Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Cory Doctorow on John Holt on Kid-Centered Learning

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I’ve become a real Cory Doctorow fan ever since reading Little Brother (and yes, I did double check that.) It’s a great novel for geeks and non geeks alike, and I wish I could remember who I loaned my copy to.

Anyway, Cory has a post at Boing Boing today that talks about his recent reading of John Holt’s classic How Children Learn which I remember reading parts of quite a while ago. (It’s obviously something I need to revisit, along with many others.) He pulls out some really great quotes that just make me yearn for that type of learning environment for my own children. I loved this one snip:

Most resonant for me was his description of kids’ learning unfolding from the natural passionate obsessions that overtake them.

Me too. I remember when I was in sixth grade and Mrs. Tharp let me go outside of the regular essay assignment to write another chapter in my exceedingly exciting novel about a camping trip gone bad. (I wish fan fiction was around back then.) Same with Ms. Riley when I was a sophomore in high school who let me write the bulk of my journalism stories around sports related topics, and Dr. DeCavalcante when I was a senior who instead of doing the standard report about John Updike let me instead try my own hand at a short story a la A&P (one of my all-time favorites) written in Updike’s voice. It wasn’t the story that he assessed, it was my attention to style and diction, and I loved trying to replicate the cadences and dialogue. And even though I knew the story wasn’t great, I got an A. (I’m an English geek, I know.)

So I’m wondering what memories along these lines others have. And I’m wondering how much we feel we’re able to let kids do along these line in our classrooms.

Btw, Doctorow’s post is worth it for the comments as well…

Comments

  2. Wendy Droke says

    I remember a college English professor who asked me to write a paper on the Communist Manifesto and Darwin’s Evolution of Species. I wrote the entire paper as a “short story” from the standpoint of what our college would look like as a socialist (a-la Marx) society. I was able to tie in the knowledge from the readings as (long) footnotes referencing the texts and showing I knew and could support my statements from both the socialist and evolutionary standpoints.

    My take on this is a little different – I am a math geek, not an English geek. However, this gave me a method for approaching the paper that was easier for me to get into. It is one of the few papers I truly enjoyed writing; I probably spent twice as much time on that one assignment than any other paper I wrote for the class. And certainly scored the highest grade I received all year.

  3. michelle says

    In our high school AP English class (senior year, I think), our teacher allowed us to revise The Canterbury Tales for modern times (with some obvious restrictions) and then present it in whatever format we chose. My group wrote a screen play, and we videotaped it around town. Our class was in stitches while watching the video. I have never forgotten the stories of The Canterbury Tales, plus my group and I learned that some morality issues from the 14th century actually applied to us.

  4. Paul C says

    “Most resonant for me was his description of kids’ learning unfolding from the natural passionate obsessions that overtake them.”

    I love that quote. It’s the goal of every great teacher.

    For me it was reading all the science fiction I could lay my hands on in the late 60’s: Verne, Clarke, Asimov, Temple.

    Unfortunately it was not motivated by my English teachers of the day.

    I was a great self motivator.

  5. Kate Tabor says

    Doctorow sounds like he is espousing “progressive education” of the John Dewey, Francis Parker variety (Hello, 1901 calling!). For years this has been viewed by many as something you scrape off your shoe not something that we should embrace. Curious how in the wake of school reform (Goals 2000, NCLB) we are catching glimpses of “real” learning again. Can’t test that.

    I, too, loved Doctorow’s Little Brother. It is a book for geeks and for anyone who worries at all about our disappearing civil liberties.

  6. Jane Lute says

    Wow, your reference to John Holt jolts me because suddenly I am aware that the wise ones, the voices, of education [didn’tcallitreformthen] of my generation are now, like the Vietnam War and — even!!!– the Sixties! — and JFK and EVERYTHING in the social-political realm since then, have slipped into an amnesiac limbo, a time neither HOT NOW! nor History. Things in this Limbo are not necessarily not important but are for now sidelined.

    Please let’s remember John Holt, Herb Kohl, Dewey, Maria Montessori, Piaget, Jonasthan Kozol (still, thank goodness, alive and writing), Ned Gorman, Dorothy Day, Saul Alinsky and all concerned about the education of poor children.

  7. Jenny Luca says

    Great teachers inspire their students in so many ways. I’ll never forget feeling like the kid who nobody noticed. The I hit Grade 3 and Mr. Burnham. He walked past my desk on our first day together, looked at me and said, “Hmmmn, Jenny O’Brien, I think I’m going to like you”. A more powerful statement had never been said to me. It gave me permission to shine. From then on my confidence grew and I have Mr.Burnham to thank for that. As an adult I got the chance to meet him. He didn’t remember me. No mind, I remembered him and the power of his words.