A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters - Hardcover

Holt, John

4.54

28 ratings by Goodreads

9780814205235: A Life Worth Living: Selected Letters

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814205232 ISBN 13: 9780814205235

Publisher: Ohio State University Press, 1991

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

The letters of educational critic and reformer John Holt contain some of his insights into education and educational reform, schooling, and politics. In this collection Holt can be seen at his fiercest - openly challenging the usefulness and wisdom of compulsory schools, of universities, of the institution of childhoods, revealing thoughts conceived in the moment of writing. Holt's letters were worksheets for his public writing as well as a record of his time. He used them to develop his own thinking, and to question and explore the thinking of others engaged in similar work; virtually all of his nine books began as personal correspondences. These letters address some fundamental issues of education, but they also discuss politics, music, self-reliance and conservation, poverty, racism and the black community, the law, adolescence, life on a submarine during World War 2, communes, and writing and publishing. Susannah Sheffer's selection of letters, spanning nearly four decades, provides an introduction to Holt's thought and, for those already familiar with it, a way to explore it more fully.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.