John Holt’s HOW CHILDREN FAIL (1964)
Penguin Education Publication
Penguin Education Publication
“Most children in school fail…because they are afraid, bored and confused”.
John Holt draws upon his observations of children both in school and at play to identify ways in which our traditional educational system predestines our young people for failure. He argues that children fail primarily ‘because they are afraid, bored, and confused’. This, combined with misguided teaching strategies and a school environment that is disconnected from reality and real-learning, resulted in a school system that kills children’s innate desire to learn.
About John Holt: John Holt (1923-1985) was an American author, a teacher, an educator who first propounded Home-schooling, and a pioneer in youth rights theory. Through-out his life, Holt was very critical of the prevailing education system, and has written extensive critiques on it. Despite some of his radical writings, Holt remains a prominent figure in the field of formal education system; and his numerous books and critiques had led to reforms and changes in the education systems of many countries and inspired many of the later progressive education thinkers and institutions.
The Book: The book “How Children Fail” was first published in 1964 and revised in 1982. Even today, it is considered as an educational classic and a must-read for those who are involved in the field of education. As noted by the author in the forward, the book was divided into four major topics: strategy, fear and failure, real learning, and how school fails.
- Strategy: This part deals with the ways in which children try to meet, or dodge, the demands that adults make of them in school.
- Fear and Failure: This part deals with the interaction in children of fear and failure, and the effect of this on strategy and learning.
- Real Learning: This part deals with the difference between what children appear to know or are expected to know, and what they really know
- How School Fails: This part analyses the ways in which schools foster bad strategies, raise children’s fears, produce learning which is usually fragmentary, distorted and short-lived, and generally fail to meet the real needs of children.
Based on the structure of the book, this review will also follow the same pattern in presentation, discussing the major themes that arose from the reading, and see its practicality in our present education system in India.
1. FEAR AND FAILURE:
Schools promote an atmosphere of fear that not only quells a child's love of learning and suppresses his native curiosity, but also makes him afraid of taking chances and risks which may be necessary for true learning to occur. Some of the steps taken to address the issue of fear and failure in school in our Indian education system are:
- Prohibition of corporal punishment (including verbal ‘name calling’)
- Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation that evaluate a child’s learning and capabilities in a holistic manner
- Prohibition of test/exam up to a certain class in school
- Prohibition of with-holding/retention of a student
The above mention steps taken are just a step towards reducing fear and failure in school, it still fails to address the bigger issues, that is, the psychological aspects like humiliation from peer groups, and fear of failing our parents and their various expectations.
Secondly, parents are the one who wants and demand that their child be, in the word of Holt, a ‘producer’ that parrots what the teacher says. It shows that majority of parents’ lack understanding of the ‘aims and objectives’ of education, Unless the parents change their perspective of seeing education as an economic investment, school and education will always be a burden for the student!
Thirdly, teachers are also aware of the parent’s expectation, and many teachers took-up the role of a parent to the child in school pushing them towards a certain goals which they have in their mind without ever consulting the students. The achievement of this goal also serve the teachers’ need for a better reputation for their school as a good-mark scoring schools. Besides that, many teachers assumed the role of moral guardian, and think that disciplining the students to be their role. Disciplining students in the name of moral guardianship or to see the reputation of the school goes up, teacher forced their students into a uniform set pattern of behaviours and mannerism which can only kill the child’s unique individuality and creativity.
When I visited Limtara M/S for drawing of greeting cards for teacher’s day, the fear of being wrong can be easily seen among the students who constantly asked what to draw when asked to draw whatever they want, and also, the teacher pushing them by playing vigilant and telling them to do this or that. Such vigilant actions, and disciplining from the school can only result in a confused child who distrust their own ability, and breed a dependent nature in them.
2. BOREDOM:
Schools demand that children perform dull, repetitive tasks which make limited demands on their wide range of capabilities and as such, it becomes boring to most students. Some of the steps taken to address these issues include:
- allowing each states and region to design their own curriculum based on certain frame-work and guidelines
- making each lesson as activities oriented as possible under CCE
- inclusion of teaching-learning materials
- including play/sports at least once a week in our school’s time-table
The synonyms of boredom when it comes to class-room will be ‘interesting’ or ‘vibrants’, and we can’t exactly call our curriculum very interesting or vibrant because the simple fact that we have a ‘uniform curriculum’ for a group of ‘individuals in a class-room’ fails to address the diversity of our students and their capabilities!
Looking at the various progressive schools like Totto-chan’s Tomeo, AS Neill’s Summerhill, Reggio Emelio schools, etc. one thing they have in common is a flexible curriculum where the teacher prepared the lesson plan based on their understanding of the interests of the students.
When visiting Mandroud P/S for class-room observation, I observed a MGML class of Class I & II. While observing, the teacher instructed them to read whatever were written in the wall and left me to take in-charge of the class. The children can, not only read, but memorized each and every word written in the wall and recite them with ease. But before finishing their recitation, most of them stopped and started playing. When I asked them to continue their recitation, one of the class-II students responded by saying that they have been reading it all since class-1 (the previous year). Looking at the small Class-I children, I can observe that peer learning was happening through recognition of word, and association of alphabets and sounds, but in the name of peer learning, we bored the students of Class-II and thus gradually alienating them from learning altogether.
There are various forms of boredom. Totto-chan’s boredom is mostly because of curiosity about the outside world, but some kind of boredom that is commonly observed in our schoolS, including Mandroud P/S, is that of ‘lack of varieties’. There was nothing in their vicinity to arouse their curiosity, they have already explored them including the TLM given to them, and the plants and insects near their school –all they need is a new insights and perspective, and to make sense of it, and that, to a great extend depends on the teachers!
3. CONFUSION:
Once enrolled in school, the child often founds himself being taught things that contradict what he had learned from his parents or other adults, and many other things that don’t make sense. Confusion is a big term, but when it comes to the disconnection between reality and class-room, there definitely is a big gap.
In India, under the NCF 2005, attention has been paid towards forms of knowledge and forms of understanding based on the age-group of a child to ensure that appropriate things are taught among particular groups of children, besides curriculum reform, contextualization of text-book and concepts, activities oriented class-room, field-trips, etc. are some of the steps taken to reduce confusion and bridge the gap between classroom and outside world.
Holts himself talked about his helplessness when it comes to the teaching of various concept which are similar, like a problem that can be solved in different ways. He dryly said that ‘no explanation is better than a bad explanation’. But the ability to explain a concept in the most simple term that will make sense to children require for special skills, and in a big education system like in India faced with shortage of teacher, such skills are not available everywhere.
Also, Holt emphasized that student should be allowed to explore and discover on their own, and to let them learn and own their knowledge they discovered. Most of the progressive school practices such kind of freedom of learning to their students. But to provide an environment for freedom of learning come with a heavy financial cost –the cost of infrastructure, provision of multiple learning materials to arouse children curiosity, provisions of resources to answer their curiosity, and most importantly, we need highly qualified people to manage and stir such environment into a learning environment.
4. REAL LEARNING:
Every expert has different views on what should be included in a child’s curriculum, and furthermore, much of what is taught in our schools is outdated by the time children need to apply that knowledge to real life. This reinforces Holt's belief that there is no single body of information that all children should learn.
It is true that we never know what piece of learning will be relevant to the child in the future, that’s why curriculum are planned for a ‘future just-in-case’ situation. For example, we learn about how to provide basic first-aid because it is important that we know. But left alone, the child will rarely learn by themselves unless they have a practical reason to learn it by getting themselves or someone they know met an accident.
Holt believed that real learning can happen only in the real world i.e. outside of the school and as such he encouraged home-schooling. But how practical and affordable home-schooling is for rural India? And the more important question is, will your real-life learning be counted as a proper qualification when you apply for a job? If we want that real life learning is to be counted as a proper qualification, then the whole concept of formal education and our perspective towards it need to be overhauled.
Besides, to consider a real life learning as a proper form of learning, we have to assume that every adult that the children dealt-with are qualified as a model to the child, and that they are capable of providing the proper answer to the child’s question, which isn’t true at all.
5. CONCLUSION:
How children are systematically failed? Over half a century after Holt criticized our education system, the criticisms still stands valid. Every word that he said are true, but the saddest part is even Holt failed to come out with an alternative system that would provide real learning to our children.
Each and every stake-holder in the child’s learning has failed them. Our education system and our approach to education drive children into answer producer who parrots their teacher through our evaluation and examination system. Parents see education as an investment with quick and observable returns. Teachers see the child’s education as a job, and deliver it as a job. And the community is more than happy to have a ‘producer’ rather than a ‘thinker’.
Here is a look at some of the approach adopted by the so-called progressive school which can give us a quick comparison with our own system, and a quick assessment of their adaptability or the dilemma with the approach when it comes to the Indian education system.
Approach & Process:
- Experiential learning (a lived experience)
- Emphasis on group work and peer learning
- Free or minimally guided learning environment with emphasis on teaching-learning material
- Highly qualified, well-trained and passionate ‘teachers’
- Strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking
- Understanding and ability to apply in practice as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge
- Development of social skills
- Education for social responsibility and democracy
- Integrated forms of knowledge
- Flexible curriculum focused on thematic units
- Selection of subject content by looking forward to what skills will be needed in future society
- Educated and highly aware parents and general population
- Active involvement of parents and community
Concluding Remark: After the 2nd World War, the education systems of many western countries were influenced by the Japanese who enjoyed rapid economic development attributed mainly to its education system that emphasized on rote memorization and curriculum overload. Starting from the late 1980s the Japanese gradually adopted the progressive approach reaching its peak in early 2000s with their ‘room to grow’ approach and constantly appeared among the top 15 in PISA score, however, in early 2012, they reverted back to their previous system allegedly due to its efficient recall power.
Now, can we say that, in the words of John Holt, ‘producing a producer’ is such a bad thing if one of the major aims of education is to create someone who can contribute as a ‘producer’ to the economy, and if that is what the parent’s want for their children?
