Children or corporate learners, they are not much different. What triggers learning is curiosity, motivation, and freedom to explore ideas. Simply being asked to remember what’s learned doesn’t work.
John Holt, an educator, challenged traditional teaching styles over 50 years ago. He stated: When curiosity drives learning, learning happens naturally!
Although his ideas were meant for children, what he stated remains relevant even for workplace learning.
Robust AI-powered microlearning platforms use the same ideas embedded in its capabilities like adaptive learning, personalized learning paths, retrieval practice (questions/quizzes), and spaced repetition (to counter forgetfulness).
Let’s see how Holt’s philosophy can help design better microlearning assets.
At a Glance:
- John Holt’s key principles of Unschooling
- Learner curiosity matters for workplace learning
- How are Holt’s concepts relevant for microlearning
- How MaxLearn LMS uses the concept to drive learner-centric learning
Who was John Holt?
Holt was a ‘progressive’ thinker on learning in the 1970’s. He gave his theory of unschooling and home-schooling by observing children.
He proposed that possibilities for learning outside of school can be more rewarding than learning at schools.
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Holt claimed that he ‘taught himself’ much more than he ever learnt in a classroom. He continually took up many new passions like learning French & Italian, skiing, playing cello & violin, water skiing, and horseback riding.
Holt felt that today’s education system simply wasn’t working!
Holt proposed that a human child is a learning animal who are naturally inclined to learn.
He gave the concept of unschooling and home-schooling. He found schools to be extremely regimented.
He opined that they scuttle a free-spirited sense of enquiry in a child (learner). He stated that regulating and controlling the ‘learning process’ wasn’t right. He recommended that learning process must play on the ‘curiosity’ of the learner.
He stated that a child (learner) learns most effectively on one’s own motivation and own terms.
Why Holt's Ideas Matter for Workplace Learning
Many of Holt’s observations apply quite well to adult learners. Employees are motivated to learn only when they know the ‘why’. Knowing the reason makes them actively participate in learning, feedback, and practice proactively. A good microlearning LMS is also built upon these factors.
Concept of ‘Unschooling’ and ‘Home-schooling’
John Holt coined the term ‘unschooling’. He became convinced that parents could take their children out of school.
He stated that when we send our children to school, we want them to ‘learn how to think’. Instead, at school, they end up learning and thinking badly. Students give up their natural and powerful habit of thinking. Instead, they adopt and fall prey to a method that does not work well for them.
Holt argued that schools foster a sense of fear and boredom. With this fear, the students are discouraged from taking chances and experiencing real learning.
The schooling system maximizes rules, compliance and a culture of senseless obedience. This way, the most important traits of a student- curiosity, creativity, self-esteem, and genuine intellect- get stunted.
By the 1980s Holt became the key figure of the ‘home-schooling movement’ in the USA.
His concept of unschooling was tied with the concept of home-schooling where no set curriculum was followed.
Home-schooling meant ‘schooling at home’, while ‘unschooling’ meant that you are doing what’s NOT done in schools. Holt encouraged that more control over subject matter, socialization, or morals be given to children.
Basis of Holt’s Theory of ‘Unschooling’ and ‘Home-schooling’
Curiosity: the Starting Point of Learning
Holt focused on ‘how children learn best’, and believed that children are naturally curious, and have a natural desire to ‘make sense out of their world’ around them. This in turn allows children to possess their ‘own’ natural learning styles.
With age-appropriate learning stimulation, children learn independently on their own.
This way, children are more likely to gain competence and control over themselves and their environment.
A child (learner) is open, receptive, and perceptive. They absorb everything that goes on around them in their minds.
We must not underestimate a child’s capacity to think, feel, and interpret events that occur around them.
Holt believed that as learners, children observed the world around them very closely and sharply, and want to take it all in.
Learning by Doing: A Confidence Building Measure
Children have an innate need to experiment. They observe the world around them. They like to experiment and explore by tasting, touching, bending, breaking etc. just to see how reality works. A child is patient and tries to patiently find meaning in new and confusing situations in life.
Unlike children, it is the adults that tend to get ‘impatient’ once they grow up!
Rushed Learning = Failure
Holt that the schooling system does not give much time and opportunity for a child to think and learn. Schooling rushes and pushes the children towards seeking out only right answers.
Creative thought which requires the use of intelligence is scuttled in the schooling system.
So, the schools deliberately crush creativity, hence he propounded the concept of unschooling.
Trainers Must Become Learning Facilitators
Holt believed that teachers’ attitudes toward children must change. Their attitude towards ‘how children learn best’ needs to be the first to change.
Teachers must stop regarding children as inferior beings. A teacher must not play the role of a ‘dispenser of information’. Dull, repetitive learning of facts alone must stop in schools.
Children tend to learn beyond mere basic facts. A child can learn independently, without the help of a teacher.
Anything learnt out of interest and curiosity sticks better in the child’s memory. According to Holt, when a student controls one’s learning, it instils a sense of responsibility in the child.
The child must be empowered to decide what they need and want to learn. Plus, they should also have the flexibility to the method of learning that best suits each student/learner.
Learner: An Explorer
Holt advocated that a child must be allowed to learn by discovery.
A child must be “free to explore and make sense of that culture in his/her way.” While teachers may find this difficult to digest, children must play an active role in self-education.
Holt Questions What Is Essential To Learn
Holt opined that not all knowledge and skills are essential. Some are useful and convenient for everyone, but not necessarily essential.
This is evidenced by the fact that even those who do not receive formal education are also able to live their life pretty well. Even uneducated people are not trained to gain competency in basic computational skills and communication skills, but they still survive. It is possible for some that these individuals survive with less ease in life due to their lack of certain knowledge and skills, but they make it through life at a basic level, one way or another.
Learner Autonomy = Better Engagement
Holt believed a child is the best judge of what she/he should learn. He believed in the curiosity factor of a child, and every child has a reason for wanting to know or learn something!
When you are curious about learning something, you are not only highly motivated but are also inspired to remember the learning permanently.
Drilling down information into children’s minds does not work well for the learner against their desires or inclinations.
When a child really wants to learn some, they will feel the need to learn thoroughly in a way that the learning is never forgotten.
This is why Holt stated teaching must bring the world into the classroom. He advised that teachers must give a child as much help and guidance as a child asks for! Also, we must listen to the child respectfully when they want to talk. This is how real and lasting learning happens!
He further opined that getting out of the way of the child and allowing the child to learn is indeed very difficult for a teacher.
The main belief Holt held was: “Children cannot be forced to learn. We can only play upon their natural curiosity to learn. The rest depends on the child!”
What This Means for Trainers
A good microlearning lesson must encourage curiosity, and preserve learner autonomy. This can be done by using retrieval practice, spaced repetition, and personalised learning paths. This way, employees can understand, retain, and confidently apply what’s learned.
Relevance of Holt’s Theory to Microlearning
The simple and practical points highlighted by Holt apply equally well to an adult learner at the workplace!
There is so much wisdom that’s useful in creating a microlearning platform that keeps the individual learner in the centre of things!
To create a microlearning platform that’s genuinely fast, fun and effective.
likewise, the trainers too can immensely benefit from Holt’s ideas and observations. This includes how to assess and treat one’s learners while crafting effective microlearning lessons, and enabling their learning progress based on each one’s learning needs, learning gaps, and learning goals.
Whether it’s content creation, or using the microlearning snippet for spaced repetition and retrieval practice (quests/tests), Holt’s theory remains pertinent to enabling and empowering each learner!
It also provides us with the basis of why microlearning needs to be highly personalised and adaptive. Additionally, it tells us why the Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms of a powerful microlearning platform need to be built around the behaviors, attitudes, learning capabilities and learning progress of each learner specific to each one’s role- and risk-specific job profile.
This results in microtargeted training that’s relevant and not boring!
Holt’s View and MaxLearn’s Microlearning
| Holt's Principle | Application to Microlearning |
|---|---|
| Play on a learner's curiosity, creativity, self-esteem, and genuine intellect | Play on a learner's curiosity, creativity, self-esteem, and other traits traditionally associated with genuine intellect while creating a microlearning lesson. Build natural curiosity about how things work while designing microlearning modules |
| Give learners control over their learning | Learning modules, especially gaming and interactive activities in eLearning/microlearning, must give the learner control over his/her environment. This way the learner gains better competence and skills. Just like children need a 'self-education' option, learners in a corporate environment also need the flexibility to learn. This can be given with multiple design options and microlearning assets like videos, podcasts, infographics, short-sims, etc., that make a microlearning snippet engaging and visually appealing. |
| Learners like to explore and experiment | Learners like to explore by interacting, touching, feeling, experimenting, and being in a simulated environment, just like in interactive games in eLearning/microlearning programs where learning happens by experiencing a real-life situation or scenario, be it a process, skill, or information piece. New-age digital learners are also like children who continuously seek an opportunity to think and learn. |
| Design around how a learner learns best | 'How a learner learns best' is the priority of a trainer, and microlearning snippets that cater to multiple options to learn are best for the optimum learning curve for each learner. When the learner is keen on learning, he/she is likely to be more open, receptive, and perceptive to training initiatives. |
| Replace dull learning with engaging learning | Dull, repetitive dispensing of information needs to be replaced with elements that bring out curiosity and interest, like gamification and motivating badges/rewards on microlearning leaderboards. The learner must be motivated enough to 'want to eagerly learn'. Only then can the learning be thorough, securing high memory and recall. This, in turn, results in knowledge, capability and skill enhancement, and arrest of memory decay (Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve). |
| Enable learning naturally | Trainers, as well as AI algorithms embedded within a microlearning platform, need to make sure that they enable learning naturally, and are not perceived as getting in the way of a learner. This too happens when we play on the learners' natural curiosity to learn. Encourage a learner to ask questions as well as answer questions/assessments (retrieval practice) to develop higher levels of skills and thoughts. This results in a learner moving from Awareness → Explanatory → Practitioner → Mastery levels (Bloom's Taxonomy simplified). |
| Encourage ownership of learning | Self-initiated activities tend to enhance ownership of one's learning. Knowing students/learners better results in ultimate learning. This needs to be enabled within a microlearning platform with a powerful analytics suite that constantly monitors and auto-adjusts based on each learner's interactions with the microlearning lessons at a topic level. |
Robust microlearning platforms like MaxLearn have reaped the benefits of Holt’s wisdom in creating a technology platform with powerful AI algorithms that create a superior learning experience for each learner.
It has created a feature-rich microlearning platform that makes the job of creating impactful microlearning lessons easier for trainers, and the top management gets a sustainable and high Training Return On Investment (ROI).
The aim is to ensure that a MaxLearn learner progresses on the learning path confidently with better comprehension, application, synthesis, analysis, and evaluation of one’s thinking and processing skills.
This result: A truly SATISFIED and HAPPY learner! This positively impacts their work-related performance and helps create a learning organisation.
John Holt told us how meaningful learning begins with curiosity, and not compulsion. Microlearning is also built on that belief. With learner-centric adaptive microlearning, retrieval practice, spaced repetition, gamification, and AI-powered authoring tools, platforms like MaxLearn help create superior learning experiences. A learning experience that’s enjoyable, easy to remember as well as apply at work, confidently!
