out what is real. As they become “producers”, rather than “thinkers”, they fall away from exploration and start fishing for the right answers with little thought. They believe they must always be right, so they quickly forget mistakes and how these mistakes were made. They believe that the only good response from the teacher is “yes”, and that a “no” is defeat.
They fear wrong answers and shy