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A Review of Lois Holzman's Schools for Growth: Radical Alternatives to Current Educational Model

By Eugene Matusov, Patricia Lowery, Valerie Bergeron, Renée Hayes, William Letts, and Michelle McKinney, University of Delaware

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Schools for Growth is a passionate manifesto calling for a new type of schooling based on revolutionary activity, relational and dialectic philosophy, and the development of performance. The book challenges the very fabric of the educational system. Lois Holzman criticizes traditional schooling practices and many current approaches to reforming them, as well as the developmental perspectives that guide those practices and reforms. The author describes a new vision and conceptual framework for schools and depicts three innovative schools that, according to the author, approximate the conceptual ideal to different degrees.

It is possible to divide Holzman's criticism of current educational practices and theories roughly into three categories. First is a critique of traditional schools that are guided by a "transmission of knowledge" educational philosophy. This philosophy, with its emphasis on the reproduction of culture, leads to the development of a passive and obedient individual. Second is a critique of innovative schools that are guided by a constructivist philosophy stemming from Piaget's developmental theory. Although Holzman appreciates the constructivist focus on activity, she rejects its dualism of social and private, its assumption of causality, and its mentalism. Third is a critique of innovative schools that are guided by neo-Vygotskian notions like the "community of learners." Holzman charges the neo-Vygotskians with too much focus on learning and knowledge building rather than on helping "children develop, that is, to create new ways of being. We [the author and her colleagues] have constructed an approach that is postepistemological, by which I mean a practice that rejects the modernist belief that knowing (of any sort) is the path to better life and/or a better world (or progress or growth)" (p. 126, emphasis in original).

Holzman's emphasis on revolutionary activity as the purpose of education is deeply rooted in the Russian notion of lichnost' (a person's wholeness and potential), Marxist-Hegelian philosophy, and the philosophy of postmodernism. The author conveys the essence of what this means to her in her dedication "to the young people of the All Stars Talent Show Network—who create hope and possibility each day as they build environments in which they can grow in a deadly and violent world."

There is a long Russian pedagogical and theoretical tradition to aim education to the development of lichnost' rather than the traditional concept of "knowledge acquisition," preparation for future jobs or adulthood, or even development of the "whole child." In brief, while the Western notion of identity entails choosing identity categories with which a person feels comfortable, the notion of lichnost' involves transcending all culturally available choices by creating new ways of being out of available cultural resources and circumstances. Although Holzman does not refer to this specific term in the book, her familiarity with Russian psychological and pedagogical literature makes this Russian influence extremely plausible.

Holzman tries to redefine what it means "to know." According to Marxist tradition introduced in psychology by Vygotsky, education and development involve transformation of people and the world through people's productive activity. "To know" means to purposefully change the world and oneself. Knowledge, in this tradition, is the practice of change rather than a body of facts, concepts, or rules that can be transferred from one situation to another.

Holzman builds on postmodernist philosophy stemming from the works of Wittgenstein and Gergen to emphasize the relational, activity-oriented, and nonepistemological (i.e., not knowledge-based) character of learning. She cites Wittgenstein's "language games" and postmodernist emphasis on deconstruction to reveal the social construction of traditional epistemology.

Holzman provides brief descriptions of three innovative school programs: Project Golden Key in Russia, the Sudbury Valley School in the United States, and the Barbara Taylor School in the United States. Several features of the schools that the author discusses help us to understand what she thinks make the model or ideal school: (1) student-generated holistic activity/project-based curricula; (2) play, acting, and performance as transcending student's personal limitations and dealing with interpersonal problems; (3) recognizing and legitimating student's peripheral participation in a cultural practice before that practice is "taught" or institutionally learned; (4) instruction as redirection; and (5) multiage education.

Throughout the book, the author emphasizes development and the importance of considering it in its totality. However, the notion of development seems to require directionality. Who defines that directionality? How is it defined? Who talks on behalf of the totality? Can one educational model possibly benefit all students with diverse cultural, economic, and biographical backgrounds? What is educational "success"? How can it be measured? On what grounds should one definition of success be privileged over another? These questions are left out of the author's discussion.

Unfortunately, the discourse of the book promotes in readers (at least, in us) a feeling that it is the author who speaks on behalf of the totality and defines what development is. There is a growing sense of dissonance between the modernist view of the "book" as a genre arguing for the right way of doing things and the postmodernist view of that genre, emphasizing social construction and relations. Holzman's book ends with the author's hope that the reader will follow her rather than dialogue with her, that among her readers' questions "are not only ones like 'Is this true?' 'Will that work?' and 'Do I agree?' but also 'Can I do that?'" (p. 129). Our concern echoes Bakhtin's concern about dialectics (so praised by the author) that dialectics is a monologized dialogue. Overcoming Marxist and Vygotskian monologism (and their ethnocentrism as a consequence of monologism) is a very difficult challenge.

All in all, we think that the book will be very interesting for educators, developmental psychologists, and social scholars working in sociocultural, Vygotskian, and activity theory traditions. It challenges existing views on education, provides provocative alternative perspectives on learning and development, and discusses innovative education practices.

From Anthropology and Education Quarterly 30:3September 1999 book reviews

Holzman, Lois. Schools for Growth: Radical Alternatives to Current Educational Models. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997. xi + 152 pp.

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