Homefires' Teleconference Speaker: Pat Farenga
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John Holt and Unschooling
By Pat Farenga
Note: This is a revised and shortened version of the foreword Pat Farenga
wrote for the book "John Holt" by Roland Meighan, Continuum International
Publishing Group, 2007. Volume 5 in The Continuum Library of Educational Thought.
Series editor: Richard Bailey.
John Holt is a rare writer about education because he brought about changes not
only in schools, but also in our homes. Holt was a major influence on the school
reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and then, when he decided most people did
not want schools to change in the progressive, learner-centered ways he advocated,
he became a major influence on the modern homeschooling movement.
Equally remarkable for someone working in the field of education, Holt wrote all
his books in a deliberately accessible style for the general public and he did
this as an independent researcher, without affiliation to, or the support of,
any university or public or private institution.
When "How Children Fail"
became a national bestseller in 1964, Holt was encouraged by a friend to enter
the world of academia instead of becoming an independent critic. Holt responded,
in a letter quoted in "A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters of John Holt"
(Ohio State Univ. Press, 1992):
"I am trying to find out why the capacity of so many children for perceiving,
and learning, and thinking, declines so rapidly as they grow older, and what we
could do to prevent this from happening. I am very firmly convinced that a
university tie would hinder my work far more than it would help it.
I explore the intelligence of children by creating situations and then seeing how
they respond to them and what they make of them. I am truly exploring, and an
explorer does not know, when he starts into a bit of unknown country, what he is
going to find there. But this is not how most of what passes for educational research
is done, or how research proposals are written up.
For the time being, it seems a matter [working for a university - PF] of spending
a large part of my time doing things their way in the hope that they will allow
me to spend some of my time doing things my way. I can't see it; life is too
short, and I believe that I can learn far more and even have more influence
working as I am."
Holt's vision about his work in this letter shows an almost prescient knowledge of his
later transformations of thought and opinion as a public intellectual, education writer,
school reformer, political activist, and a founder of the homeschooling movement. His
independence of thought and descriptions about not just the techniques, but the emotions
attached to teaching and learning continue to surprise readers, as well as to influence
parents to homeschool their children. His books have now been translated into over 20
languages, and they continue to generate adherents and controversy.
For instance, Holt's vision of homeschooling, or "unschooling" as he preferred
to call it in the early years of the movement, was not about doing school at home with
one's siblings and parents. Instead, it was about learning in and outside the home, in
places and with people that do not resemble school at all.
Holt viewed learning as an abundant, natural, human endeavor that gets warped or turned-off
by imposing years of unasked-for teaching upon the learner. He envisioned not just families,
but entire communities becoming places for life-long learning.
Indeed, Holt's writing continues to inspire people to create co-operative learning centers,
and develop other forms of community-based activities for children and adults, defying the
charge leveled against homeschoolers that they are only interested in their own children
and circumstances.
However, to use a current analogy from the world of high technology, most educators refuse to
acknowledge Holt's "open source" approach to education and insist on their
"proprietary" approach to making children learn what they think they need to know
month-by-month, year-by-year. Often, it seems that these rival visions of education are
irreconcilable.
Most professional educators and politicians dismiss Holt's work as "romantic" and
impractical because of the radical changes it could make to compulsory schooling. However,
Holt's ideas about teaching and learning are important and practical and they continue to be
implemented and adapted by a variety of homeschooling parents and independent alternative
schools.
About Pat Farenga:
Patrick Farenga worked closely with the author and teacher John Holt, until Holt's
death in 1985. He is the President of Holt Associates Inc. and was the Publisher
of Growing Without Schooling magazine (GWS) from 1985 until it stopped publishing
in 2001. GWS was the nation's first periodical about homeschooling, started by Holt
in 1977.
Farenga speaks as a homeschooling expert at education conferences as well as on
commercial radio and television talk shows. His appearances discussing homeschooling
include The Today Show, Voice of America, Geraldo, Learning Matters, Parenting Today,
Fox and Friends, The Exhausted School at Carnegie Hall and the National University
of Colombia-Bogota.
Farenga and his wife unschooled their daughters, ages 24, 21, and 18. In addition to
writing for GWS for twenty years, he has written many articles and book chapters about
homeschooling, including the entry about homeschooling for the International Encyclopedia
of Education, 3rd Edition (Elsevier, 2010).
Pat Farenga is the co-author of TEACH YOUR OWN: THE JOHN HOLT BOOK OF HOMESCHOOLING
(Perseus) and provides information and coaching through his blog and websites at:

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