Query for Home-Schoolers and Learning as Adults

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As part of my decluttering I am revisiting some of our books and deciding whether I really need to leave them on the shelves or should someone else have the pleasure of reading them. The latest to join the discard pile is John Holt's Never Too Late. Holt (1923-1985) was an American author and educator who finished his life as a strong proponent of homeschooling. He was also a pioneer in youth rights. Never Too Late is about him taking up playing the cello as an adult. Throughout the book, he expresses some of his beliefs about how children (and adults) learn or don't learn, relalting his ideas to his own experiences. He wrote a number of books about educating children and his home-schooling newsletter Growing Without School ran from 1977 to 2001 although Holt himself died in 1985. He believed that children learnt best when they weren't coerced into learning – when they were ' provided with a rich and stimulating learning environment would learn what they are ready to learn, when they are ready to learn it'. His philosophy is documented in Wikipedia and I wondered if any of the home-schoolers among our members had ever heard of him. I also found it a bit poignant that he died only five years about he wrote his book about his musical journey.