Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 190
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-4758-2243-4 • Hardback • October 2015 • $68.00 • (£47.95)
978-1-4758-2244-1 • Paperback • October 2015 • $36.00 • (£24.95)
978-1-4758-2245-8 • eBook • October 2015 • $34.00 • (£23.95)
Erik Lidström holds an MSc and a PhD in physics from Uppsala University, as well as an MBA from the Open University. After research at the ESRF in Grenoble, he moved to the software industry in 2000. He has worked in Britain, France, Sweden and Morocco, lately with a primary interest in complex development processes and organizational issues.
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1- Introduction
Chapter 2- The knowledge problem
Markets and why we trade
Hunter-gatherers in the Great Society
The rules of the Great Society
The division of labor and the division of knowledge
The roles of competition
Quality is not one thing
Why we cannot think ourselves towards better things
We can become experts on teaching but not on education reform
Why school vouchers do not work
The process of improvements is different in a free system
Democratic decision-making is a particularly inappropriate method for improving schools
Chapter 3: The threats to improved education
Reforming “our” schools is impossible
Why we seek social conformity
The ever-present threat of paternalism
The species of the paternalists–the Anointed
How parents decide
Why parents and children will not find bad schools
School as a tribal ritual
Our urge to rationally plan prevents learning
It is not self-evident what education is
All-private schools are actually very affordable
Chapter 4: School, work and growing up
Norberg’s assistants
How we grow up
Play and school
Chapter 5: The ethics of state education
Government compulsion, government conformity
Using children as tools
Treating children as cattle
What is left for the state to do?
Maybe the government should verify that all become educated
Maybe the government should financially assist the education sector
Chapter 6: The rise of the government school system
Sweden
Britain
The Third World today
New York State
The five-stage rocket of compulsory education
The flow of information stops
The hard and magnificent 19th century government school system
Chapter 7: The art, science, and nonsense of education
The art of education
The science of education
Folk “science”
Practice makes perfect
The delusions of education reformers and pedagogues
Why education reforms almost always make things worse
Chapter 8: Der Untergang–the downfall of the government school system
Overview of the decisions in Sweden
The social misdistribution of education
Against meritocracy and the high status of theoretical studies
Improving social skills
Abraham Lincoln’s dog’s tail
Empirical trials for the 9-year unity school
How education reform broke the back of the school system
All hell breaks lose
Chapter 9: The downward, self-reinforcing spiral of death
The fall in quality for academic studies
The fall in quality for those who studied at the realskola but not at high school
The fall in quality for those who did not go to the theoretical realskola
Why don’t we return to the old system?
America, Britain and the spiral of death of government systems
Comments on the Finnish school system
Chapter 10: The kind of education we never had
Universities in a free system
Chapter 11: The negative externalities of government education
Positive externalities from education
Idle minds–government school as a source of crime and angry music
State schools as a destroyer of exceptional talent
State schools as a source of irresponsibility and immaturity
State schools as a source on unequal opportunity
State school as a source of social disintegration
On the unfairness having parents of different wealth
Chapter 12: Replanting the Beautiful Tree
Civil disobedience
Promoting freedom and democracy
Helping Third World countries
Appendix 1 - Estimates of the fall of quality in Sweden
The fall in quality of the teachers
Chaos in the classroom
Measures of outcomes and some possible contributing causes
The early economic outcome
Appendix 2 - The Parable of the Citizen Vehicle
References
Those seeking to improve public schools in the US often struggle to define how they wish to make schools ‘better.’ Lidström espouses a belief that government spending has led to a decline in schools and as that funding has increased, quality has declined. He presents his ideas in 12 sections: an introduction; ‘The Knowledge Problem’; ‘The Threats to Improved Education’; ‘School, Work, and Growing Up’; ‘The Ethics of State Education’; ‘The Rise of the Government School System’; a critique of pedagogy; how he alleges government schools fail; the downward spiral in quality over time; the benefits of a market system; ‘The Negative Externalities of Government Education’; and a plan to reinvigorate schools. Though the author considers only one perspective, it is well-reasoned and passionately argued. Best for those well-versed in the issues public education in the US faces, such as upper-level undergraduates or graduate students in a seminar setting. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.— CHOICE
[T]here are surprisingly few fresh ideas on how to improve education and learning. The book by Dr. Erik Lidström brings plenty. They are both radical and proven. Radical, because he is quoting Hayek, Sowell, Weinber and calls for a free market solution to learning. And proven, because such systems worked in the past. The book is a must read for parents, teachers and policymakers in general. And it provides some just-in-time food for thought related to Mr. Corbyn’s ideas of ‘cradle to grave’ National Education Service. -Professor Žiga Turk, former Slovenian Minister of Education— Medium
Erik Lidström has provided us with a heretical, but brilliant exposé of modern education. There is wide agreement that the modern, bureaucratic school system does not work well and is subject to a never-ending cyclical spate of reforms that often make matters worse. By combining economics and evolutionary theory with an intriguing account of the educational system and outcomes before and after government organized schooling, Lidström makes a cogent and thoughtful argument for a ground-up, market-based approach to education. No doubt, the thesis will irritate and offend many educators, but this is all the more reason to read the book and seriously reflect on Lidström's proposals.— David C. Geary, PhD, curators' professor, Thomas Jefferson Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri
The shortfalls of government-supplied education loom ever larger as time marches on. Considering radical alternatives today, however, violating more than one nostrum of political correctness, Erik Lidström takes us beyond such conventionalities to show freedom and competition are a significant part of the answer to the educational crisis of our time.— Samuel Gregg, director of research, Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
Throw away all those books on how to fix the education system. As Erik Lidström shows in this thought-provoking book, full of insights, the only way to fix education is not to fix it. Education is too important to be left to the "education experts", and should be a matter for the real experts – schools, teachers and parents.— Johan Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of "In Defence of Global Capitalism"