We don’t have to make human beings smart. They are born smart. All we have to do is stop doing the things that made them stupid. -John Holt, from How Children Fail

Play, along with its alter ego, storytelling and acting, [is] the universal learning medium. Children, at all ages, expect fantasy to generate – indeed they cannot stop it from doing so – an ongoing dialogue to which they bring a broad range of intellectual and emotional knowledge at a very early age. -Vivian Gussin Paley, […]

{speaking of a child struggling in her class} [he] is not a slow learner. He is a cautious researcher. He takes each new idea and collects data on its application until he is satisfied that he knows every response and reaction it might receive in the outside world. He expects mistakes and wants them to […]

We cannot have real learning in school if we think it is our duty and our right to tell children what they must learn.  We cannot know, at any moment, what particular bit of knowledge or understanding a child needs most, will strengthen and best fit his model of reality. Only he can do this. […]

…in no other arena do we take for granted so asymmetrical a relationship as that between parent and child. -Alfie Kohn, from Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes