How Children Fail by John Holt, 0140135561, Lowest Book Price Finder

Customer Reviews:

What an eye-opener!

John Holt is well respected among the home educating/homeschooling world which given that he was a maths teacher, is impressive!!!!

This is not a negative book about childrens failure, it is a positive book about the failure of organised classroom maths and how children inevitably flounder in it. Its a manual of the techniques they acquire to cope rather than learn and as such is immensely useful. Its a description of what is not learned when someone is "taught" but at the same time it is a case study based advocate of the positive power of discovery based learning

His thoughts can be applied to any subject but as a person who floundered at maths throughout school, it gave me a masive understanding into how not to repeat those mistakes with my own home educated children.

A disturbing and vital book for all teachers

John Holt explains, though examples and case studies, his insights into how children's experience of education differes radically from the experience which teachers expect or imagine. He explains how some children can go through school without apparently learning anything, and how children conform to a system which values the appearance of success (getting the 'right' answer) rather than true understanding. In doing so they use all their intelligence to avoid the appearance of failure, rather than in the pursuit of learning. This is a disturbing book for anyone who thinks they understand children or know how to teach, and is vital reading for any school teacher.

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