John Holt, author of many books on education, suggested in his 1970 publication Freedom and Beyond that even alternative education inevitably becomes bureaucratized. He argued that instead of reforming existing institutions, the United States should expend financial resources for learners, hot for schools. The learners, then, should be able to decide how to use the money to learn— in school or out—because, as he says, "the rich will always be able to outlast the poor in school. And schools, even if their intentions are good, and in spite of anything poor people may do to get control of them, are by their very nature, structure, style, and purpose bound to be middle-class institutions favoring middle-class kids." Even in the Soviet Union, in spite of laws that give university preference to the children of farmers and workers, most students in the universities are the...