ABSTRACT
This chapter contains extracts from two classic books on learning. John Holt looks at learning in the classroom context from the perspective of the learner and draws attention to the ways in which the school can be a ‘place where children learn to be stupid’. He argues that school routines can create contexts in which children can feel so afraid to make mistakes that they learn to make themselves dependent on the teacher. They begin to lack confidence to trust their own perceptions, to correct their own mistakes. In this fear of ‘failing’, they do not see school as a place where they can put their own knowledge and curiosity to work, but become ‘frozen’ in what Holt calls a ‘school stupidity’. Holt calls for schools to try to make themselves places where children are encouraged to be independent, to say ‘I see it, I get it, I can do it!’
