On the grounds of my son's high school is a large rock, which students over the years have covered with layers and layers of painted messages. Most messages say harmless things like "Class of 2001 Rules!" When I visited the school recently, a new message, familiar to people of my generation and Pink Floyd fans everywhere, was spray-painted on the rock: "We Don't Need No Education" it proclaimed.

Why do so many students have such negative attitudes toward school? The root of the problem, according to the essays in this collection, is that tax-supported, compulsory-attendance, government-run public schools in the US thwart human freedom and dignity and in the process thwart learning, as well. The book's editor, widely published libertarian Tibor Machan, pulls no punches. Public education shares many features with slavery-"namely the massive use of government power to support the extreme regimentation of the lives of millions of human individuals." By the time many students leave public schools-with their "one size fits all" approach to nearly everything from when school should start in the morning to what should be taught and how it should be taught-"they see education not as enlightenment but as imprisonment."

The most compelling essay in the collection, by clinical psychologist and Montessori teacher Carol B. Low, comes closest to demonstrating Machan's contentions. Low shows that schools generally insist that all the students in a class do the same assignment at the same time. Many students find the assignments too easy and are bored; many find them too hard and struggle. The crux of the matter is the insistence that all classes should include only students who are the same age. Learners in other settings rarely face this artificial constraint. When learning to swim, for example, people of many ages are mixed together. If you aren't ready to swim at a certain age you aren't forced to fail. If you catch on quickly, you are allowed to advance to the next level quickly, without waiting for others.

Little stigma is attached to redoing and retrying until you finally get it right. But public schools don't see it this way, they assume and insist that everyone should do things together and in the same way. One of the most widespread failures due to this assumption, according to Low, follows from the attempt to treat boys and girls identically. Reviewing biological evidence (for example, about brain structure and hormones) and extensive studies of physical activity, social behaviour, speech and learning, Low examines the substantial differences between boys and girls. Although these differences are obvious to everyone and have existed since the dawn of mankind, modern educators insist on learning environments that are tailored to the abilities and personalities of young girls, but which aren't very appropriate for young boys. Teachers insist that students sit still and listen, and this doesn't come naturally to many students-especially young boys. One response would be tailoring the education to the child, but the educational system generally does it the other way around, forcing the child to conform. In the US over three million children are given psychoactive drugs-especially Ritalin-to get them to sit still and behave nicely. (So much for schools' zero-tolerance drug policy.) Far from an anomaly, this policy underlines the ultimate goals of public schools-equalisation, homogenisation, socialisation and control-not individuality and learning, according to Low.

Two other chapters in this collection are well worth the read. Edwin West provides a useful analysis of how our imperfect democracy allowed the state-run education system to obtain its monopoly position of compulsory payment and consumption. He also surveys recent moves to break up this monopoly-from charter schools to the Milwaukee voucher plan's success to homeschooling. Sheldon Richman argues that the solution to our educational woes is to unleash the power of entrepreneurship on the problem. School administrators have often regarded schooling as missionary work-if only they could get children out of the hands of their ignorant, prejudiced, apathetic parents. To effect true reform, teachers must abandon this flawed, condescending view and become part of the service sector, competing to supply the educational demands of their customers-both parents and children.

This book joins a flood of recent publications that diagnose the ills of the American educational system and attempt to prescribe remedies. Many of these books, such as Eric Hanushek et al's Making Schools Work (Brookings Institution, 1994) and Quentin Quade's Financing Education: The Struggle Between Governmental Monopoly and Parental Control (Transaction Publishers, 1996), argue for setting incentives to make teachers and administrators responsive-rewarding them for success and punishing them for failure. Opinion polls demonstrate that the majority of Americans now support this idea in the form of school vouchers, but Education in a Free Society goes much farther. Editor Machan argues that "confiscating money from all property-owning citizens to fund education for those with children is morally repugnant in a genuine free society." Others argue for a "complete separation of school and state." Although this book is marked by an extreme libertarianism that prizes freedom-not goodness or holiness-as the only true human end, all those who admit the problems of the current American educational system will benefit from the information and insights presented in it.