Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice

Schools on Trial is an all-in attack on the American way of education and a hopeful blueprint for change by one of the most passionate and certainly youngest writers on this subject.


Are America’s schools little more than cinder-block gulags that spawn vicious cliques and bullying, negate creativity and true learning, and squelch curiosity in their inmates, um, students? Nikhil Goyal—a journalist and activist all of twenty years old, whom The Washington Post has dubbed a “future education secretary” and Forbes has named to its 30 Under 30 list—definitely thinks so. In this book he both offers a scathing indictment of our teach-to-the-test-while-killing-the-spirit educational assembly line and maps out a path for all of our schools to harness children’s natural aptitude for learning by creating an atmosphere conducive to freedom and creativity. He prescribes an inspiring educational future that is thoroughly democratic and experiential, and one that utilizes the entire community as a classroom.

Nikhil Goyal is a journalist who has appeared on MSNBC and FOX and has written for The New York Times, MSNBC, The Nation, and other publications. Goyal has also had speaking engagements with the Clinton Global Initiative University, Google, Stanford, the University of Cambridge, SXSW, and the LEGO Foundation, among others. In 2013, he was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. He is also a recipient of the 2013 Freedom Flame Award. He lives in New York.