Holt thought that everyone has his own unique mental model of reality and no-one could possibly know how to improve upon another's mental model. Therefore, it's futile to try and teach . Choosing what he wants to learn and what he does not is something he must do for himself. First, I rejected the premise that we can't effectively teach our children because we don't know what their model of reality looks like. If we're trying to communicate knowledge about the world, we can do so by teaching via a logical method.
Good teaching requires a structure that takes the child's context and ability into account.
No-one knows the child better, or cares about him more than the parent, which is one reason why homeschooling is so effective. I disagreed with Holt and concluded that parents can and should purposely teach their children. This was my first strike against him. Second, the child-like purity of the mind that Holt found so attractive is a genuine innocence, but it is not a means of gaining knowledge. Unfortunately, Holt not only says we should look at reality in the un-complex way of a child, he throws out reason altogether.