In this thought-provoking book, Frank Smith explains how schools and educational authorities systematically obstruct the powerful inherent learning abilities of children, creating handicaps that often persist through life. The author contrasts a false and fabricated "official theory" that learning is work (used to justify the external control of teachers and students through excessive regulation and massive testing) with a correct but officially suppressed "classic view" that learning is a social process that can occur naturally and continually through collaborative activities. This book should be of interest in a time whan national authorities continue to blame teachers and students for alleged failures in education. It should help teachers and parents to combat sterile attitudes toward teaching and learning and help them to prevent current practices from doing further harm.