The Beautiful Tree

by James Tooley

  The late Milton Friedman is usually regarded as the godfather of vouchers. Just over 50 years ago, he wrote an essay entitled “The Role of Government in Education,” in which he outlined his school voucher proposal for the first time. With his wife, Rose, he further elaborated these ideas in 1980 in Free to Choose, where they also outlined some of the major objections that were emerging to the proposal for universal education vouchers in America, which remain fundamentally some of the main objections today. One of those objections they characterized as “doubt about new schools.”11 Given that private schools were then either religious (parochial) schools or elite academies, critics of the voucher proposal wanted to know what reason there was “to suppose that alternatives will really arise?” The Friedmans were convinced that “a market would develop where it does not exist today,” attracting “many entrants, both from public schools and from other occupations.” Their conviction came from talking to many people about vouchers. Many people they spoke to said something like: “I have always wanted to teach (or run a school) but I couldn’t stand the educational bureaucracy, red tape, and general ossification of the public schools. Under your plan, I’d like to try my hand at starting a school.”

  The evidence from developing countries today supports their confidence in the entrepreneurial spirit: educational entrepreneurs do emerge to provide educational opportunities, including among some of the poorest members of society. They emerge because parents and poor communities are concerned about education; it is a fundamental priority. When they have (well-founded) doubts about the efficiency and effectiveness of public schools, they’ll create alternatives of their own—at least when not discouraged or prevented from doing so by prevailing tax, regulatory, and welfare policies.

  Our evidence also helps challenge another of the fundamental objections to vouchers in America, that prosperous families would “top up,” or supplement, the state provision with their own funds, which would penalize poor parents who wouldn’t want to spend their resources on education. The Friedmans replied: “This view . . . seems to us another example of the tendency of intellectuals to denigrate parents who are poor. Even the very poorest can—and do—scrape up a few extra dollars to improve the quality of their children’s schooling, although they cannot replace the whole of the present cost of public schooling.”12 The evidence from developing countries supports this argument: if some of the poorest parents on this planet will scrimp and save to pay for their children’s education, is it plausible that the poor in America today—a more affluent group than the poor of the Third World—would not be able to “top up” vouchers too?

  However, our evidence suggests we go further than this. It suggests that many poor parents can in fact pay for all their children’s schooling, without any government assistance. Indeed, by 1980, the Friedmans were also aware of other compelling evidence, this time from history, that suggested they were being far too moderate in their universal voucher proposal. By this time, they’d reviewed the history of education in Victorian England, which we briefly touched on in the last chapter, and parallel evidence from 19th-century America, and realized that schooling was “well-nigh universal in the United States before attendance was required,” whereas in the United Kingdom, it was “well-nigh universal before either compulsory attendance or government financing of schooling existed.”13 This evidence challenged the desirability of compulsory schooling laws, and hence, as compulsion was the prime justification for public funding, the raison d’être of this began to disentangle too. Although still viewing the education voucher as a useful stepping stone, by 1980 the Friedmans were inclined toward something more radical: “We regard the voucher plan as a partial solution because it affects neither the financing of schooling nor the compulsory attendance laws. We favor going much farther.” “Farther,” in this case, was a move away from the desirability of universal vouchers to an emphasis on, at most, targeted vouchers for the poorest: “Public financing of hardship cases might remain, but that is a far different matter than having the government finance a school system for 90 percent of the children going to school because 5 or 10 percent of them might be hardship cases.” By 1980 then, the Friedmans favored a more complete privatization of education, with the government’s abandoning compulsory schooling laws and withdrawing from funding education, except for, at most, a small minority of parents who are “hardship cases.” The Friedmans did not further elaborate on the theme of privatization, acknowledging that their views “on financing and attendance laws will appear to most readers to be extreme”; hence their pragmatic “return to the voucher proposal—a much more moderate departure from present practice.”

  Perhaps the evidence accumulated throughout this book suggests that their more radical departure might be the more sensible approach for America, and by extension for other countries in the West too. For what we are seeing in Africa and Asia, in effect, is a grassroots privatization of education. This evidence raises the possibility that we may not be too radical but rather too cautious if we look only to state intervention through vouchers to assist the disadvantaged in the West too. The poor in Asia and Africa don’t sit idly by, dispossessed and disenfranchised—adjectives used by the liberal elite to describe the disadvantaged in America—acquiescent in their government’s failure until outsiders step in to improve their lot. Instead, some of the most disadvantaged people on this planet engage in “self-help,” vote with their feet, exit the public schools, and move their children to private schools set up by educational entrepreneurs from their own communities to cater to their needs, without any outside help. Could it be that the government intervention we take for granted in America and the West crowds out parallel educational enterprise that could help the poor help themselves, as they are doing in places like Kenya and India? Could it be that real privatization could emerge in the same way that it has emerged in developing countries, from the bottom up?

  Perhaps the situations in the West and developing countries are too different to make this conclusion justifiable? Perhaps public education—although almost universally chastised for being of low quality in the West—is not nearly as bad as what the poor in developing countries face every day? So resistance to it is not nearly as great or as obvious. Perhaps the “poor” in the West have been so ingrained with the dependency culture of relying on the state for education, as James Bartholomew suggests in his book The Welfare State We’re In, that they won’t be prepared to embrace the private sector as the poor do in the countries I visited? I don’t know the answers to these questions. If they’re in the affirmative, then this radical solution probably wouldn’t be sustainable in the West. If they’re in the negative, then perhaps it could. I’m sorry not to be more specific. But my reading of the runes is that what’s happening in India, China, and Africa now, the grassroots privatization of education, might just take purchase in the West too.

  If India Can, Why Can’t We?

  In 1980, the NBC News White Paper “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?” sent shock waves through American corporations. The program revealed how the Japanese captured world auto and electronics markets by reorganizing from first principles. This was also the wake-up call to the British manufacturing industry. My research leads me to think that a similar wake-up call is due here in education—not from Japan, but from India this time. And China. And perhaps Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya too.

  In the fissures of crumbling public education systems, a vibrant and confident education industry is beginning to emerge. It is serving the poor as well as the rich. It is bringing much higher standards than appear possible under public education. And with judicious support, it can engage to meet the needs of all, and can innovate through competition to improve teaching and learning and expand the curriculum, in ways that are unimaginable under public systems. If strong chains of budget private schools start to emerge in these countries, perhaps especially if they should emerge in the new economic tigers of India and China, then these educational giants could begin to challeng
e the monopolies of public education in the West. Just as the Americans in particular are afraid of competition from low-cost industries in India and, especially, China, so too could they become worried by competition from educational chains emerging there.

  My hunch, for what it’s worth, is that the educational enterprise will go from strength to strength in India and China, and in Africa too. And if for India, why not for us? There is an obvious historical precedent for this reading of events. In the 19th century, the solution to how to improve educational opportunities in England, and throughout the West, was found by copying—no doubt enhancing them along the way—the methods found in the private schools in India. Through the Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell’s Madras Method and later Joseph Lancaster’s eponymous techniques, the West copied what was occurring in India and transformed the educational experience here. Perhaps budget private schools, the grassroots privatization we see in the developing world, will one day be copied here too, transforming the educational opportunities that we give our children?

  That’s my best guess. But whether or not that happens, budget private schools in Africa and Asia appear to be here to stay. Poor parents know what they are doing. They want the best for their children, and they know private schools are the way forward. The poor have found their silver bullet. It’s time for policymakers and opinion leaders to catch up with them.

  The Eclipse

  I certainly couldn’t have planned it. During the last week of the research project, I was in Ghana to speak at a conference and to wrap things up there. And the day I was due to fly back to England, Wednesday, March 29, 2006, the last day of my journey, there was to be a total eclipse of the sun. It would be visible only within a very narrow corridor across the earth’s surface, starting in Brazil and ending at sunset in western Mongolia, and including Ghana en route!

  On Saturday, March 25, 2006, the Daily Graphic carried a one-word front-page headline: “Eclipse.” “Six regions in the country have been listed along the path to be covered by the total solar eclipse expected in the country between 8.30 am and 9.30 am next Wednesday,” read the story. All the agencies of state, complete with acronyms, were getting mobilized: The executive director of the Centre of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services (CRSGIS) “urged all Ghanaians to be interested in the eclipse,” the Daily Graphic enthused. The chairman of the National Planning Committee for Solar Eclipse said, “Special arrangements were being made with the Ghana Post to sound its sirens nationwide to announce the time of the eclipse.” And he called on “churches and mosques” to “use their bells and microphones to announce the occurrence.” Six million sunshades had been imported from Germany, with the Ministry of Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City “making arrangements with private importers to bring in more.” The National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) reported that “it was working in collaboration with the CRSGIS to draw the attention of the public to the hazards associated with the appearance of the total eclipse of the sun.” Under Act 517, it reported, it was mandated “to prepare national disaster plans for preventing and mitigating the consequences of disaster and also to provide public awareness warning systems and general preparedness for the general public.” It was “doing just that,” it added. The deputy national coordinator in charge of relief and reconstruction at NADMO counseled that “during the period when the sudden darkness came, the behaviour of pets, nocturnal creatures and other animals might change.”

  On the Monday before the eclipse, I was in the fishing village of Bortianor, listening to the school proprietor of Supreme Academy, Theophilus Quaye, relating all that he’d read in the weekend’s Daily Graphic to his students at morning assembly. But they knew already; the whole village was abuzz with excitement. On the beach, women waiting for their fishermen husbands to return had asked me to bring the imported sunglasses for their children. I’d bought a bagful in the city, at 10,000 cedis apiece (about $1, a price that was to rise to 25,000 cedis [about $2.50] as demand grew and supplies became scarce), and solemnly handed them over to Theophilus to distribute.

  On Tuesday, I presented my findings at a conference. And on Wednesday morning, at my hotel in East Legon, Accra, I packed my bags, ate breakfast, and went outside at around 8:15. The next hour was to be quite extraordinary.

  The sun had been up for an hour or more; the day had got under way as normal. As the moon slowly, imperceptibly at first, began to move in front of the sun, one by one the hotel staff congregated outside where I was standing. Sharing our imported German sunglasses, we stared up at the sun and saw the tiny speck of dark moon slowly moving across it. The young female hotel staff, in their neat black short skirts and cream blouses, begin to get excited: “CNN mentioned Ghana,” a newcomer tells us, and her friend emits in delight, “Ghana is the gateway to Africa, CNN mentioned Ghana!”; they jump around with joy. A couple of young men gather in the shade of the outside bar. They are talking about science and how great it is that scientists have predicted this: “How did they know it would happen today? They said it would, and it did, exactly as they said!” Slowly it gets darker and slightly cooler. “It’s as if it’s going to rain,” says one of the young men, “but the sky has no clouds.”

  The mood among the staff becomes increasingly excited as it becomes cooler and darker. One staring at the sun captures what all appear to be thinking—“God is great! Thank you, Jesus”—for they all join in; Ghana is a very religious country. The young men discussing science turn to this theme: “Scientists don’t usually believe in God,” says one, but his friend corrects him, “What about Sir Isaac Newton!” Yes, they agree, Sir Isaac Newton was a top scientist, and he believed in God.

  And at the moment of total eclipse, when you can look directly at the sun without sunshades and see only darkness, with just the thinnest outline of light around the encompassed moon, the staff go wild, cheering, shouting, “God is great, Jesus is wonderful, thank you, God”; they cheer and dance, and ululate. And it’s not just “pets, nocturnal creatures and other animals” whose behavior changes. Inexplicably, I find myself weeping, moved by my fellow watchers’ response, acknowledging the somber beauty of these immense but predictable movements in the heavens. It’s suddenly dark and still—but everywhere people are alive with excitement. And then it’s all over, in exactly a minute, the light appears again suddenly—you can no longer look at the sun, but when you do in your dark glasses, you see that only the smallest sliver of sun has actually appeared—no matter, this tiny piece of sun has made it light again. It is totally memorable.

  Later that day, I catch the flight home from Ghana, my journey over. And I think about the eclipse. As I eat my airline meal and drink the accompanying wine, I can’t help feeling that there is a metaphor here for what I’d found over the years of my travels. At first I think it is obvious: the sun is like public education; the moon like private education moving slowly, imperceptibly at first, eventually blotting out the sun, eclipsing the state. But that wouldn’t do, because of course then the moon moves away and the sun regains its preeminence. That metaphor didn’t seem quite right. That was not what I thought I was seeing, a revival of private education that would eventually give way to the state again. A few drinks later, a different interpretation occurs to me. Wasn’t the sun like the entrepreneurial spirit that I saw among the people, the spirit of self-help? And wasn’t the moon like the state, apparently succeeding in blotting it out, stopping its light from shining through? It succeeds, but only for a brief moment in time. Eventually, the power of the sun, the power of the spirit of self-help, breaks through again to reign supreme.

  These thoughts filled my mind on the journey home, and I wrote them in my notebook, hoping that they wouldn’t seem too cheesy in the light of day—and without the accompaniment of a few glasses of wine. Probably they do, but perhaps it’s still an apt metaphor. Public schooling seems to many to be a permanent, timeless feature of human civilization. But it’s a temporary aberration; the revolution that is taking place i
n developing countries is seeing to that. The power and spirit of free enterprise are shining through again in the field of education. Will it eventually replace public schooling? I think the evidence shows that to be very likely. But will the state come around again, threatening to crowd it out, just as the moon will return to eclipse the sun? Perhaps it will. But the market in education is powerful. It builds on something that no central planner can possibly embrace, the strength of millions of decisions by individual families, the millions of bits of information grasped by the Searchers who relentlessly create and innovate, modify and develop what the people want. The power of educational self-help is strong, and you won’t need special glasses to observe its effects.

  Postscript

  Just as I was finishing writing the book, I heard about the First Annual Private-Sector Development Competition, jointly organized by the Financial Times and the International Finance Corporation. They were looking for essays based on research that would help move forward understanding of how the private sector could assist development, and how this might open up opportunities for investors. And they had assembled an impressive array of judges, including the authors of influential books on development, such as Martin Wolf (Why Globalisation Works), Hernando de Soto (The Mystery of Capital,) and C. K. Prahalad (The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.) My team leader in Nigeria, Lanre, e-mailed me and said I should enter. So I thought I’d give it a go, with little expectation of success.

  I condensed the last chapter of this book and my research findings into an essay, “Educating Amaretch: Private Schools for the Poor and the New Frontier for Investors.” While harvesting potatoes and onions in my garden in rural Northumberland in late August 2006, I received a phone call from the International Finance Corporation office in Washington. I had to get Thomas Davenport to repeat his message several times before I could believe what I’d heard: I’d won the gold prize! I was flabbergasted, excited, humbled. For a couple of nights I could hardly sleep, I felt so elated that these ideas on private schools had found a sympathetic audience. No longer was I to plow a lonely furrow.