How Children Fail

How Children Fail

Author : John C Holt

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To start with, this is a very nicely written book. I would recommend that anyone interested in education or helping children grow and learn read the book, rather than this summary. It's a beautiful series of his notes and learnings from classes he has conducted and watched. And even as far as summaries go, I would strongly recommend that one reads this well articulated review by Kevin C Costley .
In the book, John Holt's core message seems to be that teachers and schools often get caught up in the act of teaching. Specifically in teaching subjects or knowledge, and thereby get in the way of the actual goal of enabling students to learn and build their own mental model of the world. To this end, he says that students tend to act as either:

• Thinkers - These are students who are engaging with what they are learning, thinking about it, trying it out and thus successfully building heir own mental model of what they learn. Even if they fail along the way, they are learning from the failure, and building up towards actual understanding.
• Producers - These are students who develop strategies to "succeed" in class. They have figured out that school is a system where correct answers are rewarded. They have found more energy efficient strategies to get a bunch of correct answers, please teachers and be left alone than working hard and learning. He calls them producers because they have strategies to produce correct answers without actually learning the ideas behind the concept.

Further, John Holt goes on to say that students are forced into this producer mindset because of 3 main challenges:

1. Fear - Teachers and schools can easily seem like intimidating places. There is even a fear of seeming stupid and being made fun of by students, even if the school seems like a nice and safe environment. This fear of seeming stupid and fear of temporary failure can drive students to producer strategies.
2. Boredom - It is very difficult in a school setting for any student to be actively interested in what is being taught at any point of time for so many hours in a day. Even if a student is ready to be engaged and learn, they might at the moment be interested in a whole other subject area. There is of course the highly likely situation of students simply being bored and wanting to do something other than conventional classroom learning.
3. Confusion - The material we teach, the language we use and the concepts at hand aren't always straightforward. This means that there is scope for contradictions and lack of clarity in explanations. If students are not made aware that what they are learning has its own caveats and faults, they believe that they are at fault for being confused. This confusion can drive them to producer strategies, because they no longer expect that they will be able to think and learn the material.

His recommendation is that teachers accept the above 3 challenges, rather than ignore them. Students should be told that failure is not just okay, but is a common step in the learning process. They should be told that it's okay to be interested in learning other things now and then, and should be allowed to explore a bit. They should be made aware that teachers aren't always perfectly right, and that communication and concepts can be confusing.
By levelling with students like this, he believes that they might remain more active participants in the learning process. Importantly, he believes that the student's active participation and interest is what really matters in learning, much more than any technique or approach that a teacher can adopt.