Unschooling

Unschooling is the sharpest of the alternative-education philosophies. John Holt coined the term in the 1970s and articulated the case against conventional schooling itself, not just against specific schools. The chapter works through Holt’s life and arguments, his account of learning and knowledge, the resources unschooling families use, and Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences as the second major theoretical foundation of the modern unschooling movement.

John Holt and the Unschooling Movement

Holt’s career from Yale and the Navy through fifth-grade teaching to founding the unschooling movement, and the works he wrote along the way

Education, Learning, and Knowledge

Holt on what education really is, why learning happens through doing, and why knowledge should be treated as a verb rather than a noun

Resources for Do-ers

Free schools, the Learning Exchange, libraries, commercial publications, and sports as resources for self-directed learners

Holt on the Failure of Schools

Holt’s case against traditional schools: cruelty to children, the time they consume, the judgements they record, and the demands they impose

Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences

Gardner’s three kinds of learners (intuitive, scholastic, skilled), the seven intelligences, and the case for unschooling that follows

Learning Constraints and School Difficulties

The Kantian-Einsteinian, ontological, contextual, and personal constraints that shape later learning, and why schools struggle with all of them