The five essays in this book criticize the "deadening heart" of compulsory state schooling, described as a series of assumptions and structures that stamp out the self-knowledge, curiosity, concentration and solitude essential to learning--a system wherein education and schooling are mutually exclusive terms. The book argues that between schooling and television, children have little time to learn for themselves--about the community they live in, or the lives they might lead; instead, they are schooled to obey orders and become smoothly functioning cogs in the industrial machine. It is suggested that independent study, community service, large doses of solitude, and a variety of different apprenticeships with adults in all walks of life are keys to helping children break the thrall of a conforming society. Some form of free market system in public schooling is proposed as the likeliest place to look for answers--a free market where family schools, entrepreneurial schools, religious schools, crafts schools, and farm schools, would exist in profusion to compete with compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling. (LL)