The Beautiful Tree
A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves
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- 5,49 €
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- 5,49 €
Description de l’éditeur
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.
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.
