The Beautiful Tree

I just finished reading this book. I am both excited and frustrated.

Tooley, the author, is an education researcher in third world nations (after being a school teacher in Africa for awhile). He would go into a country, ask the education officials about private schools for the poor. In EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY they told him that was an oxymoron; there was no such thing. By definition, the poor could not afford education, thus the need for public school. Besides, poor parents didn’t think education was important, didn’t really care about their children, wouldn’t know a good education if they saw it.

In every country, he would politely thank the officials (government office holders, public school principles, public school teachers) and walk out into the poorest slums in the countries and find dozens of private schools for the poor.

IN EVERY COUNTRY!

Even in China where private school was illegal.

He would ask the parents why they were sending their children to the private schools when there was a public school available. They would tell him that because the owner of the school would loose money if the parents were not happy, they monitored their teachers closely and would fire them if they didn’t perform up to snuff. Because the private school teachers could be fired, they worked harder to provide a pleasant atmosphere and to teach as much as possible. This is a “market control mechanism” that is simply not available in public school.

How did the parents know if the education was “good enough”? They would look at the children’s workbooks and see if the were written in regularly, pop in for surprise visits, and quiz their children and the public schooled neighbor children and children from other private schools to see who knew more.

Tooley had samples of students form public and private schools from the same neighborhoods tested for academic and IQ levels. He discovered the privately educated students skunked the public schooled ones (who had the same or higher IQs), just like the parents said.

This book excited me because it confirmed that parents really know what is best for their children and do love them world round. It provided some very commonsense free-market solutions to poverty through targeting these poor parents and their schools. The poor don’t need our charity. They need low cost loans and opportunities (Well, maybe a few carefully targeted school vouchers).

He even suggested these solutions could be applied to the US and England. And there is no reason his ideas wouldn’t work to solve our own education problems.

The book frustrated me for two reasons: I have read the same words coming from our education officials that he heard from those in Africa and India. Even when he would drag them out to the schools, they refused to believe parents weren’t too stupid and unloving (not their words, of course. They were too politically aware to make that mistake, but that is what they obviously meant) to supervise their own children’s education.

How in the world do we break the iron grip of those who think they are helping us but are really strangling us???? How do we defeat this monopoly that controls our country? (What is taught in the classroom today is believed in the government tomorrow). Obviously this attitude is part of being in the education industry no matter where you live. How do you defeat a universal?

Secondly, my- well, anger for lack of a better word- at the “poor” in America for tolerating the status quo has greatly increased. I have to admit that, though I have before stated that Americans are all rich enough to afford private education of some kind if they want it, I have had this nagging question of “when are you truly too poor to really afford it?” Now I have my answer.

These parents who were spending 5-10% or their income ($2-5 each month) on each child’s education were living in one or two room shacks with dirt floors and no running water. In one community, the poor lived on platforms with four posts and a tin roof set in the middle of a swamp/sewer. These people didn’t always have money for FOOD. Yet they could manage to educate their children.

Now how does the fat bottomed, American poor sitting on their plush couches on their wall to wall carpet in front of their wide screen, cable connected TV with their washers, dryers, microwaves and dishwashers humming in the background compare (I include myself in this discription, by the way)? (add a whiney voice in here) “I just can’t afford private school or homeschool.” (Never mind homeschool curriculum is available online for free)

We Americans are a bunch of SPOILED BRATS!!!

American parents, quit being so selfish! Make the sacrifices to give your children the education God calls you to give them.

You have no justification before the Throne for not doing so.





(Oh, I HIGHLY recommend the book! Your view of education and a lot of other issues will be changed for ever.)