John Holt's School Is Bad For Children: Article Analysis

Education in the United States is at the center of many, if not all children’s lives growing up. However the physical act of going to school is very different on a person to person level. That is why I believe that it’s important to look at and compare the work of Lynda Barry’s “The Sanctuary of School”, and the work of John Holt’s “School Is Bad For Children”. In her article, Barry describes to her audience a very personal story of her childhood growing up in a family that did not really notice her and the only way for her to feel noticed was to attend school. And in Holt’s article, he chose to talk about how he feels that schools in general are causing more harm than good for how kids learn and think in an educational environment. Holt chose to go into great detail and even provide a list of solutions that he believe could change the public school system for the better. Overall, both of these articles touch on a similar subject just from different angles and they both provide evidence or a personal account to support their findings. However, when it comes to education there is no denying that something needs to change to our current education system. Holt believes that the current education system is doing more harm that it is good to children. In his article, Holt mentions that he “comes to feel that is a passive process, something that someone else does to you, instead of something you do for yourself”(Holt 80) In saying this Holt is narrowing his views to one specific