How Children Learn by John Holt

Author	John Holt
ISBN-10	0201484048
First Published	1967
Wikipedia Find this Book	ISBN 0201484048
By same Author(s)	How Children Fail
Categories	Children; Education; Learning
Google It!	How Children Learn
Other	Books
Read reviews or order	Amazon.com  Amazon.co.uk

Video: Gurteen Knowledge Cafe, NAB, Melbourne, October 2010

This is a short video of a Gurteen Knowledge Cafe that I facilitated for Peter Houlihan at the National Australia Bank in Melbourne in October 2010.

The session was captured on a flip cam without the use of a roving mic, so the sound is not clear and has had some extensive editing to fit into a short learning piece, but it gives a good idea of what the Cafe is all about. 

The question posed to the group as the "conversational seed" was "What if true leadership involves embracing complexity by widening the circle of involvement rather than restricting it?

Media Information:

 We teachers - perhaps all human beings - are in the grip of an astonishing delusion. We think that we can take a picture, a structure, a working model of something, constructed in our minds out of long experience and familiarity, and by turning that model into a string of words, transplant it whole into the mind of someone else.

Perhaps once in a thousand times, when the explanation is extraordinary good, and the listener extraordinary experienced and skillful at turning word strings into non-verbal reality, and when the explainer and listener share in common many of the experiences being talked about, the process may work, and some real meaning may be communicated.

Most of the time, explaining does not increase understanding, and may even lessen it.

John Holt, (1923 - 1985) American Educator
How Children Learn

---

 The child is curious. He wants to make sense out of things, find out how things work, gain competence and control over himself and his environment, and do what he can see other people doing. He is open, perceptive, and experimental. He does not merely observe the world around him, He does not shut himself off from the strange, complicated world around him, but tastes it, touches it, hefts it, bends it, breaks it. To find out how reality works, he works on it. He is bold. He is not afraid of making mistakes. And he is patient. He can tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, and suspense ... School is not a place that gives much time, or opportunity, or reward, for this kind of thinking and learning.

John Holt, (1923 - 1985) American Educator
How Children Learn

---

 If we continually try to force a child to do what he is afraid to do, he will become more timid, and will use his brains and energy, not to explore the unknown, but to find ways to avoid the pressures we put on him.

John Holt, (1923 - 1985) American Educator
How Children Learn

---