today I want to go back twenty years and tell John Holt all my troubles.

"I wish I had a dollar for every ... defender of the schools who talks about Real Life; it's almost never the fascinating courses, or the challenging teachers - their only concern [is] that home-schooled children will miss the "social life" of schools. And when I point out that for the most part
the social life of schools is mean-spirited, selfish, snobbish,
conformist, ruthless, cold-hearted and often downright cruel and violent, nobody disagrees. "That's Real Life.'" they say, ... "[y]ou have to prepare children for the real world. How else are they ever going to get along with
others?" Notice that they don't mean others who treat each other with kindness and dignity; they can't seem to conceive of that ..."
John Holt