Holt and Pink

What They Think

According to the authors of the essay’s “School is Bad for Children” and “School’s Out” John Holt and Daniel Pink think there are many flaws in the United States’ educational system. They also feel that there is a need for a change. They recommend and think that the teachers should have different types of teaching techniques, the curriculum should not just be taught in the class room, but taught with example, and that standardized test should be abolished.

Holt believes that the curriculum doesn’t allow children to become and individual. Every since they started school they were told to sit down and pay attention to a teacher talk. That’s it. The student cannot talk to his friends or walk outside and that can only be done on school trips. Holt believes that a student will learn by leaving the school building. He believes that the student should be supplied with the hands on approach to learning. If the class is learning about an event in history they should be brought to a historical place and learn by actually seeing what they are being told. This will give the child an opinion. When the child has an opinion this makes a class discussion more interesting because now the discussion is not only between the teachers to the students. Now the student actually has something to say back. Now let’s look at it from Pink’s point of view. He thinks that the teacher is not keeping the students attention. He thinks that the teacher is forcing them to learn instead of wanting them to learn. If the student were given more choices for what they would want to learn instead of being forced to learn. Due to the lack of classes that caught the attention of the students, the students fall of task. The army is the only thing trying to give the students something to look forward to because they are offering free schooling and a job. The parents that are not pleased with how the school is teaching there child are just removing their child from the school and home schooling them.

Another issue that these authors had was with standardized testing. Holt believes a test can’t tell how smart a student is. All test tell you is what a student does wrong. If a test has ten questions on it and a student gets five wrong and five right. A student will most likely get in trouble for the five wrong be for the student receives praise for the five he got right. This both Pink and Holt believe that students have different learning styles. Some students may not be good test takers. Others may, but know one is focusing on those students who are not good test takers. The school system only looks at one learning style and everyone can’t adjust to this learning style.

Both authors have different opinions on standardized testing. Pink believes that the test is a way of having control of, or controlling the students, and Holt just does not like them and believes that tests do not help students. A common phrase you will here a teacher say is if you do not get good grades on your test you will not get in to a good school.