Reviews • Detailed Contents • Preface • Excerpts • Behind the Scenes

by Jerry Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., Professor of International Business and Marketing, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

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“This is a provocative and stimulating inquiry into the core beliefs that define our school system and inhibit the transformation it so desperately needs. By skillfully applying insights from three brilliant yet starkly different theorists—Montessori, Dewey, and Ayn Rand—Dr. Kirkpatrick offers a refreshingly original vision that will illuminate the efforts of anyone working for substantive change in education.”

—Ron Miller, Ph.D., author, Free Schools, Free People: Education and Democracy After the 1960s

“Jerry Kirkpatrick offers a revolutionary perspective on educational theory. It comes as no surprise that this gifted follower of Ayn Rand favors a free market in education over the compulsion of ‘social liberalism.’ Surprisingly, he argues that John Dewey can be enlisted as an ally in the battle for non-coercive schools. Like Maria Montessori, Dewey stressed the development of the child’s ability for concentrated attention, and his views fit better with the free market than with the Fabian socialism he himself favored. Kirkpatrick’s outstanding book is a major contribution.”

—David Gordon, Editor, The Mises Review

“As one who has experienced Stalinist as well as modern liberal education—the former in Hungary, the latter in Germany and the U.S.A.—and has himself been a teacher now for over 35 years, I have always been outraged at the similarity between the two supposedly diametrically opposed systems. More than in any other social realm, in education much of the West has followed more or less consistently, the principles of statism. Jerry Kirkpatrick’s book develops a thorough and accessible analysis of how the education of young people needs a fundamentally different approach. It needs to incorporate, among other features, the ideals of a free market society. He shows how only that kind of transformation will turn this institution into a decisively positive experience for all children and young adults. His discussions reach into many areas that surround education—political, economic, ethical, psychological, and legal. This book is clearly the most systematic, well organized discussion of its subject matter on the market today.”

—Tibor R. Machan, R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise, Chapman University,
editor, Education in a Free Society

“Professor Jerry Kirkpatrick’s Montessori, Dewey, and Capitalism is a significant and original book. Kirkpatrick shows that Maria Montessori and John Dewey—whose educational philosophies are often interpreted as being opposed—in fact agree on the most important fundamentals in education. Kirkpatrick also argues persuasively that, despite the fact that neither Montessori nor Dewey were advocates of free market capitalism, their liberal educational philosophy can best be realized only within a fully liberal polity. This historically- and philosophically-informed book will repay close reading.”

—Stephen R. C. Hicks, Professor of Philosophy, Rockford College
Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship,
author, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault

“Jerry Kirkpatrick's interesting new book on the philosophy of education effectively makes the case for uniting the views of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and Ayn Rand. The author calls for an education that recognizes the freedom, creative power, and value of the individual human mind and that can foster the transition of dependent children into mature, independent adults who engage in productive careers as a main purpose in their lives. Kirkpatrick convincingly makes the case for the elimination of coercion in education and for a competitive marketplace of capitalistic educational businesses.”

—Edward W. Younkins, Professor of Accountancy and Business Administration
Wheeling Jesuit University, author, Capitalism and Commerce:
Conceptual Foundations of Free Enterprise

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Reviews • Detailed Contents • Preface • Excerpts • Behind the Scenes • Top of Page

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