The Beautiful Tree: A personal journey into how the world's poorest people are educating themselves

by James Tooley

Upon its release several years ago, The Beautiful Tree was instantly embraced and praised by individuals and organizations across the globe. James Tooley's extraordinary ability to braid together personal experience, community action, individual courage, and family devotion, brought readers to the very heart of education. This book follows Tooley in his travels from the largest shanty town in Africa to the mountains of Gansu, China, and of the children, parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and learning to save themselves. Now in paperback with a new postscript, The Beautiful Tree is not another book lamenting what has gone wrong in some of the world's poorest communities. It is a book about what is going right, and powerfully demonstrates how the entrepreneurial spirit and the love of parents for their children can be found in every corner of the globe.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, History, Philosophy, Sociology

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Skylar Burris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: Beguiled educator and researcher travels all over the Third World and learns that the private market provides the poor with a better education than the government. Is shocked by discovery. Is even more shocked that those with a vested interested in public education refuse to believe his evidence. Researches. Lectures. Suggests that maybe public, government-funded education is not the best solution for educating the world after all. Offends. Is mocked. Is threatened. Makes relatively few inroads with his ideas. Writes book.

At first, James Tooley tells his story well. I felt like I was discovering something new and amazing and inspiring as I began The Beautiful Tree. I was surprised by the number and breadth of private schools serving the slums of India, Africa, and China (in some areas, as many as 70% of children who attended school were found to attend private schools). I was not, however, surprised (as was Tooley) by the resistance he met when trying to convince others (particularly public officials) that such schools actually existed, that they actually provided a low-cost education to the poor, that the poor were actually willing to pay for them from their meager incomes because they valued education, and that those schools actually provided a better education than the available public schools. Tooley, however, was shocked (or pretends to be), unable to believe people would continue to ignore the obvious evidence and clear statistics that showed how the poor were using the market to supply themselves with education.

I say he tells his story well AT FIRST, because, soon enough, the book begins to follow a rather repetitive pattern: Tooley travels to a country. Tooley is told by public officials and public educators and other education researchers that there are no private schools for the poor there. Maybe this time they’re right! Maybe this time he’ll find nothing! No, he finds private schools. Lots of them. Still, the socialist ideologues back in Britain deny the possibility of using the market to provide education. Why? Tooley can’t IMAGINE why! (Could it be…I don’t know…because they’re socialists?) Tooley reads the work of other education researchers. Notices trend. They think the poor are stupid and don’t know what’s good for them. No, that can’t be what they really say! Is it? Read again. Yes! It is! They think that if the poor say a local private school gives their kids a better education than the closest public school, they don’t know what they’re talking about, because they are ignoramuses! Tooley is shocked. Tooley talks to public officials and other educators. Tooley is puzzled. Why do those who claim to want to help the poor deny the evidence that the market provides a better education for the poor than government-funded, public education? (Could it be…I don’t know…because their goal is not really to help the poor but to maintain their power, influence, and ideology?)

Proponents of compulsory, mass public education often argue that a private alternative to education could never supply the needs of the poor. The poor, by definition, cannot afford private schools. The Beautiful Tree, however, shows how the private market can supply (and indeed is supplying) education even to the poor, even in the Third World, and at an even higher quality than the better funded public schools in the same areas. It is done, however, by circumventing the government regulations that hamper the market, either by operating under the radar (as non-registered schools) or by paying bribes to government officials to meet regulations. (If only there was as much ingenuity in the slums of Washington, D.C. as Tooley found in the slums of the Third World. Who knows. Maybe there is. He didn't do any investigations in D.C.)

The book is inspiring: many of the poor of the Third World, of their own volition, and usually without the assistance of international aid organizations, are educating their children the best they can, and that may mean a brighter future for such nations. But the book is also repetitive, formulaic, and therefore more than occasionally dull. It is unlikely to convince proponents of public education that we should switch to a private education system instead, supply the poor directly with cash vouchers, and allow them to attend whichever private school they wish. It is unlikely to convince them not because the book lacks compelling evidence or inspiring stories, and not because he didn’t unearth the same market pattern in country after country after country, but because the idea of public education is deeply entrenched in the minds of Western liberals (and most of those they educate), and because switching to a private system would also deprive governments of a good measure of influence over their citizens. It would also deprive a great many bureaucrats of their jobs. Yes, the poor (and middle class and rich too!) would receive a much better education at a much lower per pupil overall cost, all people would have more choices in education, and education could be more easily tailored to meet individual needs, but that’s hardly enough to offset the weight of power, money, influence, and ideology. Nice try, Tooley. Nice try.

[Patrick Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

2023-07-07 Relistening to the Audible version in preparation for a book club discussion tomorrow. Fantastic. It has aged very well. Listening to this again is making me want to read the newer book by Tooley on the same subject: "Really Good Schools: Global Lessons for High-Caliber, Low-Cost Education."

2020-08-25 - just talked to a friend who was telling me about his travels to Africa over the last few years confirming the thesis of this book to the max - he saw repeatedly how so many poor people there sacrificed greatly for their kids to go to relatively inexpensive but very decent quality private schools, since the "free" public/government schools were so terrible.

Feb. 2015 - I actually listened to the audio version, not the hardcover. I don't see that as a choice among the "editions listed however.

Marvelous book. Have wanted to read this ever since it was published and I heard the author on Cato Audio explain what it was about.

Enjoyed discussing it with others who are interested in school choice, on 31 Jan. 2015, the last day of www.schoolChoiceWeek.com 2015. Excellent discussion which brought out that most of the people in the discussion, while not reading the whole book, did get the main idea that private schools for the poorest in the world do exist and the establishment (government school officials, international development officials, etc.) were not aware of them, pooh poohed them and/or tried to stifle them.

Highly recommended!

[Anil Swarup · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In India, there were schools in almost every village before the British replaced them with the system that provided the foundation for today's public system". This is what went wrong with the education system in India, says the author. According to Tooley, private school education survives even in China despite the claims to the contrary. It does so in countries like Kenya, Ghana and India. Also because "In a private school, the teachers are accountable to the manager, and through him or her, to the parents. In a government school the chain of accountability is much weaker". Consequently, "Private schools........appear to be superior to government schools in the creation of public good". Moreover, "Politicians see the public education system as an easy way to provide patronage". How true
The author has not only diagnosed and analysed the problems relating to school education in a large number of developing countries but also goes on to provide a prescription.
Worth a try.

[Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this book has an important message. Rather than write another lengthy article let me refer you to Skylar Burris' comprehensive book review. I agree with her observation that the book has good ideas but is too repetitious and becomes dull. That is why I marked this down from 4 stars to three. I would recommend skimming the book because its conclusions are too important to ignore.

My wife and I just returned from Tanzania where we worked for a short time at the Rift Valley Children’s Village (look up the video on YouTube if you are interested). There, Ms. India Howell, a brilliant cross between a saint and a CEO, has assumed responsibility for 91 children (at last count) who were abused and would otherwise be living on the street—or worse. What we witnessed reinforced the findings of James Tooley’s research: Corrupt officials were mismanaging the primary school. Teachers frequently failed to show up for work. When they did they were often drunk.

Ms Howell and her dedicated staff, working with parents from the impoverished villages around her facility, arranged to take over the management of the primary school, and in a few short years improved its rating from the lowest performing school in the Arusha district to the highest. She now not only is responsible for educating her own 91 children, but 500 other poor children from the surrounding villages populated by coffee plantation workers. She is now preparing to assume the management of the nearby secondary school so her older children can get the benefit of a real education. She is changing the world one life at a time.

I’m a libertarian, but it doesn’t matter whether label ourselves socialists, liberals, or conservatives. We all want our children to succeed and want what’s best for children around the world. Tooley primarily evaluated for-profit private schools that gave scholarships. Ms. Howell gets her funding from a non-profit charitable foundation. All the children in her school have to come up with something—-pencils, uniforms, books, etc. These are not easy to come by, and her foundation supplies what the most destitute lack.

The moral of the story is that most poor parents, like most more financially fortunate parents, want the best for their children and want to work in some way to give it to them. As India Howell observed, they want a hand-up, not a handout.

No monopoly is good for consumers, and government monopolies potentially can be the worst. If a private for-profit or private non-profit school can provide competition to “free” public schools that are not performing, we should encourage them to thrive.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This magnificent book should be required reading in every teacher training program on the planet. Tooley's intent is to show how many poor children are already being educated by private schools, demonstrate how this is much better than the public school disasters all over the world, show why (using basic economic incentives a high schooler ought to be able to figure out on his own) and then urge the world to begin to get behind private educational solutions now, so as not to leave even more children behind. It is eloquent, passionate, and convincing. I had no idea of the enormous scope of private schools in third-world countries, and I had no idea how well the solution is working, although as a very small low-cost private school myself (homeschool) I suppose I ought not to have been so surprised. Nor am I particularly surprised that Tooley has been met with ridicule and derision from the "aid" community--they are ideologically married to the idea of large-scale government intervention, and initially met microcredit solutions with derision as well. They'd rather build a dam, a gigantic factory, or a "model" school. But I see no other way to judge the present situation other than massive educational negligence on the part of governments and NGO's all over the world, now that we have this clear evidence of what works and what doesn't. Not that that will change many minds, since most international aid workers were educated by governmental behemoths themselves.
Too bad, because there is enough hope packaged in this three hundred pages to make a real difference in the lives of children around the world.

[Srinivas]

Through Atanu.

Tooley's research apparently found that even the private schools at the bottom of the heap catering to very poor people, are doing much better than the ones funded by the Govt. Is anyone surprised? I hope not; Anyone with a brain the size of a sand grain would have figured that out.

There are better alternatives to public schools, through which the Govt. can fund education. Education vouchers is a good way of doing that.
Apparently an U.S. Govt. pilot program with education vouchers gave good results.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/0...- at-a-quarter-the-cost/ [http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20094050/...]
This is something that can be pulled off in India IMO, especially because it can be implemented in phases. Since basic education comes under state Govt.'s purview, a decent CM in even single state can make a lot of difference. Modi and Nitish Kumar come to mind; Gujarat, and Bihar, two states at two ends of the economic spectrum can probably run this experiment and show the way for the rest of India. If it becomes a success, the rest of the states will come under a lot of pressure to implement this model.
Well, am I dreaming too much? I guess so :(

[Gordon Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Tooely is a remarkable individual. The point of the book is to demonstrate how poor kids in poor countries are being educated by private schools that are far more effective than the parallel public schools, and that until publication of Tooley's extensive research about ten years ago, no one in the development community recognized this obvious solution to educating the world's poor. In fact, most—including the governments of these countries—had no idea these schools even existed. That evidence of the superiority of the private schools, and the implications for helping the world's poor, is compelling and fascinating. But the takeaway for me is that the world needs more people like James Tooley, who has spent his career figuring out a better way to help the poorest of the poor. The combination of his compassion, intellectual curiosity, and apparent ambivalence towards the "experts" who dismissed, mocked, or threatened him, is inspiring.

This is a revolutionary and wonderful book. Hat tip to James and Temma Devereaux for choosing it for our book club.

[Dwayne Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent look at how the poorest of people in the poorest of nations care for their children enough to send them to private school despite public schools being available. About how entrepreneurs start private schools, competing for students by lowering costs and raising quality, targeted at the poor. About how governments deny the very existence of such schools or, if shown them, claim that they are of low quality compared to public schools - despite the judgement of parents and outside observers.

If you're interested in education, this book is a scientific and convincing argument for privatization.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an advocate of "education for all" children around the world, I never thought I would be in favor of private schools. After reading this book, I want to work for their development! This is an extremely important read.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Discussions about improving education, especially education for the poor, should be preceded by the participants reading this book. Not only does this book dispel many misunderstandings about viable solutions for educating the poor the world over, it demonstrates the degree to which government aid programs and non governmental organizations (NGOs) often completely misallocate resources and either willfully or inadvertently misdiagnose both the challenges and solutions to improving education, especially for the world's poorest.

Tooley visited a variety of developing nations in Asia and Africa where he was initially surprised to find a plethora of successful, unofficial private schools serving the very poor. While it is impressive enough that such schools exist, charging as little as US$0.17 per day per pupil, many of them also offer free education to the children of families unable to pay. Further, these schools continue to thrive despite, or perhaps because of, the low-quality, better-funded public schools with which they compete.

Whereas the public schools in developing nations often focus on funding facilities and administrators instead of minimizing teacher absenteeism and graft, the private schools are singularly focused on the quality of education their students receive, often to the detriment of the facility quality and administrator compensation. Whereas public school teachers in these countries are often much better paid than teachers in the inexpensive private schools, the teacher attendance and performance of the latter usually far exceeds that of the former.

Regretfully, United Nations and developed country aid for education in developing countries is concentrated almost exclusively on increasing funding and resources for public schools, rather than recognizing that it could go much further were it to fund scholarships or facilities for the aforementioned private schools. Were these private schools to no longer depend on tuition paid by the parents of their students, they would potentially sever the vital accountability to their customers which so markedly distinguishes them from their public counterparts.

Ironically, the public education ministries in these countries are often either oblivious to or disdainful of such inexpensive private schools. Although they acknowledge the existence of expensive private schools for the rich, they are loath to admit that poor parents are both cognizant of the importance of quality education for their children and intelligent enough to distinguish the value of inexpensive private schools relative to the free public offerings.

It is tragic that proponents of free public education are often so condescending as to believe that attendance must be compelled out of a distrust of parents being sufficiently motivated to educate their children. In fact, parents might be disinclined to send their children to free government schools precisely because they are all too aware that little education is happening there. This is clearly the case in the developing nations covered, where the government schools are of such consistently low quality. The proof of this lies in the fact that so many of the ultra poor continue to make sacrifices in their lives in order to continue sending their children to the private schools.

In addition to criticizing the facilities of inexpensive private schools critics often also cite the lower "qualifications" of the teachers as compared to the public schools. This translates to teachers often lacking university degrees or government teaching certification. Tooley's investigation challenges this critique by large-scale testing of students in both public and private schools in these countries to measure efficacy. On all academic measures, the private school students, both expensive and inexpensive, outperformed their public school counterparts. Among the few areas where the public schools themselves consistently outperformed private schools was in the provision of playgrounds and state licensed teachers.

The primary conclusions from this remarkable research are:
1. School and education should not be conflated. Not all schools effectively educate and effective education can happen outside of school.
2. Schools have more incentive to provide quality services when they are paid directly by the parents of their students.
3. New facilities and certified teachers are poorly correlated to quality educational outcomes.
4. Parents, even poor, illiterate ones, generally care about the education of their children, are willing to make sacrifices to provide it, and can distinguish between high and low quality educational options.
5. Well-intended government agencies and NGOs seeking to improve education often infantilize poor parents and fixate on mandatory "free" government schools as the solution to educational shortfalls rather than embracing market-based educational alternatives by honestly assessing the relative efficacy of all options.

This is one of the most important books in the educational debate and has profound implications for improving education in all countries, not just developing nations. Even in the United States, concerns about low quality government schools abound and families often prioritize public school catchment among their home purchase criteria, paying a premium for their children to be able to attend better public schools.

Tooley provides hope that education can be improved around the world without large outlays of money. Indeed, simply redirecting and re-purposing existing expenditures could monumentally improve results. I look forward to reading Tooley's latest book, Really Good Schools: Global Lessons for High-Caliber, Low-Cost Education.

[JoséMaría BlancoWhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't finished this book but I give it all the stars in the heavens. It is so important that people read this book and wake up.

The author meets so many liberal (meaning leftist) hypocrites that I can’t help feel my blood boil in every single page. One of the things that called my attention, as well as the author’s, was India´s noise: It’s the noise that will always represent India for me. It’s a trait my country, Spain, also shares, to my annoyance.

A note on the candidness of the author and of many well-intentioned people: Back in my hotel room, I did some quick calculations and it dawned on me that running these schools [private ones] must actually be profitable –sometimes very profitable- … profit wasn’t a great issue for them, but certainly they viewed themselves as businesspeople … this could of course explain why there were so many private schools –because it’s easier to attract business investment than philanthropy.. What an amazing discovery! Come on, world. Where is the common sense of people? For Pete’s sake! The day people realize this piece of common wisdom for themselves, without having to read a thousand books or visit a thousand places around the world, that will be the day of hope.

Now, businesspeople are humans as well as people from the Left, with feelings of love and care (in case leftists don’t know), and so they also may be concerned for the wellbeing of their fellow citizens. These private school entrepreneurs also wanted to be viewed as “social workers”, giving something back to their communities. They wanted to be respected as well as successful. Of course the reason why those private schools in the middle of the poorest neighborhoods in poor India (and elsewhere) was no mystery: They were much, much better, and their parents really could afford them. Those poorest-of-the-poor parents cared more for quality of education than for free uniforms, free lunch, free books…. Simply because there was NO EDUCATION!: In public schools teachers partied … or taught only one class out of six, and treated the children like orphans. There was no question that they wanted their children out of the public schools.

Really this book makes me mad, very mad. The good private schools in these poor parts of the world, instead of being helped, are having all the obstacles thrown at them in the shape of regulations. What do governments do to prevent poor families to send their children to these better and affordable schools? They write regulations that are impossible to be met. Therefore bribes are so common. How can I have a playground of 1,000 square meters? says the owner of one of the private schools in India. Places where no family household has even a toilet and people live like rats, how on earth can you put on them those heave requirements that cannot be fulfilled? But regulations do not apply to elite schools… oh, no. Regulations? … Oh, if anyone gets in my way, I pick up the phone to the CM [chief minister]. So say the managers of the wealthy elite colleges. God, this is so aggravating!

Another principal of a private school in Lagos, Africa had written to the Lagos education department saying that instead of hassling the private schools, why didn't it help them with a revolving loan fund? He had received no reply.

Can you perform? That is the important thing, not whether you have certificates!

Hold on to your chair for this one. A headmistress in a public school: "Parents in the slums don't value education. They are illiterate and ignorant. Some don't even know that education is free here." Don't you feel like going to India if only for the reason of burying her head in a bloody puddle of mud?? The same rat-in-a-human-body headmistress interrupts the children who were going to answer the author if they had brothers or sisters in private schools. The principal interrupted: "No," she said, these children are poor, they can't afford to go to private school." But I persevered; and the children said yes, yes, their siblings went to private schools. And they gave me names ... the headmistress admitted that she had never been into Makoko itself, had never seen where her children came from.

More coming soon

[Daniel Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps we’re doing third world development all wrong.

That was the thought that stuck with me most after I finished reading James Tooley’s The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey into How the World’s Poorest are Educating Themselves, a surprisingly readable book about the role of private schools in education in some of the world's poorest neighborhood. In The Beautiful Tree, Tooley tells his story about discovering private schools in some of the world’s poorest neighborhoods and discovering that in case after case they are doing well, are educating the poor, and are often, if not always competitive with the much better funded government schools that are found nearby.

It’s a proposition that surprised me, and for good reason: the private schools in my neighborhood—which is already among the higher income brackets in the state—are prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, I have a high degree of confidence in the public schools available to my family, but what about in places where public schools are failing or are inadequate? What choices do those who live there have?

Tooley found himself in some of these places while researching private schools in India for the World Bank. One day, he wondered into one of the poorer neighborhoods Hyderabad’s Old City and found it overflowing with small, parent-funded schools. At first, such schools seemed to be the exception rather than the rule, but as Tooley began to look for schools in other countries where his World Bank research took him, he found similar schools and similar stories, often existing in spite of the protests of government officials that private schools could not and did not exist for the poor (Tooley finds them specifically in India, Nigeria, Ghana and China, though this latter case is unique from the others).

Ironically, the book is not a critique of what is going wrong in the world, but rather seems expository of something that is going right and without the interference or help of the state. Parents, dismayed at slovenly, under-motivated and underperforming schools, banded together to form schools that are accountable to them, and the results are astounding, providing education to student who would not otherwise have opportunity.

Did I mention that these private schools are not subsidized, let alone acknowledged, by the government? Rather, parents scrimp and save, putting a premium on the education of their children. No one is going to get rich teaching at private school, thought: Tooley quotes fees at $10 per year in some cases, and generally in the range 4-20% of the minimum wage of the country. Some schools even offer scholarships to help students who still cannot afford the fees.

How do private school students rate against their peers? Tooley tested 24,000 students in India, Nigeria, Ghana and China in math and language proficiency. In India and Africa, children in private schools almost always excelled over those in public schools; in China, private schools were more likely to be limited to remote locations where travel to public schools was not safe. The one place that the government did better than private schools was in providing playgrounds for schools.

Tooley seems to attribute the cause to a general lack of accountability among government teachers, whereas private school teachers were held directly accountable by parents. With no incentive to excel among government teachers, they often delivered high rates of absenteeism, failed to teach altogether, or allowed classes to collapse into chaos. Tooley also notes that government inspectors meant to assure teaching standards were easily paid off and kept away from government classrooms.

If there’s more I would have asked from Tooley, it would have been how to replicate the successes that he saw in India, Ghana, and Nigeria. If there’s a way to bring about serious and long-term change to the third world, it should be replicated.

Tooley tells the story in a series of anecdotes that is appealing and makes the reading easy. not to mention powerful. Even if third world development is not your cup of tea (it’s not mine), the story is fascinating.

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Tooley traveled the third world researching small private schools for the poor. In every country, he found that public schools are a disgrace, and, more importantly, that there are small entrepreneurial schools providing services for the desperately poor. Some how, some way, poor parents scrape together the money to pay the small tuition, especially for their girls, to give them a safe place to study. The conditions and sacrifices should make every American parent blush with shame for what we refuse to do for our own children despite all our wealth.

Small, entrepreneurial, private schools are the answer to such disasters as, for example, the Detroit school system. But entrenched teachers unions, government thugs and neighborhood busybodies would never allow this perfectly sensible answer to our own government schooling dilemma to develop.

James Tooley is my hero.

Warning to all you middle age women--make sure you have the tissues nearby while reading this book.

[Rahmad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A narration of the author's path to discovering the important and the potential role private schools play in developing countries. Written in a first person account of the author's enlightenment process rather than a list of prescription of what a good private school in developing countries should look like or do. Overall an enjoyable read and let me to question some of my own assumptions of private schools in Indonesia.

[Warren Norred · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book traces the discovery of how poor people handle the creation of inexpensive non-government schools.

I thought that this would be a good about how the Internet was changing the price of education, but the level of development in these areas are below what is necessary to discuss meaningful impact of technology in education. The book is more about the struggles of private schools in developing countries and where government bureaucrats both get it wrong and get it right.

[Cait Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toole portrays the reality of the education system around the world. I found the most impressive aspect of the book was reading about the sacrifices families made to send their children to private schools. It did get a bit redundant, but that may have been Toole's intention. Maybe he wanted to show how out of touch the bureaucracy is.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed reading about the author's discoveries as he traveled to developing countries to study how the poorest of the poor receive an education. His research on the private schools he found in distant villages - private schools run by the poor, for the poor - was interesting. Would have liked more discussion about how to fix the issue of poor-quality public schools in developing countries.

[J. J. Arias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and informative. It was slow at times. It often made me angry to learn just how intransigent governments and the development establishment are in refusing to acknowledge the existence and accomplishments of private schools for the poor.

[Vishal Talreja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant in parts and unnecessarily judgmental at times, it is an interesting book to understand how local communities come together to solve educational inequity for their children. It demonstrates their resilience, creativity and commitment to their children.

[Nixon Sucuc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book. It was exciting to read about the adventures of Tooley in the slums of the countries he visited hunting for private schools in the most unexpected places and finding the wonderful things he wrote he is now telling the world. I was inspired by the determination and passion with which he conducted his research even against the disapproving, uncooperative and even sometimes hostile "development experts" and government beaurocrats. A very important book for the freedom movement to champion.

[Andrew Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was fascinating to learn about widespread success of private education in poor countries. It's difficult to see how anyone could conclude more government schooling is a reasonable answer, given its utter failure.
I was inspired enough to pen an article that draws heavily from Tooley's work.
https://principledlibertarian.com/201...

[Edy · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Tooley merupakan professor bidang pendidikan dari Newcastle University, Inggris. Beliau pernah bekerja sebagai guru di Zimbabwe, Kanada dan Afrika Selatan. Beliau menaruh perhatian yang intens terhadap dunia pendidikan di Negara sedang berkembang.

Buku ini bercerita tentang ketertarikan Tooley kepada sekolah swasta yang melayani masyarakat miskin di perkotaan dan pelosok perdesaan. Di tengah gencarnya tekanan internasional dan suara nyaring para pakar pembangunan untuk adanya “pendidikan gratis” di Negara sedang berkembang, Tooley mempunyai pendapat berbeda. Riset yang dilakukan Tooley di India, Ghana, Nigeria dan China menunjukkan bahwa pengembangan program pendidikan gratis melalui pembangunan “sekolah negeri” yang dibiayai pemerintah ternyata tidak selamanya tepat karena membutuhkan sumberdaya finansial yang sangat besar dan membutuhkan keberanian reformasi birokrasi di sector pendidikan.

Tooley dalam risetnya menemukan bahwa secara alamiah di banyak daerah terdapat sekolah-sekolah swasta sederhana yang memberikan layanan kepada kaum miskin dengan biaya sekolah yang sekedarnya. Sekolah swasta ini dalam beberapa aspek mempunyai kelebihan dibanding sekolah negeri yakni: (1) guru lebih disiplin dan bertanggungjawab karena diawasi kepala sekolah dan orangtua murid, (2) kurikulum pelatihan lebih fleksibel dan sesuai kebutuhan siswa, (3) guru berasal dari lingkungan murid sehingga interaksi dan komunikasi guru dan murid menjadi intensif, (4) rasio guru dan murid di sekolah swasta lebih kecil dibanding sekolah negeri sehingga pembelajaran intens, (5) biaya sekolah per siswa di sekolah swasta lebih efisien, (6) ada subsidi silang antara siswa dari keluarga mampu dan kurang mampu. Dalam risetnya Tooley juga menemukan bahwa belajar bersama antar siswa (peer learning) sebenarnya sudah lama dikembangkan di sekolah-sekolah tradisional di India. Metode ini yang kemudian dikenal dengan Metode Madras. Metode ini kemudian diadopsi dan dikembangkan di Inggris dan belahan dunia lainnya.

Pembangunan pendidikan di Negara berkembang yang seringkali berkiblat ke Negara maju (“Barat”) seringkali mematikan kreatifitas bangsa itu sendiri. Pembangunan sekolah negeri yang berlangsung massif dengan hibah atau pinjaman dari lembaga keuangan internasional, terkadang hasilnya tidak optimal. Oleh karenanya Tooley berpikiran untuk memberikan akses pendidikan kepada seluruh lapisan masyarakat, pemerintah di Negara sedang berkembang harusnya tidak hanya mengembangkan sekolah negeri tetapi juga harus mengoptimalisasikan keswadayaan masyarakat melalui sekolah swasta. Masyarakat miskin bukan berarti mereka tidak punya apa-apa, mereka mempunyai sumberdaya hanya saja nilainya terbatas. Sumberdaya yang terbatas inilah yang harus dikelola dengan baik agar mereka mampu menolong dirinya sendiri untuk hidup bermartabat dan sejahtera di masa depan.

Secara umum buku ini sangat bagus untuk dibaca oleh pengambil keputusan, aktivis atau pemerhati pendidikan. Kita diajak berpikir lateral dalam menghadapi carut marutnya dunia pendidikan Negara sedang berkembang. Terkait dengan Indonesia, walaupun tidak semua yang dikupas di buku ini sesuai dengan kondisi kita, namun ada banyak hal yang bisa dijadikan renungan bila kita ingin mewujudkan Indonesia pintar dan berdaulat dimasa depan.....

[Vibina Venugopal]

If I laid my hands on a great book in spanish what would I do with it?? Just flip through the pages unable to decipher a word..But I would enjoy and relish if it had been in English or any other language I am well versesd with...But what would be the case of a person who could read nothing??? A person with no education not by his fault, what are they to do ?? I was questioning myself reading this book..As it says its James Tooley's personal journey into how the world's poorest people are educating themselves...His research for the world bank on private schools in third world countries India, China, Ghana, Nigeria gets an insight about struggle of education...What happens education becomes too costly to afford , a strong will is all that takes to pursue the same...All his research makes three points clear-1) Private schools are performing better in terms of quality than the public schools funded by government..2)The parents do everything they can to educate their children by all means..3) Quality of education is not in terms of infraustructure of the schools nor in the certificates the teachers but the standard of education they are able to give the students in the private schools...In India even when government has opened many schools with free education, Tooley found that parents were not ready to send them there., but prefer much costly private school over public school which the family is unable to afford..Many interviews with parents, children and the people running the private school and few visits to the deserted public schools under the government funding, he found that., in spite of financial deficit the quality of education the private schools were able to provide were good enough for the parents to take the risk....
Everytime he visits a country side or backward area in a new country he expects not to find a private school and very predicatbly he ends up discovering a good private school in narrow alley, under a tattered tached roof with hand written nameboard providing a passerby about a school next by..Tooley is surprised at the state of experts and their take on education while working for the government., conveniently they are unaware of all this plight, Tooley is saddened as of why the government has turned on a blind eye on all these...Tooley argues that as these private schools exist outside the governments' helping hand ., it is left with no choice but to charge higher fee for their survival...Agony of a poor parent, corruption of the government administration are well pinned out..NGOs too are conrtibuting well in brininging about quality education to poor in underdeveloped areas..
Though I agree with Tooley with private schools educating poor, there are schools in city were the education has been developed into a lucrative buisiness, everything made so attractive that every parent aspires to find a place even when they charge money big time...
Your brain might get crowded with many facts and figures yet its worth a read atleast to realise the blessing of education that we have...

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, so you know a book endorsed by Will Easterly and put out by the Cato Institute is going to have a very specific type of philosophy, but I think this is an interesting entry in my "public education" readings because Tooley's recent research (this book was just published this last year) suggests that private education is the solution to the education crisis.

"Pwaht?" you may say. "Private education is what drives inequality, keeping the poor down." But Tooley disagrees. We have a very odd view of public education. For centuries private education was more like Old Mrs. Greenley teaching out of her parlor, or to make this more international, Old Mr. Gupta. Private education was accountable to parents, even poor parents.

Tooley finds private schools all around the world who are educating the poor far better than the corrupt public schools, which suffer from teacher absenteeism, embezzlement, and favoritism. In the private schools of the poor, though, teachers are driven to provide the best educations they can, fighting for parents' fees. Most of these schools, because they are embedded in the community, can't resort to the corruption of public schools as the teachers are the same people who have to buy bread and fish from the teachers: the community is too tightly knit for corruption to go unnoticed or unpunished. The result, from administering basic literacy and math tests, is that the public schools, with up to 200 students per class and commercially-built play grounds, far underperform the private schools, with a handful of students per class and held in a leaky room. The one exception to this compared to his sample of Indian and African regions is China, where private schools are built not to improve the faulty public schools, but to provide access in regions where traveling to school is a dangerous, expensive endeavor. There the private schools are merely equal to public schools.


I wouldn't go as radically as to say that we should do away with public schools altogether, as Tooley inplies, but I do think that perhaps microloans to support educational entrepreneurs in developing countries should probably be ramped up, both to help the development of smart, hard working proprietors, but also to provide a necessary educational resource in a places where all government jobs, including teaching jobs, are rife with cronyism and corruption.




My own complaint about the book qua book is that the travelogue of a white man narrative gets a little annoying sometimes, but Tooley makes an excellent intellectual case that perhaps forcing western-style education on indigenous people is imperialist in the extreme.

[Amit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book makes two key points (a) government-run education is unlikely to work wherever the poor have no practical way of holding the government accountable (b) private schools, operating with a profit motive, already offer a superior alternative and need to encouraged.

This book was an eye-opener and resonated with my personal experience. I went to school in India during the 1980s, and during that time, it was accepted wisdom among the middle class that government-run schools were to be avoided. Private schools were quite affordable for the middle class. My tuition in 1990 was Rs. 250/month (or < $15/month). My family and I used to think that the poor have little choice but government schools. One of my uncles was a star teacher at a middle-class private school and joined government-run school for better pay. I used to hear horror stories of how the principal of this school actively discouraged children to attend, so that he could pocket the money provided for lunch. I don't know if private alternatives existed for the poor in India during the late 1980s, but I was glad to read that they are available now.

The author, through extensive research, demonstrates that the quality of the school building, the size of the playgrounds, or teacher qualifications do not matter. What maters is accountability and attitude. The people running government schools are not accountable for the outcomes. They blame the parents and the socio-ecominc conditions of the kids. For lot of middle-class teachers, it is tiresome chore to commute to the edge of poor areas where the school is located, and they have built in bias about the capabilities of the poor children who attend them. He makes a convincing case that rich countries giving money education ministries of poor countries will do nothing to improve the quality of education.

Further, lot of issues about accountability that the author raises are just as valid in poor neighborhoods of rich countries. I would highly recommend this book.

[Xavier · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Tooley writes about his journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves in his book, The Beautiful Tree. While I was in Mumbai I use to attend couple of activities with a child rights organization like calling for action from the government department responsible for health of public school children. The reports from the government department includes: unavailability of government doctors, schools not keeping track of report cards, etc. That child rights organization favor in actions that will eventually make the government established systems to work; like keep posting the situation in government schools to public and authorities, organizing parades and street plays, etc. Meanwhile the poor has to wait.

James Tooley mentions in his book that the insensitive for the government system is not based on the work they do but the system for insensitive is already in place even no work is done. The privatization of education for poor would certainly make difference as the proprietors insensitive is the fees children pay and the parents may withdraw their children if the school is not doing what they are expected to do. As the author showcases in his book that the poor parents are capable of making such decisions only if they have a choice.

The Beautiful Tree is a beautiful book on how poor children are getting educated and suggests what could be the future instead of spending much of the taxpayer’s, donor’s and loan money in the public education. The author explains his various tested ideas in this book.

James Tooley has written an essay on this topic, Educating Amaretch: Private Schools for the Poor and the New Frontier for Investors, and is a gold prize winner.

[Desean Dyson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't rate books based on my agreement with them, rather I judge them by their thoroughness and thoughtfulness. Such is the case with this book. I am a career public school educator who due to a unique fit and mission match became the founding leader of an Urban Christian School in Jackson, Ms. Independent schools in this state have ugly racial histories so I've been hesitant to embrace much of what is my new normal. As I've worked in the area of independent schools, I've been a part of bigger conversations pertaining to education policies ( voucher systems, school choice, school accountability). A good friend who is on the opposite side of many of my views recommended this book to me after I asked questions concerning the " supply-side" of school choice. My thought was that policies in our state would not help the most needed because the schools don't exist for these students to go to (rather, most of our Independent Schools were set up as segregation school and thus are not perceived as being accessible by many of the families with the most need).

I do not believe there is a clean and clear correlation between what Dr. Tooley found in these countries, and this debate in my state ( and America at Large), but his larger points are very well made. As with many other areas, I believe education reformers would be served well by hearing diverse perspectives and arguments. Much of this is based on the economics of choice and options, but even here I think some of us in the Urban/ public education movement could stand to grow in terms of holistic understanding of all that plays into how a society educates its children.

[Marlena May · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great reference book to explain the value of private education to the poor. I was especially fascinated by the fact that these schools offer better education than the public sector and the economically poor are more than willing to pay for their children's education. These schools offer what is needed for a child to become "educated" based on the cultural context, which says more than what the public sector provides. Private schools offer stay much more accountable and provide better education because they are dependent as businesses upon the matriculation rates of their students.

The private education model was the first schooling method as modeled by ancient schools in India and Africa. Teachers giving lessons to students who then teach other students is not a new concept, but rather an ancient, effective one which was abandoned to attain "uniformity" in education. Uniformity in education is unpractical and irrelevant in our diverse world in which knowledge should be customized to address local context. "Poor" parents understand this fully, and shop for their "brand name qualified" private schools to provide their children with a relevant, applicable, captivating educational experience for their children.

Sure, the infrastructure of these schools may not be the best. The curriculum may be old and worn. However the enthusiasm and passion of driven teachers and business-minded proprietors coupled with the accountability demanded by loving parents results in an education (NOT schooling or educational system) that cannot be beat.

[Jack Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journey of Discovery

Interesting and challenging travels around the world, discovering an abundance of true modern education being demanded and delivered to the poor by small time entrepreneurs - in spite of governments, aid agencies, and education "experts."

The corruption and incompetence of public education systems the world over can be illuminating to the problems of American and British systems as well.

The lesson: Get your child out of any public system and into private instruction by any means possible.

The insight: Aid experts, agency authorities, liberal intellectuals, politicians have unjustified, rationalistic contempt for the poor, considering them essentially sub-human, unable to judge results for themselves, having no personal values and goals for themselves or their children, and needing to have the wisdom and policies of their betters forced upon them. Empirical evaluation of this assumption and the consequences of policies is not needed - only more tax money.

Commercial schools and teachers are typically more able and more committed to educating children than state certified ones. Motivated by their desire to win customers and the respect of their communities.

Tooley fails to generalize his understanding to the benefits and morality of capitalism (free choice, trade) to all areas of life. Perhaps he is focusing on one battle at a time?

Assisting with Tooley's work and the publication of this book alone justifies the existence of the Cato Institute - not to mention their many other valuable publications.

[Marissa | storiesinthemeadow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for book club, can’t say I would have picked this up otherwise.

From the very beginning I kept thinking how refreshing it was to read a research based work where the author was not a proponent of more government involvement.

Interesting research and wonderful stories/case studies. A bit wordy though. I think if it had been about half the length it would have been more compelling, and for sure easier to read.

I enjoyed the final chapter where he conjectured possible crossovers with his findings in Western education (specifically USA and Great Britain). I know many of the problems he was seeing with public education in developing countries (particularly in the slums/urban areas) are present here in urban areas of the USA as well. Sad. I think many people (myself included?) shrug and say “oh well, whatcha gonna do?” A trend I’m seeing in the USA is the growth of home schooling as a viable alternative. Though, that wouldn’t do anything to help the “poorest of the poor” discussed often in the book, because both parents (or single parents) would be working to provide for their families.