addition to Marx, it uses the insights of Vygotsky and Wittgenstein. It seeks to enlist "patients" in the collective work of constructing new environments that challenge the commodification of emotionality, and re-ignite human development. Let's Pretend – Solving the Education Crisis in America: A Special Report (Newman & Fulani, 2011, All Stars Project) What if all the kids currently failing in American schools pretended to be good learners, and all the concerned adults played along? The thesis of this paper is that such a "performance" would solve the education crisis in America. Several connected arguments are brought to bare on this idea. First, successful interventions into the "achievement gap" (like the Harlem Children's Zone) are attributed, not primarily to tougher standards and better teaching, but to an overall approach that draws students into highly organized "ensemble performances." Second, an appeal is made to a wealth of social research showing that there is a close connection between "performance in social contexts" and human development. Finally, a distinction is drawn between learning and development and it is argued that the learning gap cannot be closed without closing the development gap between poor children and children from more affluent circumstances. A seemingly preposterous idea (pretending our way out of the crisis in education) acquires a certain plausibility. The provocative formulation (typical of Newman's writing) seems calculated to expose that the obstacles to implementing such a proposal are primarily institutional and political. Marxism, influences, and views Newman considered himself a Marxist, a philosophy that he incorporated into his therapeutic approach in an attempt to address the alienating effects of societal institutions on human development. In his earliest statement of his attempt to develop a Marxist approach to emotional problems, Newman wrote in 1974: Proletarian or revolutionary psychotherapy is a journey which begins with the rejection of our inadequacy and ends in the acceptance of our smallness; it is the overthrow of the rulers of the mind by the workers of the mind. Later, Newman (along with his primary collaborator, Lois Holzman) incorporated other influences, including the 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and Aleksey Leontyev and Sergei Rubinshtein's activity theory, and the work of early Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Newman and Holzman challenged what they described as the "hoax/myth of psychology," the various components of which were termed "destructive pieces of pseudoscience." Politics Political roots Newman founded the collective Centers for Change (CFC) in the late