Spiraling In and Out: A Review of Lisa Tucker's Flourishing in the Holistic Classroom

Abstract

Flourishing in the Holistic Classroom represents an important contribution to the Holistic Education literature. In it, Lisa Tucker clearly ties together some of the most important voices from the canon of this field. With surgical precision she analyzes the limitations of traditional contemporary, bureaucratic educational models. Going well beyond elucidating the core principles of Holistic Education, she takes us on a journey. This is a journey filled with side-trips; we see powerful exemplars of how these principles can live in our practice as educators. This is a story of hope and optimism. It is an invitation to each of us to utilize our individual “egg tooth” to collectively crack open the hard shell of education’s constraining dominant pedagogy. We are encouraged to first travel inward and then open wide… even wider, to embrace an expansive cosmos of possibility.