This essay discusses the institutional dysfunction that has resulted from the misguided belief that a market forces approach leads to the improvement of teaching quality and learning outcomes. Because the market forces approach is based on a simplistic input-output model that pays scant attention to teaching and learning processes, it is an approach that rewards those who are already advantaged and penalizes those who are disadvantaged. It is, therefore, a mechanism by which inequality is continually reproduced. School administrators, school teachers, and students are all at enormous risk of being trapped in an endless tail-chasing game that induces social discord and emotional distress, and diverts attention from the problems of the world that education is supposed to equip us to address. The author argues that one way to correct institutional dysfunction is to revitalize the public debate about the purposes of education and to emphasize the importance of education in shaping secure, confident, active, curious, and engaged citizens who are willing and able to engage with the challenges of being a human being in the 21st century. This will be a lot harder than allowing market forces to make all of our decisions for us. It is likely to involve encouraging students in schools and universities to be more actively involved in the construction of their own learning experiences. In turn, this will require teachers and lecturers to be more active in developing more inclusive pedagogies. Education needs much less mindless devotion to market forces and much more vision about the power of education to transform and enrich lives to the benefit of everyone.