The Plowboy Interview: John Holt

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And even then, 99% of our nation's schoolchildren went right on filling out workbooks, just as they always had.

PLOWBOY: Wasn't there a groundswell of interest in truly alternative private schools, though?

HOLT: Oh, a few such places sprang up. But if you were to guess that, at the peak of the socalled educational reform movement, there were 1,000 small alternative schools with an average of 50 students each-and that's a generous estimate, by the way-then you could conclude that a total of about 50,000 children were enrolled in private alternative programs. But the school age population in the United States was some 30 or 40 million children! Compared to that massive figure, 50,000 youngsters is just a drop in the bucket.

PLOWBOY: Weren't you optimistic about such schools at the time?

HOLT: Oh yes, I was saying, "Here comes the wave of the future! Everybody join the parade!" The truth, though, was that all of us reformers went through a mighty big mountain of labor to produce -in effect-a small, dried up, wizened mouse.

PLOWBOY: But if child-initiated learning really works, why did a movement advocating that approach fail?

HOLT: Well, the innovators themselves were partly at fault. Some of us actually knew more about what we were against that what we were for . . . a few were trying to work out hangups about their own childhoods . . . and many of us thought of open education as a "secret" motivating device that could be used to help children learn the same old school curriculum.

But failures on the part of some innovators didn't really kill the alternative education movement.

PLOWBOY: What did?

HOLT: It was doomed from the start, simply because nobody really wanted to make the schools better. You can't believe how much I hated facing that truth. I started out believing that most teachers were potential allies whogiven the chance to really help students learnwould jump at the opportunity. But then I'd talk to administrators arid teachers in alternative public school programs, and find out that their co-workers were treating them like pariahs. I know of teachers who became involved in an Albuquerque, New Mexico alternative education project, as an example, whose former colleagues wouldn't play golf, drink beer, or even talk with them anymore!

And the teachers who didn't want improved schools were as sore as hell about the experiments that were going on. Of course, even those folks wanted some changes . . . like having fewer children in class, and less paper work-and more money-for teachers. But they also felt that the basic educational system-"You students do what I want, or 'POW!' ' was perfectly fine.

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