The Beautiful Tree (4 page)

Seeing the school owners giving up their entire weekends seemed a mark of their commitment to the children under their care. And I discovered something else remarkable as well. At New St. Maria High School, I met the wonderful correspondent Maria, whose twin sister also ran a private school nearby. She told me that her school was built on a “lamentation,” pointing to the picture above her desk, of a young girl who was two years old. “My daughter expired,” she says, “and I had to have an operation so that I could not have any other children. So I decided to open a school, to give to children everywhere.” “You now have 700 children,” I said. “Yes, 700 children. And I have scholarships for 130 of these, named after my daughter. And every year on her birthday, I give out these scholarships.”

Maria’s generosity to the poorest of the poor turned out to be not that unusual. For those children who had been orphaned or who were from large families, the school entrepreneurs typically offered free or subsidized tuition. What kinds of children were assisted? As I toured the private schools of the Old City, I heard some of their stories.

Nine-year-old Saba Tabasum and her two sisters had free tuition at Master Mind Private School. Her father, who was educated up to primary-school level, was currently bedridden, due to an accident at work. Her mother, who was illiterate, worked as a maid in the neighboring houses to earn a living for the family. The three children and parents survived on the mother’s income, which was approximately 200 rupees ($4.44) per week. With this money, she tried to educate her three daughters, pay the household expenses, and pay her husband’s medical bills. Saba was good in her studies. She was one of the best students in her school and wished to become a teacher.

Peace High School gave five-year-old Shakera Khan and her three sisters 40 percent concessions. Their father, who was illiterate, worked in a shoe shop earning daily wages of up to 100 rupees ($2.22). However, if he didn’t sell any shoes, he would return home empty-handed. Their mother was also illiterate but tried to help out by working as a day laborer for 25 rupees to 30 rupees (56 cents to 66 cents) per day.

Ten-year-old Farath Sultana also attended Peace High School. Her father works as a cleaner in a mosque and earned a monthly salary of 700 rupees ($15.55), which he admitted was not enough to feed his four family members. The family lived rent free with relatives who helped them get through each month by providing food. Both the mother and the father were illiterate, but they wanted their children to be educated. Peace High School provided both Farath and her six-year-old brother free tuition because of their critical financial position.

It appeared that these private schools, while operating as businesses, also provided philanthropy to their communities. The owners were explicit about this. They were businesspeople, true, but they also wanted to be viewed as “social workers,” giving something back to their communities. They wanted to be respected as well as successful. A major motivation—many of the owners had a similar story—was their status in society. Khurrum told me: “I have an ambition of running a school, of giving good knowledge, and of building good character, good citizens, good people. We have status, as leaders of schools, people respect us, and we respect ourselves.”

But the central mystery was why parents were sending their children to these schools at all. For however low the fees, the public schools were free. In public schools, children got free uniforms, free rice at lunchtime, and free books. And however much I enjoyed visiting the private schools and witnessing the dedication of their managers, the condition of the buildings worried me. They were crowded, many dirty, often smelly, usually dark, and always on some level makeshift. One was even in a converted inner-city chicken farm. So why would parents choose to pay to send their children to schools like these? The school owners told me that the public schools were just not up to scratch. Teachers didn’t show up, and if they did, they seldom taught. I was told of public schools in the Old City that were becoming denuded of students, even though the teachers still commanded high salaries. One public school nearby apparently had 37 teachers but only 36 pupils. Other schools had more children, but the same story of the lack of teaching prevailed.

But of course the school owners might be biased. I wanted to hear what parents thought. At New Hope School, in a narrow two-story building with three classrooms upstairs and a main room downstairs, I spoke with nine mothers, all dressed in black burkas. Three fathers also came and sat away from the mothers on the other side of the room. I asked them about the public schools. They were totally disparaging. Teachers partied at schools, they said, or taught only one class out of six, and treated the children like orphans. There was no question that they wanted their children out of the public schools.

At Peace High School, a large group of parents came at the end of the school day to talk to me, congregating under a colorful tarp that Wajid had provided to shelter them from the sun. Mothers mainly, Muslims dressed all in black, some veiled, some half-veiled, some not veiled at all, interspersed with a few Hindu or Christian women dressed in colorful saris. The mothers were very forthcoming. There was no way they would send their children to public schools, one said. But aren’t the teachers well trained? I asked. Yes, they might be very good at studying, but they are not very good at teaching. “They even beat the children very badly, treat them as slaves,” said another.

Again, such parents might be biased—after all, they’d made a financial commitment to send their children to private school, so they might feel the need to defend that decision. I had to go to a public school to see for myself. Khurrum readily agreed to take me, and he seemed on surprisingly good terms with the deputy district education officer who accompanied us. The building looked fine from outside—much, much better than the crowded conditions I had found in the private schools. It was a well-apportioned, three-story structure, with a large playground and prominent signboard and a spacious and comfortable principal’s office. Upstairs, the first class we visited had 130 students cramped together, all sitting on the floor, there being no desks or chairs anywhere in the school. The other teachers are absent today, I was told unapologetically by the head, “so we’re teaching them altogether.” “They’ll be absent every day,” the deputy district education officer said—the first of many comments from government officials that impressed me—if that’s the right word—with their matter-of-fact candor when addressing the failures of the system for which they were responsible. There were two other classes with similar numbers of children, whereas all the other classrooms were empty. Perhaps such crowded classrooms were the reason why parents preferred the private schools? But were they really better, I wondered, or were parents mistaken?

Finally, I learned of the school owners’ frustrations with government regulations. At first, I was baffled to hear how often the government inspectors called on their schools—perhaps three to five times a year—showing a surprising dedication to quality and standards, I thought. Then Khurrum took me to one side and told me that they didn’t come to inspect, only to “be made happy.” I was naive enough then to be shocked, until others told me the same story as I was brought into their confidence, and realized that bribing officials was an unfortunate but necessary way of life in their community. Very quickly, I too become quite blasé about the presence of bribes—“unofficial payments” as they were labeled in Sajid-Sir’s meticulous accounts. There were simply too many regulations to meet—“how can I have a playground of 1,000 square meters?” said Wajid of Peace High School, pointing to the crowded street where his school was situated. Detailing his problems with government inspectors, and his desire for official recognition, he said something I’ll never forget: “Sometimes, government is the obstacle to the people.” So they had to resort to bribery to remain registered or to keep the inspectors from closing them down. This was in stark contrast to the way the managers of the wealthy elite colleges that I was simultaneously investigating for the International Finance Corporation responded when I asked them about difficulties with regulations and inspectors: “Regulations?” they would nonchalantly say, “Oh, if anyone gets in my way, I pick up the phone to the CM,” that is, the chief minister.

I realized that something quite remarkable was going on in the back streets of Hyderabad. It seemed that my expertise in private education might have some relevance after all in my urge to help the poor. Clearly, what was happening must have implications for the way we viewed education in developing countries? If so many parents were choosing to send their children to private schools because they perceived that the public schools were so bad, this was surely a profound discovery that would interest the development experts? I was in for a rude awakening.

2. . . . That Was No Discovery After All

Oddly, my “discovery” was no discovery at all, or at least not to some people. Leaving Hyderabad, I returned to Delhi to meet again with World Bank staff before moving on to continue my “field trip” in other countries. I was eager and excited to tell them what I’d discovered in the back streets of the Old City of Hyderabad and to gain their insights on the way forward.

They weren’t at all impressed. I met with a group of staff members in their pleasant offices, replete with potted ferns and pretty posters of cute children. Most, it was true, had never heard of private schools serving the poor, and they were frankly puzzled about how schools charging only $10 a year could exist, except through charity. And they told me that I had found some nongovernmental organizations working in the slums, opening a few schools, that was all. They told me this, assuming I was simply misguided, even though I had told them it was something else altogether. However, one of the group, Sajitha Bashir, had herself seen a few private schools in Tamil Nadu, although she insisted there were none in Karnataka, where she was now doing a study, so they weren’t a universal phenomenon. In front of the group, she launched into a tirade against such schools: they were ripping off the poor, she said, run by unscrupulous businesspeople who didn’t care a fig for anything other than profits. This didn’t gel at all with what I’d seen in Hyderabad—how could such people devote their weekends to science competitions and cyber-olympics if money was their sole motivation? I was not at all convinced and hesitantly related some details of what I’d found. No one considered my information very significant. Those who hadn’t heard of these schools simply shrugged, and the meeting soon dissolved.

Afterward, Sajitha took me downstairs for coffee, clearly trying to be helpful in letting me see the errors of my ways. So the private schools might be there, some
might
even be better than the public schools, but that’s only because they are
selective
. “They take the cream of the cream,” she said (and I had to force myself to remember that we were talking about parents earning a dollar or two a day), leaving the public schools much worse off. Anyway, continuing the theme that only a few were any good, she continued, “Most of the schools are shocking, there is a shocking turnover of teachers, they’re not trained, they’re not committed, and the proprietors know that they can simply get others because there is a long list of people waiting to come in.” She paused to take a sip of her coffee: “All educators, 100 percent, believe that what the private schools for the poor are doing is untenable in modern educational theory. The rote learning, the cramming, they’re just crammers ripping off the poor.”

But her main problem, clearly based on well-intentioned personal convictions, was the question of equality. Because some children, the poorest of the poor, are left behind in the “sink” public schools, the private schools were exacerbating inequality, not improving the situation at all, she said. For that reason, we must devote all our efforts toward improving the public schools, not get carried away by what was happening in a few private schools. For Sajitha it was clear: if many—or even a few—parents had higher aspirations for their children and wanted to send them to private schools, then “they should not be allowed to do so, because this is unfair.” It’s unfair because it makes it even worse for those left behind. This puzzled me. Why should we treat the poor in this homogenous way? Would we—Sajitha and I—be happy if we were poor, living in those slums, and unable to do the best for our children, whatever our meager funds allowed? But I said nothing. As we parted, amicably enough, she told me that there was quite a bit of development literature about private schools for the poor in any case, and so I shouldn’t go on too much about my “discovery,” as I had done today, as people would only laugh. She gave me a couple of references to look up.

And she was right. I wondered at my own poor detective work in not having located these references before. Perhaps my own lack of recognition for what was taking place was excusable: For in the writings she pointed me to, and subsequent ones that I found, discussion of private schools for the poor was somehow veiled, or referred to tangentially, and ignored in subsequent writings. It was certainly not headlined in any conclusions or policy implications—to which many of us lazily turn when we digest development writings. It was almost as if the writers concerned were embarrassed or bewildered by private schools for the poor. They could write about these schools in passing, but instead of their leaping out at them as something of great significance—as they had to me when I first “discovered” them in Hyderabad—they didn’t seem to impinge in any significant way on the writers’ policy proposals or future discussions. Even for those who didn’t deny the existence of private schools for the poor, everyone, it seemed, altogether denied their significance.

The more I explored those references, the more baffled I became. It was one thing to argue that “education for all” could be secured only through public education supported by international aid if you were unaware of private schools for the poor. But as soon as you knew that many poor parents were exiting the state system to send their children to private schools, then surely this must register on your radar as being worthy of comment in the “education for all” debate? Apparently not.