Something is deeply wrong with school—and everybody knows it. Students forget nearly everything they learn within months of passing a test. Teachers burn out, crushed between impossible bureaucratic demands and classrooms full of children who would rather be anywhere else. Parents oscillate between guilt and helplessness, dimly aware that the system they entrust with their children's futures is failing spectacularly—yet unable to imagine an alternative.

In The School Trap: Why Education Fails, Boris Kriger draws on decades of experience as an educator, entrepreneur, and restless questioner of received wisdom to dismantle the myths that prop up modern schooling. Why do curricula remain stuffed with irrelevant material while children's natural curiosity is methodically extinguished? Why does the structure of a typical school day resemble a minimum-security prison more than a place of intellectual awakening? And why, despite an explosion of educational technology, are students less prepared for adult life than ever before?

Kriger examines the neuroscience of curiosity and boredom, the corrosive effects of standardized testing, the war for children's attention waged by TikTok and video games, the epidemic of bullying, and the taboo subject of teachers who do more harm than good. He reveals a startling biological truth: that doing good for others triggers the same reward circuits as falling in love—and argues that this overlooked fact should become the cornerstone of a radically reimagined education.