“I learned whatever I learned about children by prolonged and careful observation, and even more importantly, as a result of continued failures to teach them, in more or less orthodox school fashions, the things people said they should learn.”

Born in New York City in 1923, Holt attended private schools but felt they were irrelevant to his education. He once said, “Most of what I know I did not learn in school and indeed was not even ‘taught’.” He described his childhood as “gloomy” and said he was unpopular as a teenager but that at boarding school and in college people lined up outside his door for tutoring and advice.

He served in a submarine during World War II, an experience he later described as one of the best learning environments he was ever in. After the war, he joined the United World Federalists, an organization working towards world peace.

After working with them for six years, he toured Europe for a year and, on his return to America, planned to become a farmer but his sister suggested that, as he was wonderful with children, he might like to teach at a school which had just opened near Aspen. The school planned to grow their own food and John could learn something of farming there. John made arrangements to work there as a cook without pay. He slept in a granary on the premises until another teacher quit and he was given the job. …