Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 228
•
Trim: 6 x 8¾
978-1-4758-5811-2 • Hardback • September 2020 • $60.00 • (£46.00)
978-1-4758-5812-9 • Paperback • October 2020 • $30.00 • (£22.95)
978-1-4758-5813-6 • eBook • September 2020 • $28.50 • (£21.95)
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.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: The Knowledge Problem
Chapter 3: The Threats to Improved Education
Chapter 4: School, Work, and Growing Up
Chapter 5: The Ethics of State Education
Chapter 6: The Rise of the Government School System
Chapter 7: The Art, Science, and Nonsense of Education
Chapter 8: Der Untergang—The Downfall of the Government School System
Chapter 9: The Downward, Self-reinforcing Spiral of Death
Chapter 10: The Kind of Education We Never Had
Chapter 11: The Negative Externalities of Government Education
Chapter 12: The Private Origins of Science and Higher Education
Chapter 13: An educational, socio-economic motorway pile-up
Chapter 14: Replanting the Beautiful Tree
Appendix A: Estimates of the Fall of Quality in Sweden
Appendix B: The Parable of the Citizen Vehicle
References
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
Education remains among the highest ranked concerns of parents across the world, yet many believe, often rightly, that their children are receiving sub-optimal material and instruction. In this book, Erik Lidström shows why this need not be the case as well as ways forward for a thorough-going renewal of learning – one in which truth, evidence and the good matter.
— 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 Lindström 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", author of Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, named by the Economist as one of the best books of 2016