Throw away all those books on how to fix the education system. As Erik Lindstroem 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" 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 Lidstroem 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 Erik Lidstroem has provided us with a heretical, but brilliant expose 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, Lidstroem 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 Lidstroem's proposals. -- David C. Geary, PhD, curators' professor, Thomas Jefferson Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri.