According to John Holt and Daniel H. Pink, authors of “School is Bad for Children” and “School’s Out”, our education system has some major flaws. Holt and Pink both feel that school stifles a child’s interest and enthusiasm for learning. They recommend bringing in non-traditional teachers, and attendance should not be compulsory, they both have the same opinion, that school should be interesting and enjoyable for students.
Holt believes that the curriculum doesn’t allow children to become an individual. He feels that school demolishes a child’s creativity and eagerness to learn. Ever since they started school they were told to sit down and listen to a teacher talk, the students are not allowed to socialize in the classroom. They are made to feel that school is only for learning; Holt states that we teach children that school is separate from living “You come to school to learn.”(64) He feels that school teaches children that they cannot be trusted to learn on their own. In his essay he states, “Everything we teach about reading, a task far simpler than many that the child has already mastered, says to him, “If we don’t make you read, you won’t, and if you don’t do it exactly the way we tell you, you can’t.” (64)
Daniel Pink (90) refers to school as “Starting life with a 12-year jail sentence, in which bad habits are the only curriculum learned.” He feels that home schooling is possibly the largest and most successful education reform movement of the last two decades. (90) Pink considers home schooling almost perfectly in agreement with the four animating values of free agency which are: having freedom, being authentic, putting yourself on the line, and defining your own success. (91) In a public school he feels children don’t have any freedom, they aren’t allowed to move until a bell rings or a teacher permits them to. In high-school students can’t really chose what they want to study, in a home school environment children can be in control of their own...