This article was originally published in Paths of Learning, Vol. 1 Number 1 Spring 1999. It was slightly revised in November, 2003.
本文最初发表于1999年春季第一期第一卷《学习之路》，后于2003年略有修订。
Patrick Farenga worked closely with the late author/teacher John Holt from 1981 until Holt’s death in 1985. He published Growing Without Schooling magazine for sixteen years, as well as many other materials, articles, and books about unschooling. He continues Holt’s work by writing and speaking about learning outside of school for children and adults. His most recent book is Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling (Perseus, 2003).
Patrick Farenga和已故作家/教师John Holt自1981年起密切合作，直至1985年Holt逝世。他发行Growing Without Schooling(《无学校教育的成长》)杂志长达16年，还发表了关于非学校教育的若干材料、文章、书籍。他继续Holt的工作，就儿童和成人的校外学习进行写作演讲。他最近的书为《自学：John Holt家庭学校手册》（Perseus出版社1993年出版）。
Far from being a new idea, homeschooling has grown and developed over the centuries, and came into focus in the late 20th century as the forces of standardization and cultural homogenization took over schools and people sought alternatives to them.
家庭学校绝非新潮理念，它已成长发展了数个世纪，20世纪末，随着标准化和文化同质化的力量左右了学校，人们开始寻找不同的教育方式，家庭学校成了焦点。
Homeschooling didnt emerge from the vision or work of any one person, and it is not the province of any one political party. By focusing on the work of author and teacher John Holt though, one can trace not only a personal journey from school reformer to unschooler,[1] but also an intellectual and educational legacy that led to homeschooling that is little reported by conservative and liberal media alike.
家庭学校并非从任何个人的愿景或工作中浮现，也不属于任何政治党派的领域。通过关注作家及教师John Holt的工作，我们不仅可以追随他从学校改革者到非学校教育(unschooler)[1]拥护者的个人历程，还可以追随保守媒体和自由媒体都闭口不谈的家庭学校学术.遗产。
The sixties and seventies were times of great ferment for new ideas about education. Some education and social critics, like John Holt, became popular writers by questioning methods of schooling. The battles over look-say reading methods versus phonics, training teachers to be gentle facilitators or drill instructors, whether to encourage hands-on learning or test-taking skills, were well-worn battles to these writers even in the sixties. Many school reformers, such as Herbert Kohl, noted that it is a wide variety of methods, materials, schedules, and techniques that help children learn and the teacher should have the freedom to use any combination of things and ideas to help students. Further, some writers, such as A.S. Neill and Holt, suggested that the student should have complete freedom to choose how, when, and from whom they wanted to learn. In the early sixties, Paul Goodman, in Compulsory Miseducation and Growing Up Absurd, argued that compelling children to attend school is not the best use of their youth, and that education is more a community function than an institutional one. This idea was developed and amplified over the years but many authors, but most forcefully by John Holt.
六、七十年代是教育新观点发酵的时代。有些教育及社会批评家如John Holt因质疑学校教育的方法而成了颇受关注的作家。识字阅读法与看字读音阅读法、培养老师成为温和的协助者还是成为教练，是鼓励学习实践呢，还是鼓励应试技能，诸如此类的争论即使在六十年代对于这些作家也已司空见惯。许多学校改革者如Herbert Kohl提出，有各种不同的方法、材料、计划和技巧帮助学生学习，老师们应有自由使用任何组合和观点来帮助学生。还有些作者如A.S. Neill和 Holt则建议学生应完全有自由选择他们如何学习、何时学习、向谁学习。六十年代初，Paul Goodman在《义务错误教育及荒谬成长》一书中提出，强迫孩子们上学并非度过童年的最佳方法，教育应该是社区功能而非体制功能。历年来，这一观点被很多作家发展壮大，John Holt的贡献尤其突出。
John Holt was a fifth grade teacher who worked in private schools. In 1964 (see bibliography for current edition information) his book How Children Fail created an uproar with his observations that forcing children to learn makes them unnaturally self-conscious about learning and stifles children’s initiative and creativity by making them focus on how to please the teacher and the school with the answers they will reward best.
John Holt是一所私立学校的五年级教师。1964年（参见当前版本中的参考书目），他的《孩子如何失败》一书产生轰动，他认为强迫孩子学习使他们对学习不自然地有了自我意识，让他们关注如何用老师和学校最欣赏的答案取悦他们扼杀了孩子们的主动性和创造力。
To paraphrase Holt, the only difference between a good student and a bad student is that the good student is careful not to forget what he studied until after the test is taken. His subsequent book, How Children Learn (1967), also became widely known广为人知. The two are still in print and together they have sold over a million and a half copies and have been translated into over 14 languages.
按照Holt的说法，好学生和坏学生的唯一区别是好学生在考试结束之后还记得所学的内容。他随后的《孩子们如何学习》（1967）一书也广为人知。这两本书仍在出版，共发行了150万册，被翻译成14种以上语言。
Holt went on to become a visiting lecturer at Harvard and Berkeley, but his tenure at both places was short-lived. Holt did not feel the school establishment was serious about change in the ways he wanted to go, such as changing the relationship of the child to the teacher and the school to the community. During this time Holt wrote two books about why he thought schools werent working and how they could be made better: The Underachieving School (1969) and What Do I Do Monday? (1970). Holt was intrigued by the free school movement of the late sixties and supported it as a way to help children who werent thriving in conventional schools. However by the early seventies Holt developed reservations about free schools and proposed other ways to reunite living and learning.
后来，Holt成为了哈佛和伯克利的访问讲师，不过他在两处的任期都很短暂。Holt觉得校方对他所期望的变化比如师生关系、学校与社区的关系，并不热衷。在此期间，Holt写了两本书，讲述为什么他认为学校无用以及学校可以如何改善：《未能达标的学校》（1969）和《周一我做什么？》（1970）。Holt对六十年代末的自由学校运动甚感兴趣，也非常支持，将其当作帮助在传统学校不能茁壮成长的孩子的方法。不过到了七十年代初，Holt对自由学校产生了保留态度，提倡其他方式将生活和学习相结合。
In Freedom and Beyond (1972) Holt openly questioned and analyzed the free school movement, and in particular what educators really mean when they use the words freedom, discipline, authority, and choice. Most importantly, it is in this book that Holt decides that bringing more freedom into the classroom is not the solution to educations problems; he recasts the problem as a social one rather than a technical one. He writes, People , even children, are educated much more by the whole society around them and the general quality of life in it than they are by what happens in schools. The dream of many school people, that schools can be places where virtue is preserved and passed on in a world otherwise empty of if, now seems to me a sad and dangerous illusion. It might have worked in the Middle Ages; it cant work in a world of cars, jets, TV, and the mass media. …The beyond in the title Freedom and Beyond means, therefore, that we must look beyond the question of reforming schools and at the larger question of schools and schooling itself. Can they do all the things we ask them to do? Are they the best means of doing it? What might be other or better ways? (Freedom and Beyond, p.4)
在《超越自由》（1972年）一书中，Holt公开质疑分析了自由学校运动，尤其是教育者使用自由、纪律、权威和选择这些词时，他们真正的意思是什么。最重要的是，正是在这本书中，Holt认为赋予教室更多自由并非教育问题的出路；他将问题定义为社会问题而非技术问题。他写道，人们，即使是孩童，从周围的整个社会及其整体生活质量得到的教育比从学校得到的多得多。我觉得，许多学校人士的梦想——学校是世界所稀缺的优良品质得以保留传承的地方——现在看起来不啻为悲哀而危险的幻觉。在中世纪这可能没错；但在充斥着汽车、飞机、电视和大众传媒……的世界，并非如此。因此，书名《超越自由》中“超越”的意思是我们必须超越改革学校这一问题，而要审视学校和学校教育本身这一更大问题。它们能否做我们要它们做的所有事情？它们是否是做这些事情的最佳方法？其他方法或者更佳方法是什么？（《超越自由》p.4）
Other writers at this time also proposed ways to alter compulsory schooling. Hal Bennett wrote what he called “an operators manual” in 1972 entitled No More Public School about how you can take your child out of public school and how to educate him at home. In The 12-Year Sentence (1974), a collection of essays, one of the writers proposed that gifted parents should be able to teach their own children if they wish. But it was Ivan Illichs Deschooling Society (1971) that most influenced Holt. After Deschooling Society appeared, Holt studied and corresponded with Illich at length, and was deeply influenced by Illichs analysis, particularly with his analysis that school serves a deep social function by firmly maintaining the status quo of social class for the majority of students. Further, schools view education as a commodity they sell, rather than a life-long process they can aid, and this, according to Illich, creates a substance that is not equally distributed, is used to judge people unfairly, and, based on their lack of school credentials, prevents people from assuming roles they are otherwise qualified for.
当时，其他作者也提出了改变义务学校教育的方法。1972年，Hal Bennett写了他所谓的“使用手册”——《别了，公立学校》，告诉你如何将自己的孩子带出公立学校，在家教育。在论文集《12年的宣判》中，有位作者提议有能力的家长如果愿意可以自己教孩子。但是对Holt最大影响的乃是Ivan Illichs的《非学校教育社会》（1971年）。该书问世之后，Holt与Illichs长期共同学习，互相通信，深受Illichs分析的影响，尤其学校通过坚守大多数学生的社会阶级现状担任着深刻的社会功能这一分析。更进一步地，学校将教育当做它们销售的商品，而非它们可以帮助的终身过程，根据Illichs的观点，这产生了不能平均分布的物质，还用以不公平地评判人们，由于他们缺乏学校文凭，阻止了他们承担其实他们能够胜任的角色。
By the late seventies Holt had given up on the possibility that schools would welcome and assist the sorts of changes he and others were suggesting. He sought ways to make these changes as individuals and communities, thus running around, rather than confronting, school resistance to these ideas. One tactic Holt wrote about was to fight for childrens rights, which he thought would not only help kids escape bad schools, but also help them escape bad social situations by granting children the full protection and responsibilities of US citizenship. Holt’s Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children (1974) continues to stir passions on both sides of the argument, particularly now that some of the scenarios Holt discusses, such as giving children the right to choose their own legal guardian, the right to control their own learning, and the right to legal and financial responsibility, have come into our courts twenty-five years later. A concept that runs throughout Holt’s work gets further developed in this book. Even though our institutions may not be the way we want them to be in order to bring about a better world, we can still act, in our daily lives, as far as we can, as if that world existed. For instance, we don’t have to wait for the courts to grant children the right of privacy for us to act as if they have a right to privacy. In this book Holt also expands on his theme that it is not what children are taught, but how they are treated, that determines the sort of adult they will become. Holt continued to develop these ideas and practices in his next book, which led directly to his work in homeschooling.
到七十年代末，Holt已经放弃了学校愿意接受帮助他和其他人提议的各种变化的可能性。他寻找方法以个人和社区形式进行这些变化，从而以迂回而不是对抗的方式应对学校对这些观点的抵制。Holt写的一种战术是争取儿童权利，他觉得这不仅帮助孩子逃离恶劣的学校，也通过赋予儿童美国公民的完全保护和责任帮助他们逃离不良社会环境。Holt的《逃离童年：孩子的需求和权力》（1974）继续在争论双方引起轩然大波，尤其是Holt所讨论的一些情景如给孩子选择自己的法定监护人的权利、控制自己学习的权利、法律和经济责任的权利，在25年后，都出现在我们法庭上。贯穿Holt工作的理念在此书中得到进一步发展。尽管我们的机制并非如我们期望的那样可以带来更美好的世界，我们仍可以在日常生活中尽自己所能地行动，就好像那个世界已经存在一样。比如，我们不必等到法庭赋予孩子们隐私权，我们可以假设他们已经有了隐私权。在本书中，Holt也拓展了他的主题：决定孩子们成为哪种成人的，不是给他们教什么内容，而是如何对待他们。Holt在他的下一本书中继续发展这些观点和实践，而这些直接都引向他在家庭学校领域中的工作。
In Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better (1976), Holt not only described actual non-compulsory schools, learning centers, and informal learning arrangements in action, but also proposed a new Underground Railroad to help children escape from S-chools.[2]Some may say that such a railroad would be unfair, since only a few children could get on it. But most slaves could not escape from slavery, either, yet no one suggested or would suggest that because all the slaves could not be freed, none should be. Besides, we have to blaze a new trial if only so that others may follow. The Childrens’ Underground Railroad, like all movements of social protest and change, must begin small; it will grow larger as more children ride it. (Instead of Education, p. 218)
在《取代教育：帮助人们做得更好的方法》（1976年）中，Holt不仅描述了行动中的实际非义务教育、学习中心、非正式学习安排，还提出了新的地下铁路帮助孩子们逃离学校(S-chools)[2]。可能有人会说这种铁路不公平，因为只有少数孩子才能享受。但是，绝大多数奴隶也无法脱离奴隶制，可没有人建议或者会建议既然不是所有奴隶都可以释放，那就都别释放。另外，如果只有我们开了先河，他人才可能跟随，那么我们就开先河。孩子的地铁，像所有社会抗议和变化一样，必须从小规模开始；随着更多孩子搭乘，它会壮大。（《取代教育》，p.218）
In this book Holt proposed removing children from school legally or as an act of civil disobedience. While the education establishment barely recognized this particular book of Hol’ts, it struck a chord with some parents. Some wrote to Holt explaining that they were teaching their children at home legally, others that they were doing so underground. Some were rural families, some city dwellers, others were in communes.
在这本书中，Holt提议让孩子合法地或以文明反抗的形式退出学校。虽然教育机构并不认可Holt的这本书，它却打动了一些家长。有些人给Holt写信，说他们在家合法地教孩子，有些说他们偷偷这么做。有些是农村家庭，有些住城里，有些在社区。
Intrigued, Holt corresponded with them all and decided to create a newsletter that would help put these like-minded people in touch with one another. In August of 1977 the first issue of Growing Without Schooling (GWS) was published, and the nations, and probably the worlds, first periodical about homeschooling was born.
受到启发，Holt和所有人都通信，决定创办杂志，帮助这些志同道合的人彼此联系。1977年8月，第一期《无学校教育的成长》（GWS）发行了，国内，甚至可能是世界第一份关于家庭学校的期刊诞生了。
Holt wanted to help bring about a social change not by writing from a distance while employed at a university or think tank, but by being engaged in action with like-minded people. It is, I feel, important to note that Holt never believed that more than a very small percentage of parents wo homeschool even if it were a widely accepted practice, which is why he never gave up trying to help schools change. Susannah Sheffer writes that during the last years of Holt’s life he was collecting material for a book about school reform, indicating that even though he had made conscious resolutions to stop trying to change what he could not change, he apparently never quite lost the hope that if shown the way more clearly we would do what needed to be done. Holt urged educators and parents to catch the spirit of unschooling, be inspired by the variety of approaches and methods homeschoolers show, and reconsider assumptions about schooling based on what ordinary parents, as well as some alternative schools, were doing with children. It is in this regard that Holt is so different from many education writers and school reformers.
Holt希望与志同道合的人一起行动带来社会变化，而不是在大学或智囊团任职，然后远远观望写点东西，我觉得有一点非常重要，即要注意尽管家庭学校广为接受，但Holt相信仅有很少一部分家长愿意家庭学校，这就是他从未放弃尝试帮助学校改变的原因。Susannah Sheffer写道，在Holt生命中最后几年，他在为写学校改革方面的书而收集资料，说明尽管他已经明确表示停止尝试改变他无法改变的东西，显然他从未失去信心——如果有人能更清楚地为我们指明道路，我们会做需要做的事情。Holt敦促教育者和家长抓住非学校教育的精神，以家庭学校者所展示的各种途径方法为动力，根据普通家长和一些另类学校所做的，重新考虑我们到底可以为孩子们作些什么。正是在这方面，Holt和众多教育作家及学校改革者截然不同。
He never felt that only trained teachers should teach students. Holt never studied education in school, which he considered an advantage since his mind was thus not full of assumptions about what kids can and can’t do. He was a practicioner who learned from what worked and what didnt in his experience, and he felt very strongly that any concerned adult could do as well or better than he in this regard.
他从未觉得只有经过培训的老师才能教学生。Holt从未在学校学习过教育学，他认为这是个优点，因为他的脑子里不会充斥着孩子们可以做什么不可以做什么的观点。他是位实践家，从自己的经验中学习什么可行什么不可行，他坚定地相信在此方面，任何有心的成人都可以和他做得一样好，甚至比他更好。
In this sense, his book Never Too Late: My Musical Autobiography (1978) is instructive not only as a desciption of how an adult learns new things, in this case how to play the cello, but also as testimony against the view that one must become expert in something before one can truly love it and do it effectively with others. Holt (and we who heard him play!) knew he would never be in a league with Yo-Yo Ma, but that never stopped him from playing the cello. Likewise, Holts support of homeschooling parents, many of whom have never been professional teachers, is inspiring. Holt often wrote that there is no need to duplicate institutional teaching and assumptions in non-institutional settings, and he therefore saw no need to make parents anxious about their abilities to learn from their children how to best teach them. As long as children and parents communicate clearly, solutions can be found for all situations, utilizing family and community resources.
在这方面，他的《犹未为晚：我的音乐自传》（1978年）一书颇具指导意义，不仅描述了成人如何学新东西，如他如何学大提琴，也反驳了一个人必须成为某样事物的专家才能真正爱上它，才能有效地与人合作这种观点。Holt（ 还有我们听过他演奏的人）知道自己绝对不可能和马友友相提并论，但那从未阻止他拉大提琴。同样地，Holt对家庭学校的家长们的支持也鼓舞人心，这些家长从来也不是专业教师。Holt多次写道，没有必要再非机构环境中复制机构性教育和理念，所以，他觉得没有必要让家长们担心自己没有能力从孩子们学习，没有能力用最有效的方式教他们。只要孩子们和家长沟通清楚，利用家庭和社区资源，任何情况都能找到解决方法。
For instance, Holt wrote in the second issue of GWS about how a welfare mother who doesn’t know how to read can still teach her own kids, by finding a child, relative, or friend who can read to teach them all to read. He cites various mass literacy programs used in a number of poor countries in which as fast as people learn to read they begin to teach others, as well as various schools whose policy of allowing older children to teach younger children to read has borne excellent results. He notes that reading, and teaching reading, are not a mystery. The schools, in teaching the poor (and the rich too) that no one except a trained teacher can teach, have done them (and all of us) a great and crippling injury and wrong. Trained teachers are not trained in teaching, but in classroom management, i.e., in controlling, manipulating, measuring, and classifying large numbers of children. These may be useful skills for schools, or people working in schools. But they have nothing whatever to do with teaching — helping others to learn things.
比如，Holt在第二期GWS中写道，领福利救济的母亲，哪怕自己不会读书，还是可以教自己的孩子，她可以找一个会读书的孩子、亲戚或朋友教孩子们读书。他列举了很多贫困国家的各种扫盲计划，这些地方的人一旦自己学会了读书，就开始教别人，还有各种允许大孩子教小孩子读书的学校，而且都取得了卓越的成绩。他说，阅读和教别人阅读并非神话。学校告诉贫困生（也有富学生）只有训练有素的教师才能教授，这其实对他们（还有我们所有人）造成了极大的伤害和误导。经过培训的老师并非在教学方面受训，而是在课堂管理上受训，即控制、操纵、衡量孩子们，并对他们进行分类。这些技巧可能对学校以及在学校工作的人很有用，但都和教学——帮助他人学习——无关。
The growth of homeschooling often led to strange bedfellows, or mixed allies as Holt referred to them in GWS:
家庭学校的成长经常会产生貌合神离的伙伴或如Holt在GWS中所说的鱼龙混杂：
Those who read GWS, and want to take or keep their children out of schools, may have very different, in some cases opposed reasons for doing this…
那些阅读GWS的人，或想将孩子带出学校或想将他们留在学校，可能都有大相径庭甚至截然相反的理由……
… [For example,] some may feel that the schools spend too much time on what they call the Basics; others that they dont spend enough.
……[比如]，有人觉得学校花太多时间在所谓的“基本功”上，而有些又觉得时间不够。
Some may feel that the schools teach a dog-eat-dog competitiveness; others that they teach a mealy-mouth Socialism.
有人觉得学校教的是自相残杀的竞争；有些却觉得学校教的是拐弯抹角的社会主义。
Some may feel that the schools teach too much religion; others that they dont teach enough, but teach instead a shallow atheistic humanism. I think the schools degrade both science and religion, and do not encourage either strong faith or strong critical thought.
有人觉得学校宗教教得太多；有些觉得宗教教得不够，只不过用浅显的美学人文主义代替。我认为学校在科学和宗教方面都退步了，既不鼓励坚定的信仰，也不鼓励有力的批判性思考。
What is important is not that all readers of GWS should agree on [the reasons for a family to homeschool], but that we should respect our differences while we work for what we agree on, our right and the right of all people to take their children out of schools, and help, plan, or direct their learning in the ways they think best…
重点是，并非所有GWS读者都应同意[家庭学校的理由]，但在我们决定在什么方面达成一致的努力中，在我们及其他人将孩子带出学校的权利而努力中，帮助、计划并指导他们以自己认可的最佳方式学习而努力的过程中，我们应该尊重彼此的差异。
Twenty-two years after Holt wrote that, more and more writers about homeschooling keep creating new ways to define themselves, since they agree only with bits and pieces of various practices. Some are uncomfortable with unschooling since Holt asks parents to respect children and allow them freedom to pursue their intellectual interests (but he never dictates that they do so), particularly when these interests veer away from school subject matter; some prefer to literally do home school, with the national anthem sung each morning, 6 hours of school work with a break for recess, and so on. Other parents consider most of Holt’s ideas untenable, but like his life-long advocacy of using whatever works – with parental discretion – to help children learn: they refer to themselves as eclectic homeschoolers. Some will follow various curricula: some purchase canned curricula and follow them to the letter; others purchase curricula and use them as broad outlines. Some homeschoolers work with private schools through the mail or the internet. Some prefer no label at all, daring you to capture the richness of their family life with a phrase.
在Holt写此之后22年，更多家庭学校的作者不断创造新方法来为自己定义，因为他们只同意各种实践的只言片语。有些人对非学校教育感到不自在，因为Holt让家长们尊重孩子，让他们有自由来追求自己的学术兴趣（不过他从未规定他们这么做），尤其是当这些兴趣偏离学校课程时；有些人喜欢进行家庭学校，每天早上唱国歌，学习六个小时，也有课间休息等等。还有家长认为Holt的大部分想法都站不住脚，但赞成他终身提倡采用任何可行的方法——由家长做主——来帮助孩子学习：他们喜欢把自己称为折中家庭学校者。有些人遵照各种课程大纲：他们买现成的课程，然后一字不落地照着学；有些买课程当做总体大纲。有些家庭学校者通过邮件或网络和私立学校合作。有些人干脆什么标签都不要，让你无法用一个词来捕捉他们家庭生活的丰富。
Holt’s only book about homeschooling, Teach Your Own: A Hopeful Path for Education (1981), is, I feel, really two books in one. Both books grew directly out of Holt’s work with GWS. One book is about the nitty-gritty details of how and why to teach your children in your home and community. The other book is an analysis of the public consequences of homeschooling, particularly regarding how parents can fight in our schools, courts, and legislatures to maintain their rights to raise their children according to their beliefs. I revised this book in 2003 and doing so made me marvel at how many of Holt’s insights about children, learning, and politics are now even more pertinent than in 1981. Society, and schools in particular, have become even more standardized and the breezes of personalization and human scale that homeschooling drifts into our communities and families seem to me more needed now than ever.
Holt唯一一本关于家庭学校的书《自学：教育的希望之路》（1981年），我觉得是本二合一的书。两本书都直接源自Holt在GWS的工作。一本书讲述如何在家里和社区教授孩子的各种具体细节以及原因。另一本书是家庭学校公共后果的分析，尤其是家长如何与学校、法庭和立法机构抗争，以维护按照自己的信仰抚养孩子的权利。2003年，我修订了该书，在此过程中，我不由得惊叹Holt对孩子、学习和政治的洞察比1981年更中肯。社会，尤其是学校已经变得更标准化，我认为，我们比任何时候都更需要家庭学校带给社区和家庭的个性化和人性化清风。
As homeschooling has grown, so has the market for selling a variety of methods, philosophies, products and services to homeschoolers. Some families prefer to develop communal resources rather than buying them; they join together to form homeschooling co-ops and learning centers in peoples homes or to share facilities, costs, and teachers for group instruction. The idea that we need to have one best way for all children to learn is effectively refuted by the diversity and growth of the homeschooling movement. But this was hardly enough for Holt. In 1983, he wrote, “A life worth living and work worth doing – that is what I want for children (and all people) – not just, or not even, something called a better education.” (A Life Worth Living, p. 266)
随着家庭学校开始增长，面向家庭学校者的各种方法、哲学、产品和服务也不断增长。有些家庭喜欢开发公用资源而不是买现成的；他们聚在一起，在家里形成家庭学校者合作社和学习中心，或者一起分享设备、成本，一起请老师进行团队辅导。我们需要一种最好的方法让所有孩子学习的这种观点受到家庭学校活动多样性和增长的有力驳斥。但对Holt而言，这远远不够。1983年，他写道，“值得过的生活，值得做的工作——这才是我想让孩子们（以及所有人）所拥有的——不仅仅， 或哪怕是，所谓的更好的教育。”（《值得过的生活，p.266》）
Holt presided over the slow but steady increase in subscribers to Growing Without Schooling, and in 1983 revised his two most popular books, How Children Fail and How Children Learn. Holt felt the revisions were needed in light of his work with homeschoolers. The changes made both books significantly different from their original printings, and Holt kept the original text alongside the newer text so that the reader can see the differences. Both books are worth reading on their own of course, but they also serve as demonstrations of Holts philosophy that living and learning are interrelated, that we learn more from our mistakes and successes than from tests and instruction, and that it is never too late to learn more about ourselves and the world in which we live.
Holt负责《无学校教育的成长》缓慢而稳定增加的订阅，1983年他修改了最受欢迎的两本书《孩子如何失败》和《孩子如何学习》。Holt认为有必要根据他和家庭学校者的合作进行修订。这些变化使得这两本书与原来的版本相去甚远，Holt将原稿放在新稿旁边，这样读者可以看到差别。这两本书单独而言，也值得一读，但也证明了Holt的哲学，即生活和学习相互关联，我们从错误和成功中学到的东西远比从考试和教导中学到的更多，更多地了解自己和我们生活的这个世界，永远也不会太迟。
In the late seventies and early eighties, Holt would often speak about homeschooling to small groups of parents. Often Holt would get a speaking engagement at a large university and when he was done there he would travel to speak to local homeschoolers in smaller venues, such as parks, homes, and small hotels. By the mid-eighties, large-scale (1000 or more attendeees) homeschooling conferences began to spring up across the nation, but Holt would not be able to address them. In 1985, John Holt died of cancer at the age of 62. His final book, Learning All the Time: How Small Children Begin To Read, Write, Count And Investigate The World, Without Being Taught, which contains a lot of writing that Holt did for GWS, was published posthumously in 1989.
70年代末80年代初，Holt经常向小型家长团队谈论家庭学校。通常，Holt会在大学里进行演讲，演讲完毕之后，他会旅行，在较小的聚会场所如公园、家和小旅馆对当地家庭学校者进行演讲。在八十年代中期，大型（1000或更多出席者）家庭学校会在国内雨后春笋般地出现，但Holt无法对他们演讲。1985年，Holt因癌症去世，时年62岁。他的遗作《随时学习：小孩子如何开始无师自通地阅读、书写、数数、探索这个世界》，其中包括了Holt为GWS写的很多内容，于1989年出版。
The history of homeschooling is still being written. Homeschooling continues to spread across the United States and other countries; as of this writing, GWS contains listings for homeschooling support groups in Canada, Ireland, England, France, Australia, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand, and Japan. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states.
家庭学校的历史仍被书写。家庭学校继续在美国和其他国家继续传播；如本文一样，GWS包括了加拿大、爱尔兰、英国、法国、澳大利亚、西班牙、南非、新西兰和日本。在全美50个州，家庭学校都合法。
One recent benchmark of homechooling’s growing popularity is that Newsweek (Oct. 5,1998) ran a cover story about it with the headline: More Than A Million Kids And Growing: Can It Work For Your Family?
家庭学校不断受到欢迎的最新标志是《新闻周刊》（1998年10月5日）的封面故事用了这样的标题：《超过100万孩子，而且还在增长：这对您的家庭适用吗？》
Some will argue that I assign Holt too big a place in the history of homeschooling since others have influenced more people to actually undertake homeschooling than did Holt. I don’t dispute that others influenced the growth of homeschooling as much as, if not more than, Holt, particularly among religiously-oriented homeschoolers. But John Holt does not only speak to the choir of would-be and current homeschoolers, political parties, or education theorists. His work speaks to adults and children in school as well as out; it addressess larger social concerns beyond school, and continues to inspire thousands of people from all walks of life.
有人会说，在家庭学校的历史中，我给Holt的地位太重，因为其他人比Holt影响了更多人实际进行家庭学校。其他人对家庭学校发展的影响如果不比Holt更多，至少也一样多，尤其在宗教方面的居家学习者中，对此，我毫无争议。但是，John Holt不仅面对目前和未来的家庭学校者、政党或教育理论家，他的工作也面向成人和学校内外的孩子们；它强调超越学校的更强大的社会影响力，并且一如既往地鼓舞着各行各业成千上万的人们。
注：
1. Unschooling was Holt’s neologism for describing what families were doing at home with their kids during school hours. He created this word in order to avoid giving the impression that families were merely creating miniature schools in their homes, as the word homeschooling connotes. However Holt used unschooling and homeschooling interchangeably in his writing, and eventually felt that homeschooling, for better or worse, was the term most people would use when discussing the idea that one can learn without going to school.
1. 非学校教育是Holt描述家庭在学校时间内给孩子们安排的活动的新名词。他创造这个词以免人们误以为家庭不过是在家里创办微缩学校，如家庭学校一词的含意。不过，在写作中，Holt将非学校教育和家庭学校混用，最终认为不论如何，家庭学校是大多数人在描述孩子不用去学校也能学习的观点时所用的名词。
2. In Instead of Education, (Sentient Books, p. 19), Holt used the spelling S-chool to denote: “The schools for educators, which get and hold their students by the threat of jail or uselessness or poverty,” and s-chools to denote: “The schools for do-ers, which help people explore the world as they choose.”
2. 在《取代教育》(Sentient Books, p. 19)中，Holt使用S-chool的拼写方式来表示：“教育者的学校，用监狱或无用或贫穷等威胁来抓牢学生，”而s-chool表示：“实干家的学校，帮助人们按照自己的选择探索这个世界。”
参考书目：
Bennett, Harold. No More Public School, Random House, 1972.
Goodman, Paul. Compulsory Miseducation. Penguin, 1971.
_____. Growing Up Absurd. Random House, 1960.
Holt, John Caldwell. Escape From Childhood: The Needs and Rights of Children. Holt Associates, 1981.
_____. Freedom and Beyond. Heinemann/Boynton/Cook, 1995.
_____. How Children Fail. Perseus, 1995.
_____. How Children Learn. Perseus, 1995.
_____. Instead of Education: Ways to Help People Do Things Better.
Sentient Publications, 2003.
_____. Learning All the Time: How Small Children Begin To Read, Write, Count And Investigate The
World, Without Being Taught. Perseus, 1991.
_____. Never Too Late: My Musical Autobiography. Perseus, 1991.
_____. The Underachieving School. Pittman, 1969.
_____. What Do I Do Monday? Heinemann/Boynton/Cook, 1995.
Holt, John Caldwell and Farenga, Patrick. Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling.
Perseus, 2003.
Illlich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. Boyars, 1999.
Rickenbacker , William F., ed. The 12-Year Sentence. Open Court, 1974.
Sheffer, Susannah, ed. A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters of John Holt. Ohio State Univ. Press, 1990.
