John Holt: Libertarian Outsider

“Holt, in effect, reasoned his way to libertarianism from his relentless, dogged analysis of what worked and didn’t work in education, in the schoolroom.”...

“To live well with other human beings, adults or children, is a subtle art,” Holt wrote.

Rules for doing it are not much help. But if I had to make a general rule for living and working with children, it might be this: be very wary of saying or doing anything to a child that you would not do to another adult, whose good opinion and affection you valued. “Mind your own business” is not a bad minor rule in human affairs.