The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves [Hardcover]

James Tooley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 16, 2009

Everyone from Bono to the United Nations is looking for a miracle to bring schooling within reach of the poorest children on Earth. James Tooley found one hiding in plain sight. While researching private schools in India for the World Bank, and worried he was doing little to help the poor, Tooley wandered into the slums of Hyderabad's Old City. Shocked to find it overflowing with tiny, parentfunded schools filled with energized students, he set out to discover if schools like these could help achieve universal education. Named after Mahatma Gandhi's phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India, The Beautiful Tree recounts Tooley's journey from the largest shanty town in Africa to the hinterlands of Gansu, China. It introduces readers to the families and teachers who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tooley (Reclaiming Education) documents his surprising finding that private schools are providing quality education to millions of poor children in the developing world. Whereas development experts insist that the path out of poverty lies in investment in public schools, the author draws on his fieldwork in India, China and Africa to argue that small entrepreneurs are educating the poor. In one region of India, 80% of urban children and 30% of rural children attend private schools; in China's Gansu province 586 private schools are located in small villages, even though the state prides itself on its public system. Contrary to accepted wisdom, the modest fees of private schools are within reach of most, and parents find them superior to public schools that are often riddled with corruption and incompetence. Tooley argues that development funds be invested to support these institutions, through vouchers to parents and microfinance loans to the schools. The author's engaging style transforms what could have been a dry if startling research report into a moving account of how poor parents struggle against great odds to provide a rich educational experience to their children. (Apr.)
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From the Back Cover

"Tooley's specialty is ultra-low-cost private education in the world's poorest countries. Orthodox opinion on developing-country education for the poor holds that parents are too ignorant to know a good school when they see one, and that a decent education is impossible to provide on the minimal budgets available to private schools serving poor students. In country after country, Tooley found that both claims are false. The book is a memoir of his travels and researches, and a thorough examination of the issues. Everyone interested in development should read it."
--Clive Crook, The Atlantic

Product Details

• Hardcover: 268 pages
• Publisher: Cato Institute; 1 edition (April 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933995920
• ISBN-13: 978-1933995922
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #281,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Tooley is professor of education policy at Newcastle University, where he directs the E. G. West Centre. For his ground-breaking research on private education for the poor in India, China and Africa, Professor Tooley was awarded gold prize in the first International Finance Corporation/Financial Times Private Sector Development Competition in September 2006. For the past two years, he was President of The Education Fund, Orient Global, living in Hyderabad, India. He is currently chairman of education companies in Ghana and China and advisor to a company in India, all creating embryonic chains of low cost private schools.

Prior to joining Newcastle University, Professor Tooley previously taught and researched at the Universities of Oxford and Manchester, England; Simon Fraser University, Canada; and University of the Western Cape, South Africa. His PhD is from the Institute of Education, University of London. His first job was as a mathematics high school teacher in Zimbabwe, which he took up after graduating with a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Sussex University. His work has been featured in documentaries for the BBC and PBS: for the latter it was profiled alongside the work of Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus and Grameen Bank.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What We Can, and Should, Learn from Africa!, August 1, 2009

By 

Kevin Currie-Knight "Education Grad Student" (Newark, Delaware) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves (Kindle Edition)

James Tooley's "The Beautiful Tree" is a book concerned with questioning the widely held assumption that free public education is the only, or most efficient, way to educate the poor. The book is a first-person recount of four years spent examining poor areas of African countries like Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and India, and recording the surprising number, and diversity, of private schools that serve the poor. In many areas, Tooley found that, despite the opinion of the areas politicians, the large majority of students were educated privately, even with the availability of "free" public education.

Tooley not only explores that this phenomenon exists (and that it is not an anomaly, but a presence in every poor village he explored), but why it is happening. Tooley talked to school "proprietors," parents who elect to send their children to private schools, and children who have attended both public and private schools. Tooley found that low quality of public education was the largest reason for parents sending children to private schools. Much like the United States, Tooley explains that corruption and bureaucratic jockeying is plaguing the public school infrastructure in Africa (from regulators taking bribes to teachers' unions shielding teachers from accountability). Towards the end of the book, Tooley unveils the results of his 150 school (and several thousand student) study whereby he gave students in public and private school tests and compared their results. Even those who can already guess the results will be surprised!

One of the most infuriating parts of The Beautiful Tree is the attitude and resistance Tooley found in the politicians and academics he encountered along the way. Politicians uniformly told him that his research was a waste of time ("Private schools here only serve the rich," which Tooley would quickly document was not the case.) Academics offered much resistance to "Tooley's research citing the "good reasons" why it was dangerous to share research on the efficiency of private schools for the poor, regardless of what the data says. (Tooley rebuts these "five good reasons" in a closing chapter.) Much of the time, the politicians' and academics' knee-jerk reaction to private schools for the poor amounted to the belief that they knew better how to educate the children than the parents of the students, who one politician called "ignoramuses".)

This is a highly interesting book with a message which needs to be heard. As Tooley points out, the existence, and quantity, of these private schools goes a long way in showing that private schools can and do educate the poor for a much more reasonable cost than public schools. And the fact that parents willingly choose to send their children to for-profit schools even though a "free" option exists gives lie to the myth that private schools educating the poor are too expensive or low-quality. A very interesting and eye-opening read.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learning More About the Do-gooders Around Us, May 11, 2009

By 

Alan Farrier "Deep Thinker" (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves (Hardcover)

I liked the book for what I learned or confirmed about the Non-Governmental do-gooders out there. The books explains the up-hill battle against pre-determined conceptions among them and their agendas. I have some first hand knowledge of this during two deployments to Iraq. They have the money and their minds are made up. No facts, research or personal, up-close, in the trenches experience is going to deviate these people from their mission to save the world or parents from themselves. I particularly enjoyed the chapters toward the end where Dr. Tooley explains the history of private education, the use of peers to educate and how much the West owes the East in spreading education world-wide. This is a great read. There has to be a better way than look to government, NGOs and rock stars to solve all our porblems. Sadly we have to go to the slums of India to learn this.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Important New Research on Education, April 29, 2009

By 

D. W. MacKenzie (New London CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves (Hardcover)

The standard story behind public education is simple. In theory, education is a public good that generates `positive externalities'. In theory, education must be compulsory and taxpayer funded, because people will not pay for the `social benefits' of education, and may not even understand the importance of education. In theory, only the state can guarantee the education of the masses.

The Beautiful Tree puts the theory of education as a public good to a serious test. In reality private schools are flourishing in countries like India and China, and in the African continent. The theory of education as a public good never was sound. It is obvious that most of the benefits of education are internal (i.e. education increases lifetime income) and the external benefits are arguably infra-marginal (i.e. externalities of education exist but do not hinder the supply of education).

This book also sets the affordability issue to rest. Poor people can afford good education because education is not inherently expensive. While it is true that the per student cost of American education is high, this is due to institutional conditions driven by lobbying and politics (i.e. by the AFT) which have artificially inflated our costs. However, the costs of education are not inherently or inescapably high. There is no need to fund education through redistribution.

The one nit I have to pick with the Cato crowd is on vouchers. Entitlements to education, like vouchers, can produce the same results that the author of this book decries- corruption and waste. But this disagreement does not detract from the general value of this book. Read it and learn more about learning.