BOOK REVIEWS: AN EXCHANGE - Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World by Eli Meyerhoff

An exchange as a review between Helen E. Lees and author of Beyond Education, Eli Meyerhoff

Abstract

Helen: Dear Eli, we have not met before but I would like to review your fascinating book Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World. I have been extremely taken with it as a work of scholarship—so much so that I contacted you directly by email—via your website http://www.elimeyerhoff.com/—to say how much it was affecting me. In the spirit of Other Education as a journal promoting face to face democratic modes (more of the word modes later perhaps, as it features so predominantly in your book: “modes of study”…) I have asked you if the review can be conducted as a “live” conversation via email exchanges. This, with a separate written response from yourself to each of my areas of enquiry and analysis; rather than a formal, usual book review format. You have agreed!

In my opinion that a book affects the reader is a serious, important requirement for a book to be called great. I consider your book is great. Books about education are all too often a tweak on an already known set of ideas and these books I find...