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John Holt was born on 1923, in New York City. He received a private education and later attended Yale University, where he graduated in 1943 with a degree in Industrial Engineering. Despite his academic success, Holt felt a disconnect between his studies and the real world around him.

After graduating, he participated in the U.S. Navy during World War II from 1943 to 1946. His wartime experiences deeply influenced his worldview, leading him to join the United World Federalists, an organization advocating for global peace through a unified world government.

In the 50s, Holt transitioned into education area where he was a teacher at several private schools including Cambridge Harvard etc.

Holt became really critic with traditional schooling, believing that fear and rigid structures block children's natural curiosity and learning. He wrote some books: How Children Fail (1964) and How Children Learn (1967), challenging conventional education.

John Holt passed away from cancer on 1985, in Boston, Massachusetts.

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John Holt was born during the interwar period where the socio-economic situation wasn't favourable. It coincided with the Great Depression. Taking part in the Second World War, exposed him to realities of violence that influenced him in his critical perspective of the educational system authority.

After the war, USA started preparing citizens for a modern way of work, based on disciplinated and rigid methods. And Holt as a teacher, started questioning how the traditional schooling did not supported children's natural learning processes.

In decades where the protests and the movements began to grow, his thoughts about education resonated with other unschooling thinkers that were seeking more humane and personalized learning.

When passed away, the homeschooling movement was gaining power in the U.S. His philosophy promotes trust in children's innate curiosity and learning abilities leaving aside the formal institutions.

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Children are natural learners: Holt believed children have an innate curiosity and a powerful drive to learn about the world. Moreover, he thought that children learn best when they are free to explore topics that interest them, without coercion or rigid curricula. “Babies do not learn in order to please us, but because it’s their instinct and nature to want to find out about the world.”

Traditional schooling often undermines learning: Holt critiques the school environment (fear of failure, emphasis on right answers, pressure to please teachers rather than genuine discovery). Furthermore, according to him, schooling tends to kill curiosity and create passive learners.

Learning should be self-directed: Holt proposed that children learn best “on their own terms” and when they are genuinely interested, rather than simply following a mandated curriculum. He criticized that standardized testing and rigid curricula ignores individual learning styles and emotional needs. Likewise, he believed that excessive teacher control stifles student initiative and authentic learning.

The importance of freedom, rights and respect for the child: Holt believed in the need to treat children with respect, not as mere recipients of adult decisions. He also argued that if children are respected and given freedom in their learning, not only will they learn, but they’ll develop as creative and autonomous individuals. In the same way, h e advocated for learning embedded in real-life experiences—music, travel, conversation, play—not artificial classroom settings.

The concept of “unschooling” / alternatives to schooling: From Holt’s view, education doesn’t have to be confined to schools; life and the world are rich learning environments. He searched for alternatives to traditional institutional schooling, including home-based learning and flexible educational environments. He believed schools often suppress curiosity and creativity.

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His unschooling theory is based on learning through explorations, since he believed that children are naturally curious and that they can learnby following their own interests, and therefore, he did not believe on the traditional school system. He afirmed that parents should help and guide children instead of controlling their studies.

He supported the idea of using stimulating spaces instead of the traditional ones and eliminating exams. In this way, the goal was to build full trust in the student in order to achieve deep and efective learning.

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He belived in trust in children´s abilities and thought that they had an instinct to learn, which was innate

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He critiziced exams because they prevented children from focusing in other skills