How children learn and how children fail.

John Holt was an Ivy League graduate and a teacher in alternative schools, and in in 1964 he published his first book, How Children Fail, in which he laid the blame for the failure of schoolchildren squarely on the compulsory school system. Not surprisingly, How Children Fail was extremely controversial and John Holt was soon famous for rattling the American national consciousness.

In addition to his numerous other books about education and the problems with compulsory schooling, he also founded a magazine in 1977 called "Growing Without Schooling" which was the first magazine aimed at bringing together parents and secular families all over the nation who were homeschooling their children. 

John Holt also coined the term "Unschooling" because the type of learning he was talking about didn’t have to take place at home and it didn’t have to look like school. Unschooling could be described as "allowing your child the freedom, and the joy to explore their own passions and interests in their own way because they’re innately motivated."    

In this clip, taken from the feature length documentary Class Dismissed, John Holt talks about how children naturally learn using the world around them and how as adults we interfere with that natural process.