Continuum of Experience

"We talk about school as a place where people teach (or try to) and others learn (or try to, or try not to) the "skills" of reading, or arithmetic, or this that, or the other. This is not how a child (or anyone else) learns to do things. He learns to do them by doing them. He does not learn the "skills" of speech and then go somewhere and use these skills to speak with. He learns to speak by speaking.

When we try to teach a child a disembodied skill, we say in effect, "You must learn to do this thing in here, so that later on you can go and do something quite different out there." This destroys the continuum of experience within which true learning can only take place. We should try to do instead in school as much as possible of what people are doing in the world."

John Holt, What Do I Do Monday?