In 1869, at age 25, the precociously brilliant Friedrich Nietzsche was appointed to a professorship of classical philology at the University of Basel. He seemed marked for a successful and conventional academic career. Then the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner transformed his sense of purpose. The genius of such thinkers and makers - like the genius of the ancient Greeks was the only touchstone for true understanding. How then was education to answer to such genius? Something more than sturdy scholarship was called for. A new way of teaching and questioning, a new philosophy... What that new way might be was the question Nietzsche broached in five vivid and popular lectures delivered to the public in Basel in 1872. Following a chance encounter in the country, an old philosopher, his former student, and two very wet behind the ears undergraduates embroil themselves in a discussion of the current state of education, devoted, they concur, on the one hand to the democratization of shallow learning, and on the other to fostering a narrow specialization that serves the interests of industry and the state. Neither of these, the philosopher insists, constitutes true learning, which can only arise out of a determined attention to the genius of language, written and spoken, instead of practical ends, however newsworthy. Composed in emulation (and to some degree as a satire) of a Platonic dialogue, Anti-Education presents a stimulating, provocative, and thoroughly timely reckoning with one of the great problems of the day.