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Author Lidstrom, Erik, 1964- author.

Title Education unchained : what it takes to restore schools and learning / Erik Lidström.

Publication Info. Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2015]

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe 3rd Floor Stacks  379.1 L619e 2015    ---  Available
1 copy being processed for Axe Acquisitions Order.
Description xiv, 175 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
text txt rdacontent
unmediated n rdamedia
volume nc rdacarrier
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references.
Contents 1. Introduction -- The plan of the book -- 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 toward better things -- We can become experts on teaching but not on education reform -- Why school vouchers do not work -- 3. The threats to improved education -- Reforming "our" schools is impossible -- Why we seek social conformity -- The ever-present threat of paternalism -- 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 -- 4. School, work, and growing up -- Norberg's assistants -- How we grow up -- Play and school -- 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? -- 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 nineteenth-century government school system -- 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 -- 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 loose -- 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 -- 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 -- 10. The kind of education we never had -- Universities in a free system -- 11. The negative externalities of government education -- Positive externalities from government -- 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 of unequal opportunity -- State schools as a source of social disintegration -- On the unfairness of having parents of different wealth -- 12. Replanting the beautiful tree -- Civil disobedience -- Promoting freedom and democracy -- Helping Third World countries.
Summary Are we going about education the wrong way? The somewhat shocking demonstration of this book is that "we" simply cannot reform "our" schools "together." We don't actually know what schools or education really are. Education can only be improved the same way we improve and invent things in other walks of life: through unbridled, unchained trial and error. Assembling a wealth of economic, psychological, and historical evidence, Erik Lidström paints a coherent and deceptively simple picture of how we went wrong, why we went wrong, and what we can do about it. The disconcerting conclusion is that education must be set free; it must be returned to parents and to pupils. Government should have no - or hardly any - role in the financing of education, in the setting of curricula or diploma, or in the supervision of schools and education. At the same time, this book is filled with optimism. By doing things differently we can quickly and almost painlessly restore education and learning to a level previously unheard of. -- from back cover.
Subject Privatization in education.
Schools -- Decentralization.
Education and state.
Education and state. (OCoLC)fst00902835
Privatization in education. (OCoLC)fst01077670
Schools -- Decentralization. (OCoLC)fst01107981
ISBN 9781475822434 hardcover alkaline paper
147582243X hardcover alkaline paper
9781475822441 paperback alkaline paper
1475822448 paperback alkaline paper

 
    
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