School Is Bad For Children By John Holt

School is a place where we learn abundance amount of material that could help us become successful. Yet, is school the only place where we can learn what is required to be successful? It is often debated whether we can still learn what we learn in school outside of school. Some people say that children don’t need teachers to teach them. They can teach themselves in a better way than anyone could. They can figure out how to teach themselves and learn from their own mistakes. John holt in his article “School is Bad for Children” argues this point by saying that instead of traditional school, “let the child learn what every educated person must someday learn, how to measure his own understanding, how to know what he knows and doesn’t know” (Holt). …show more content…
Since Holt is against the school system, he surely is against this rule too. Holt believes that children are discouraged to come up with an answer because they “learn that to be wrong, uncertain, confused is a crime” (Holt). Children should be allowed to correct themselves and not have their intelligence graded. Yet, is it really beneficial to allow students to measure their own understanding. Everyone knows if a child is given the opportunity to grade his or her paper, he or she would definitely give themselves an A. Yet, teachers who have a lot of experience would grade their papers based on correctness and would point out what they need to work on. Therefore, Amy tan would not agree with Holt because grades are what helps her find what her children need to work on, so she could give them enormous amount of practice to imperfect their skills. Grades help parents measure where their children stand and how much more work their children need to do. If their children get a low grade, “ the devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A” (Chau). If a child grades its own paper, they would definitely think they did a great job and doesn’t need any practice, However, a paper graded by experienced teacher in school would help a parent like chau help their children. Most of …show more content…
He or she would wait for someone to hold his or her hand to lead to path with no obstacle. Similarly, in the world of learning, a child would seek for a teacher to learn what he or she desires to learn. When Holt wrote his essay about the how we need to “let the child learn what every educated person must someday learn, how to measure his own understanding, how to know what he knows and doesn’t know”(Holt), the school system was different. Nowadays everything has been changed. Grades are what determine your rank, what college you will attendant, and many more things. Therefore, parents like Amy Tan totally disagree with Holt’s ideas. Like any other parent, Chinese parents want to prepare their children for the future by making them struggle in the beginning and get better at the end. If children are left to travel the path with many obstacles, it would take them a lot of time to reach their destiny. Children will not be satisfied until they are good at they