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.