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THE BEAUTIFUL TREE
A Personal Journey Into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves

$19.95

Award-winning scholar James Tooley shares lessons learned on a journey that took him from the largest shanty town in Africa to the mountains of Gansu in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He tells the story of how parents, teachers, and education entrepreneurs in poor communities in Africa, India and the PRC have built and funded their own small private schools.

The Beautiful Tree is named after Mahatma Gandhi’s phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India.

Mr. Tooley was a professor in leading universities in Canada, England, and South Africa for many years. He has conducted research and consultancy work for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), World Bank, United Nations, UNESCO, and Asian Development Bank Institute on private education in developing countries. He received recognition for his research paper on private education for the poor from the Financial Times-IFC in Singapore in 2006, the 2006 Templeton Freedom Prize for Excellence in Promoting Liberty in Free Market Solutions to Poverty in the United States, the 2007 Alexis de Toqueville Award for the Advancement of Educational Freedom in Warsaw, and the 2007 National Free Enterprise Award in London.

“Schools for the poor are the obsession of James Tooley’s book, The Beautiful Tree… Tooley spent years surveying private schools across the developing world. He found that, on average, they had smaller class sizes, higher test scores and more motivated teachers, all while spending less than public schools… Tooley blasts development experts for recognizing the problems with public education and still insisting that more investment in public schools is the way to go.”—Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post

“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 •