James Tooley

Looks at the growth of small private schools in India, Africa, and China and describes how parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs are building their own schools to provide quality education for impoverished children.

A Personal Journey Into how the World's Poorest People are Educating Themselves

The Beautiful Tree

Upon its first 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, in all respects, of education. “This is a book that is filled with hope,” noted the London Review of Books, “and one cannot but feel moved by the struggle of poor parents and their children doing their best to get into education for all the right reasons.”

A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themsleves

What role should government have in education? This question has exercised philosophers since Plato and economists since Adam Smith. It is also a question that is as relevant today, as people around the world worry about standards in public (government) schools and governments and international agencies look to fine-tune their educational policies. This book describes and analyses the work of one economist, Professor E.G. West, whose life's work was focused precisely on this question. His classic 1965 book, Education and the State, and subsequent writings inspired a new way of looking at this question. Based on historical analysis of what happened in the UK and USA before governments got involved in education, and supplemented with philosophical exploration of the justifications for government involvement, West set out a position with only minimal state involvement. James Tooley outlines West's ideas and their challenges, elaborating them in terms of public choice theory and recent empirical evidence of 'education without the state' in developing countries.

Economic Liberalism and the Role of Government in Education

E. G. West

David Salisbury

Parents in many other countries have more freedom of choice in education than Americans do. In Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands, they can choose private schools without financial penalty. As we expand school choice in the United States, reformers and policymakers should look beyond our borders and learn from the examples of other countries. Critics in America claim that school choice would benefit a minority of students at the expense of the majority or that choice in education would drain funding from public schools and segregate students into racial or economic groups. Are these claims based on fact or fear? In this collection, scholars from Europe, South America, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States examine other countries’ experiences with school choice and draw out critical lessons for America. What school choice policies are most effective? How well do private schools serve the poor? What policies are necessary to promote the widest selection of educational opportunities for the largest number of children? Also, what controls and regulations are most harmful to the development of a competitive education industry? Has school choice in other countries led to a free education market, or has it, at least in some cases, led instead to increased regulations, regimentation, and uniformity among private and public schools? The wealth of information and insights contained in this volume will aid policymakers and reformers as they search for the best ways to improve American education.

What America Can Learn from School Choice in Other Countries

To what extent has feminism benefited women? To what extent have women really been liberated? James Tooley argues that the implication of many women's testimony is that feminism so far has failed to deliver the promised benefits and has even in some ways proved harmful. Bringing together many women's voices, from Bridget Jones to Simone de Beauvoir, he provides a radical rethinking for feminism and sexual politics in the 21st century.

The Miseducation of Women

Can education be run as a profitable business and still be driven by a humanitarian vision? SABIS shows the answer is yes. Now with 60 schools in 15 countries and over 60,000 students, SABIS is a global education company committed to improving lives. The book is a journey through time - tracing the company from its humble origins in 1886 Mount Lebanon, through the civil war to the present day. It's also a journey through geographies, from Kurdistan to Katrina - from the first international schools in war-torn northern Iraq, to the first charter school to reopen after the hurricane devastated inner city New Orleans. SABIS goes where other educational providers are unwilling to tread, helping to rebuild lives shattered by war and natural disaster. It's finally a journey through the minds of committed educators, watching as they grapple with the fundamental question of how we educate young people in the virtues that have stood the test of time, whilst still enabling them to be prepared for a future of unknown possibilities.

Changing the World through Education

From Village School to Global Brand

Girls and boys are different. So why do our schools insist on treating them as identical? Could this misguided equality have anything to do with the increasing dissatisfaction among women that is revealed in survey after survey? Do gender-blind educational policies in fact work to women's disadvantage? Bringing together many women's voices, from Bridget Jones to Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan to Germaine Greer, James Tooley challenges education's sacred cows, demanding a radical rethinking of sexual politics and a fairer way forward for women. The Miseducation of Women landed like a bombshell when it was published in England a few months ago; but Mr. Tooley's book, replete with examples and anecdotes from the United States as well as Great Britain, has equal application to the gender arguments on this side of the Atlantic.

Girls and boys are different. So why do our schools insist on treating them as identical? Bringing together many women's voices, Tooley challenges education's sacred cows, demanding a radical rethinking of sexual politics.

James Tooley

About

Books

Join the club