How Children Fail in School

the note-taking

HOW CHILDREN FAIL
(by John Holt, Pitman, 1965)

1. Most children in school fail. - Close to 40% of pupil who dropout before they finish in high school. - Be push up through the grades and out of the schools without caring if they know anything or not. - 'Raise our standards' much higher, classrooms will bulge with kids who can't pass the test to get into the next class. - Excepting a good handful student, they fail to develop the tremend-ous capacity for learning, understanding, and creating.
2. Why do they fail? - Because they are afraid, bored, and confused. + Felling afraid: Of failing, disappointing or displeasing + Felling bored: * Things are given & asked to do are trivial, dull. * Limited and narrow demands (of their intelligence, capabilities,& talents). + Felling confused: * Most of the torrent of words that pours over them (just little or no sense).
3. Four major topics: Strategy; Fear and Failure; Real Learning; and How Schools Fail. a. Strategy: the ways which children try to meet, or dodge, the demands that adults make on them in school. b. Fear and Failure: the interaction in children of fear and failure, & the effect of this on strategy & learning. c. Real Learning: the difference between what children appear to know or are expected to know, & what they really know. d. How Schools Fail: the ways in which schools foster bad strategies, raise children's fears, produce learning (fragmentary, distorted, short-lived, & generally fail to meet the real needs of children).