Since I could not sustain my curiosity of reading this book, I bought
it and finished reading it. It is one of the best books I have ever read on the
subject of
education. As the
signature line says, it’s the
“personal
journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves.’
Thanks to
James Tooley, the author of the book for his brave attempt to bring
in some of the ignored realities across the nations. Without his radical
thinking and self motivated efforts, he would not have found out an alternative
that already existed to the current public education system.
James’s dedicated efforts and brilliant research in India, Nigeria,
Ghana, Kenya and China challenged some of his previously held beliefs about
the importance of improving public education in the developing world.
Contrary to the insistences of policymakers, bureaucrats, and development
experts, James found that there are very many low-cost private schools operating
in even extremely poor areas. I could
very much relate to this because of my own experience and the places I grew up
during my childhood. Places were filled with private schools (they used to call
‘convent’ schools). Even if they do not teach anything in English, they were
named as ‘English’ Schools. After reading this book, it became very evident
that it’s the same case with all the developing countries. The objective is to
give ‘Education’ to all and the only option for the poor is to opt for the free
education at the government schools. But parents and children across the
countries are also concerned about having alternative options and the quality
of education at the government schools. As James writes, “The poor engage in
self-help and vote with their feet,” leaving the state services for self-funded
and self-created alternatives.
James begins his journey in India and takes us on an unbelievable
journey to the East Asia and African countries. He closely observes the efforts
of poor communities in education, and finds competent, committed entrepreneurs
in slums who have started schools in two-room apartments as well as entire
buildings, catering primarily to lowest income neighborhood children. In his
stories of these schools, he explores the young, passionate teachers, inspiring
entrepreneurs, and self evolved teaching models that work to ensure that
students are engaged and learning. A large number of the schools James surveys
are unrecognized, since getting the permissions required for a license remain
highly cumbersome. Yet he finds that even among the unrecognized private
schools, average teacher attendance, and English and math proficiency surpass
the apathetic government school system.
Although the existing system tries to give free education for the poor,
it is inaccessible for a large mass of people. And in some countries it is
expensive (requirements like uniforms, books, transport) compared to other
private schools in the community. In our case in India, the universal education
has been historically sidelined in government budgets, and school policy has
suffered in the tug of war between the center and the states. And if such
state-funded education has suffered from politics or bad policy, the only
alternative we see is the explosion of private schools.
It was a very moving experience to read the stories of his journey to
these countries and the way he achieved his vision. It was also deeply disturbing
to know that so called development experts, the funding agencies and the
government were not very helpful for James to carry out his research. All of
them resisted him to perform this research in their countries. Sadly, none of
them were even aware that the private schooling is creating such a huge impact
in their own countries. Every person James meets with in any of the countries
he visited kept repeating the same statement again and again – “there are no private schools for the poor.
Private schools are only for rich people”. Some of them were even rude to
him as well. Without making all those enemies, James could not have become
closer to many others who were in need of his wonderful work. Well, what was
discovered later was something miraculous.
It was delightful to read the chapter
‘The Men Who Uprooted The Beautiful Tree’. I was even more thrilled
to know that the expression
The Beautiful Tree was coined by Mahatma Gandhi. Starting with Gandhi and his efforts in
making education available for all, James tells us stories about all those
philosophers and thinkers in the past and made a world of a difference to the
education system. I was also kind of surprised to learn that Dr. Andrew Bell in
the 18
th century learned from a school in Madras (now Chennai) region
on how a community can self-educate themselves. He called it as the ‘
Madras Method’ and published about the
same. He was so impressed with this method that he returned to London in 1797
and published the description of his ‘
Madras
Method’. Following that, he was in great demand to introduce the system in
British Schools. By 1821, 300,000 children were being educated under this
method. His ideas were adopted around the Europe, and as far away as the West
Indies and Bogota, Columbia. And eventually this method did so much to raise the
educational standards across the world. The chapter ends of course with
Macaulay’s accomplishments and his greatest contributions ever to the field of
Education with some unbelievable statistics.
The last chapter deals with the potential solutions for all the
challenges on hand. Some of them, includes, Milton Friedman’s voucher system
and James’ discovery of alternative low-cost private education. To achieve 100%
universal education for all by 2015, as one can understand from the book,
countries need not depend only on the public education. They have a lot of
alternative ways to look at it. Some of the problems that they need to address include
dysfunctional/inaccessible public schools, educational quality and reliability
on the system. What James proposes and also experimented in a smaller groups
(of course ensuring complete care while implementing) are as under:
- To extend the private schools to created targeted vouchers for the poorest
- The schools (private) can cash these vouchers from the agency providing them ensuring they are sustained and work more towards earning more vouchers by creating good name by providing good education.
- Furthermore the targeted vouchers can also include supplements for textbooks and even midday meals, to allow poorest to have the education that the wealthier-of-the-poor parents can afford.
James has given a very detailed explanation on all the potential
solutions in the last chapter and also has worked on the potential objections
that may arise out of them. But like what he says in the end “Even as things stand now, with current levels of aid funding and
without touching any government funds currently being spent on public
education, so with no need to reform and public finance, I reckon we could
afford to send every out-of-the-school child to private school”.
It surely is an inspiring journey into the lives of families and
teachers in the poorest communities who have successfully created their own
private schools in response to the failed public education. James Tooley with
his outstanding efforts of growing ‘the beautiful
tree’ has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The book is
a delightful read and gives a lot of hope.
Author: James Tooley
Pages: 302
Publisher: Cato Institute
Published: April 2009
Srik
