John Holt's School Is Bad For Children

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Everyone has heard kids claim that school is bad for them, which is partially true. It is bad when school becomes a place where children become ashamed for their curiosity and hide questions because they are afraid of not catching onto the subject fast enough. As John Holt says in ‘School is Bad for Children,’ “in a great many other ways [they] learn that [they are] worthless, untrustworthy, fit only to take other people’s orders, a blank sheet for other people to write on.” Though school can be bad, it is not bad for truly learning or finding friends, discovering what one is interested in, or even finding out what career path they want to take in life. John Holt’s “School is Bad for Children” is a little too extreme for the real reasons why school is bad. …show more content…

Personally, school has helped me find friends, excel in sports, have the normal teenage “hardships,” and has put teacher role models in my life. Believe me, I say I want to drop out many times a week because of the irrational amount of stress from classes, but I also know that it is a part of life most go through. John Holt describes school as a miserable place where there’s absolutely no happiness, or in other words, Hell. He says that students learns “that to be wrong, uncertain, confused, is a crime.” But in reality, eventually everyone has to learn that in the real world they are going to be wrong countless of times, uncertainty can lead you to making a great mistake, and being confused can cost you a

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