4Real Forums: Sharing some John Holt quotes.

Oh, Dearest Mother, Sweetest Virgin of Altagracia, our Patroness. You are our Advocate and to you we recommend our needs. You are our Teacher and like disciples we come to learn from the example of your holy life. You are our Mother, and like children, we come to offer you all of the love of our hearts. Receive, dearest Mother, our offerings and listen attentively to our supplications. Amen.

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Topic: Sharing some John Holt quotes.

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Leonie
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Posted: Sept 01 2006 at 5:57pm \| IP Logged

I went in search for a quote for my entry in Helen's Elegant Simplicity in Learning Spaces.

I found some very cool quotes from John Holt and thought this would be the best place to share them.

"All I am saying in this book can be summed up in two words: Trust
Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult
because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and
most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted. "
~John Holt, in "How Children Learn"

"What children need is not new and better curricula but access to
more and more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think
over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning
out of them; and advice, road maps, guidebooks, to make it easier for
them to get where they want to go (not where we think they ought to
go), and to find out what they want to find out." ~ John Holt, in
"Teach Your Own"

"Any child who can spend an hour or two a day, or more if he wants,
with adults that he likes, who are interested in the world and like
to talk about it, will on most days learn far more from their talk
than he would learn in a week of school."
~John Holt

"We destroy the love of learning in children, which is so strong when
they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty
rewards--gold stars, or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or
A's on report cards, or honor rolls, or dean's lists or Phi Beta
Kappa keys--in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that
they are better than someone else." ~John Holt

"A child who is learning naturally, following his curiosity where it leads
him, adding to his mental model of reality whatever he needs and can find a
place for, and rejecting without fear or guilt what he does not need, is
growing - in knowledge, in the love of learning, and in the ability to
learn....All his life he will go on learning."~John Holt, in How Children Fail

Thanks for letting me share!

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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School

lapazfarm
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Posted: Sept 01 2006 at 6:31pm \| IP Logged

Those are some of my favorites, also. Thanks for sharing!

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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
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ladybugs
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Posted: Sept 01 2006 at 6:40pm \| IP Logged

I really liked these quotes, Leonie. The one about a competition really impacted me.

Thanks for sharing.

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Rebecca
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Posted: Sept 01 2006 at 7:06pm \| IP Logged

Thank you Leonie. These quotes are great food for thought.

Jen L.
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Posted: Sept 02 2006 at 8:29am \| IP Logged

Thanks!

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Jen
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Taffy
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Posted: Sept 02 2006 at 9:40am \| IP Logged

Thanks Leonie! These are great!

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Susan
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Karen E.
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Posted: Sept 02 2006 at 10:34pm \| IP Logged

Great quotes, Leonie! Thanks.

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Karen E.
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knowloveserve
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Posted: Feb 04 2007 at 6:38pm \| IP Logged

Those are awesome; I just read Holt's "Learning All the Time" and was highly impressed with it.

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Ellie
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Paula in MN
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Posted: Feb 05 2007 at 7:10am \| IP Logged

Wonderful. Thanks!

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Paula
A Catholic Harvest

Leonie
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Posted: Feb 05 2007 at 5:26pm \| IP Logged

My favourite is -

"Any child who can spend an hour or two a day, or more if he wants,
with adults that he likes, who are interested in the world and like
to talk about it, will on most days learn far more from their talk
than he would learn in a week of school."

It kind of describes how I see an unschool influence in our family.

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Leonie in Sydney
Living Without School

Mary G
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Posted: Feb 05 2007 at 6:11pm \| IP Logged

Leonie -- you always mention quotes that really speak to me and what I'd like our homeschool to be ... I agree that the one about kids and adults vs a week in school is so very true.

THANKS for keeping me supplied with pithy quotes!

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MaryG
3 boys (22, 12, 8)2 girls (20, 11)

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Leonie
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Posted: Feb 06 2007 at 5:35pm \| IP Logged

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Leonie in Sydney
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MarilynW
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Posted: Feb 11 2007 at 6:30pm \| IP Logged

Thanks Leonie for sharing the quotes. I have just read the two John Holt books and reread my two favorite Thomas Armstrong ones. (the ones that made me think about homeschooling years and years ago!!) - always inspire me to rethink things and look outside the box. Just hard for my type A, schedule and list oriented,conventional schooled brain to figure out sometimes!!

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Marilyn
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