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

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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.

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.

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.

I'd like to see as many people reading this book as have read the very popular book Three Cups of Tea. Both of these books are about education in poor countries, but this book is well researched, detailed, and has some fascinating insights. It's also a great read. While Three Cups of Tea appears to advocate that the poor can only be helped by charitable outsiders or government, The Beautiful Tree gives us details of how the poor are educating their children now, despite abysmal public schools.

I look forward to hearing more from James Tooley.

"... it's a peculiarly modern and unhelpful mistake to conflate education with schooling," James Tooley observes in The Beautiful Tree. Schooling is about where one goes, while education is about what one actually learns. This book will give you an education.

To begin near the end of the book, Tooley's historical research indicates the state-run education system in Britain started with for-profit and philanthropic schools that were gradually taken over by the government (I suspect the same process occurred in America). However, in exporting education to the developing world, both during the colonial era and the modern age of foreign aid, we've gotten it exactly backwards, sponsoring massive state-run projects with all the bloat, corruption and lack of accountability one would expect. There's a lot of schooling going on, but very little education. The development and aid experts all recommend time, patience, and of course, more funding.

The surprising good news Tooley chronicles is that even the poorest and most isolated communities in the developing world are doing for themselves instead of waiting for others to do for them. He finds small private schools in slums, fishing villages and remote mountain towns, and provides objective evidence that these private schools are succeeding on a pittance where well-funded public schools are little more than day-care centers, or are too remote for rural children to get to.

This is all wonderful, and left me wondering, "What can we in the developed world do to help?" Tooley recommends more capitalism: carefully targeted vouchers for the poorest of the poor, microfinance loans to help private schools improve their facilities, and eventually turning the best of the private schools into franchises or chains.

Will a capitalist approach to education succeed in the developing world? It could hardly do worse than the present sorry situation. I lack Mr. Tooley's optimism about the uneclipsed virtue of capitalism, simply because concentrations of power, money and influence will always tempt the fallen angels of our nature, whether the concentrations occur in government, development agencies, business or even religion. To his credit, he is taking a gradual, small-scale approach to cultivating "the beautiful tree". I can only hope that those who follow his lead will remember that the point is education, not merely making a buck.

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.

I thought this book was superb! I have traveled all over the world too and found similar things as this author found. The Do gooders of the world look down on dirt poor people as being unable to decide what is best for their kids. Tooley talks about this in his book and guess what, the intellectuals throwing aid money around are doing more damage than good in the field of education. I knew the author had integrity right away when he admitted that he flew around first class and stayed in fancy hotels, all to supposedly help the POOR! Amazing stuff and it does not surprise me at all that the World Bank etc. do not want to listen to this man and what he has found. I guess that is why he is working with the Cato Institute. It is so discouraging and most of what he writes about in this book can be said about the American 'education' system too. Teacher's unions are against vouchers because they would make teachers/administrators accountable and that scares the heck out of many administrators and teachers.

I very much enjoy writing which challenges "conventional wisdom" with first hand research. This book accomplishes that task superbly. Our educational establishment assumes that learning is mostly a function of highly credentialed teachers working in schools which are built to the best standards with small classes. The common wisdom is supported by the academic educational elite, in concert with politicians and teachers' union officials, with little regard for either the practical wisdom and concerns of parents or for measurable proof of their contentions. Tooley has traveled some of the poorest regions of the world and found a vibrant educational "industry" operating in hovels, at a (very small) profit, sustained by parents of no means with results far outdistancing the supposedly "free" schools provided by governments and international aid agencies. The principal difference between private schools for the poor and government schools for all is in the degree of direct accountability to the parens implicit in private schools. This book makes a passionate and moving case for some type of voucher system to supplant the inefficient and ineffective government educational programs in developed, as well as undeveloped, countries.

Many have searched for a way of bringing schooling to the poorest children in the world, but THE BEAUTIFUL TREE may hold the answer. Professor Tooley wandered into the slums of Africa's Hyderabad Old City - there to find it packed with small, parent-funded schools. His travels throughout the world in search of those establishing similar grassroots educational programs offers some startling, inspirational insights for any interested in world education processes at a very basic level.

This book is an informed, moving and surprising account of the failure of public (ie state-owned) schools to provide decent education to the poor and, more importantly, a living tribute to the ability of a self-generated, entrepreneur driven, private sector to provide a viable alternative for that purpose in *slums*.

This book will provoke a real deep admiration for the efforts and successes of real educational entrepreneur (living in the same sums themselves) that creatively and resourcefully address the unmet educational needs of poor families living in slums. Of course nothing is perfect and surely the private sector has also failure that the author actually does not hide. But the author certainly succeed in making its reader raise with anger and disgust against the public sector's attempt to systematically dismiss the private sector educational initiatives as "low cost poor quality alternatives" while complacency benefiting from dollar aids and doing nothing.

Moreover the author successfully show that the "for profit" motivation of this educational entrepreneur are actually the root cause of their progress and success ... if they don't succeed in raising the standard of the children in their school, parents can take their children away and stop payments.

Even more surprising is the ubiquity of this private school phenomenon, it occurs in countries as diverse India, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, China, and it occurs despite the "best" educational experts that it could not and it should not occur. The ultimate criteria of a scientific discovery is its reproducibility; its seems Tooley has made a scientific discovery in this senses: the poor are able to find way to educate their children that are better than the best way that state and aid dependent institution claim to be.

This is a living tribute to the power of liberty. I highly recommend this book to anyone deeply and truly interested in social innovation and relieving poverty.