Placebo Education

Marginal Revolution has a link to an interesting post today on the concept of "Placebo Education" from Tyler Cowen's new book:

Placebo effects can be very powerful and many supposedly effective medicines do not in fact outperform the placebo. The sorry truth is that no one has compared modern education to a placebo. What if we just gave people lots of face-to-face contact and told them they were being educated?