John Holt is the advocate of homeschooling who initiated his home schooling movement in 1970s.He wrote 11 books and a magazine “Growing without school” that have homeschooling as their central theme. He is regarded as the father of homeschooling movement. Throughout his life, he strived to instill the idea of self-driven learning among the masses. He strived for abolishing compulsory education and stood determined by his idea that most learning requires no teacher. John Holt’s movement against schooling was provocative and sparked disagreement among the proponents of formal schooling and education. In his article, Holt uses a simple vocabulary to reach a larger audience and demonstrates intensive use of logical reasoning to convince his readers. However, he commits logical fallacies, hasty generalizations and barely uses statistical evidence which makes the reader question the credibility of his argument.
The main theme of the article is freedom of learning for children and his intended audience is parents and teachers. Although Holt does not begin with an appropriate thesis statement, but he floats the main idea in the first paragraph to make readers aware of the topic he will be discussing. Holt expresses strong disapproval for compulsory schooling and education. He sees the law of compulsory universal education as a hideous step taken by government to control the minds of the “young” and to prevent the generation of revolutionary ideas among the people so that it is easier to maintain social order in society. His article is biased because it also revolves around the same theme and does not offer any unique idea. In his article, he intends to enlighten his audience with the disastrous repercussions that children face as a result of going to school. Holt’s philosophy of education is different from the philosophy of other educators as he firmly believes that