The Beautiful Tree (41 page)

I have to admit, for what it’s worth, that I find this kind of objection quite compelling. I’m not totally satisfied by what I see in the private schools for the poor, in terms of their teaching and learning styles, and the curriculum. It always makes me sad when I see the brightest kids treading water, struggling to maintain enthusiasm for rote learning a passage that they understood at the first reading; some become disruptive, even drop out of school altogether, as a result of their boredom. Conversely, it breaks my heart to see less-gifted children (described in India as “dull,” which always makes me cringe) struggling to keep pace with their class, left behind because they’ve not mastered basic reading and arithmetic, and who now will never do so, because the rest of the class has moved on. And the children in between too, I often wonder whether their learning couldn’t be made more engaging, more liberating, less passive.

For it’s true, in general, that the private schools I’ve visited are generally steeped in the same learning styles—usually rote learning—as the public schools, and they tend to follow the state curriculum. Regarding the latter, they more or less must. The government inspectors aren’t too keen on letting them deviate from it, and more to the point, parents want their children to pass the state exams, currently the only route to higher education and employment. And the teaching styles—well, they are ones that everyone is used to and feels comfortable with, the way that proprietors and teachers themselves were taught, and parents accept as being the right ones.

In short, I’m as bothered by pedagogy and curriculum as many development experts are. Now, development agencies have plowed millions upon millions of dollars into trying to get teachers to change their methods, and children to rise above passivity. Millions of dollars have been spent on training teachers in child-centered methods (the District Primary Education Project is a notable example in India), or in using high-technology solutions, such as television, interactive radio, or information technology, to bypass teachers altogether, or to train them in “modern” methods, or to supplement classroom teaching with these beamed-in add-ons.
⁵

But the stark fact is, little or none of this really works—the child-centered methods introduced (which are themselves often the subject of criticism in the donor countries promoting them) just don’t gel with teachers, who tend to revert to their preferred methods once the aid workers have bid farewell. Expensive high-tech solutions, the television, interactive radio, and information and communications technology projects that hit the headlines, might work well while they’re being funded. However, as soon as the aid funding is withdrawn, the intervention ends. Presumably, aid agencies engaged with these kinds of projects assume that, once they’ve shown how brilliant they are, then governments will pick up the tab. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that this doesn’t happen. Once the aid agencies disappear, everything reverts to the
status quo ante
. Such projects do not manage to harness any
incentives
for poor people to continue with, or invest in, the intervention, and it is hard to see how
any
of the proposed solutions can overcome these combined problems.

But is the correct response then to simply let things continue as they have and avert our gaze whenever we go into these classrooms and see what is taking place? I don’t think it need be. For again, the private school market provides the basis for a possible way forward.

First, it becomes quickly apparent from any visit to private schools in poor areas that very often the proprietors themselves are eager to learn of different ways of teaching and learning, and of new curriculum areas, from overseas visitors. I found it rather embarrassing on my first visit to the slums of Hyderabad back in 2000, that I was asked to speak at a meeting of private school proprietors and was bombarded with questions about what they could do better with teaching and curricula. I was from overseas, where everything was much better, what could I advise them to do? And going around each school, the proprietor would sit me down in his or her tiny office after I’d visited the classes, and ask: “How can I improve my teaching? Tell me, what can I do better?” I used to hide behind the idea that I was there to learn from them, that they had so much to teach us in the West. I still think that’s true: the very fact that private school proprietors are there at all in these seemingly inhospitable environments is something that we can learn from and gain inspiration.

But I think now that it was a bit of a cop-out to say that I had nothing to contribute, only things to learn, about the way they handled their curricula and teaching. That was certainly
their
reaction, as attested by the many disappointed faces when I trotted out the “I’m only here to learn” line. But we don’t have to go the route of the failed—or soon discontinued—aid interventions to effect real change. Private school proprietors’ eagerness for new ideas is the key reason why not—and why they are motivated, incentivized, to want to explore new ideas in a completely different way from those handing out or receiving aid funds.

A couple of years ago, I collaborated on a small-scale project in a private school in the slums of Hyderabad with Dr. Sugata Mitra, who, before he moved to Newcastle University, was chief scientist at NIIT Ltd., one of India’s largest computer education companies. Mitra has experimented with peer-group learning using information technology—dubbed “the hole in the wall” by the media. Now, Hyderabad is flooded with call centers; many alumni of private schools for the poor seek employment with them but are stymied by their low standard of English pronunciation—their teachers can’t help because they don’t speak English well enough either. I invited Mitra to try the hole-in-the-wall approach here: could children
teach themselves
to improve their English pronunciation?

We conducted the experiment in Wajid’s Peace High School. The details—based on a speech-to-text recognition program
⁶
—need not concern us here. The experiment showed that this method was successful in improving English pronunciation. But what happened
after
the experiment was most relevant. Wajid is closely connected to many other private school proprietors through various federations and informal associations. Many came to see what was happening in his school. Many came to learn of our findings. And they wanted what Wajid had in
their
schools. And they were prepared to pay for it, of course; they didn’t simply want it handed to them. Previously, his preferred investment in computer technology was, once suitable surpluses had been accrued, to acquire as many secondhand computers as possible, and a computer teacher. Now proprietors like Sajid-Sir were saying to us: “Perhaps we don’t need a computer teacher. We need the hole in the wall.”

The school proprietors were hungry for innovation. Why? First, whatever the critics of private schools for the poor may claim, the proprietors simply care about their children’s education and want the best for them. Even on its own, that might be enough for some of them to invest some of their surpluses in new methods and technology. But the power of the market is that the proprietors’ good intentions are coupled with another major incentive that makes it even more likely that they will seek to invest: they know that they face increasing competition. School proprietors need to differentiate themselves within the marketplace. To maintain or even increase market share, they need parents to know that their school is special. If a method of learning seems to have demonstrably better outcomes, they’ll want it for their schools.

Importantly, the situation in these poor areas is completely different from the situation in private schools in the West: there is a
genuine market
operating in these countries. In some of the poorest areas of the world, private education makes up the
vast majority
of school enrollment. In the West, however, private education is only a small fraction of total enrollment, around 7 percent in the United Kingdom, for instance. This is true, even if one focuses instead on urban areas, which have a particularly high concentration of private education: in central London, for instance, private school enrollment is only about 13 percent, and overwhelmingly organized along non-commercial, nonprofit lines. Such private education “markets” are unlikely to illustrate real competitive behavior, are more likely to exhibit complacency or even anti-competitive cartels (as has recently been reported in the UK
⁷
) , because the “market” is very small, has a largely captive audience, and is competing against a near-monopoly state provider.

In poor areas of developing countries, however, private education forms the majority of provision. In these areas, parents have genuine choices of a number of competing private schools within easy reach and are sensitive to the price mechanism (schools close if demand is low, and new schools open to cater to expanded demand); in these genuine markets, educational entrepreneurs respond to parental needs and requirements.

So let’s return to concerns about the quality of education for Amaretch, and what outsiders could usefully offer by way of improvements. We don’t have to be afraid of imposing solutions that are not deemed practicable by parents. We don’t have to worry about finding solutions that are not sustainable because no one can afford to follow them through once the aid money dries up. Instead, if we’re concerned about teaching and learning and curricula, we can try small-scale experiments—like the one in Hyderabad with Sugata Mitra—to see if something works. If it does, we won’t keep it to ourselves but will make sure everyone knows about it. (The same is true if it doesn’t work, so that people can avoid repeating that mistake.) The only way that we can really help is to ensure that the improved technology—whether in curriculum, teaching methods or learning methods—is available, suitably packaged, as inexpensive as possible, through some commercial enterprise. If private schools think it’s desirable, they’ll buy into it—perhaps using loan funds to help. The problems of sustainability and scalability that so bedevil any aid intervention are solved. Testing new methods in the market is where venture philanthropy can make its mark. If a new method works, then let the market take it up. If it doesn’t, then we’ll know that our aspirations for educating the poor with that method were misplaced, but we can always try another.

In
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,
C. K. Prahalad challenges the “dominant assumption” that the poor don’t care about brand names: “On the contrary,” his findings suggest, “the poor are very brand-conscious.”
⁸
In private education, brand names could be important in helping solve the genuine information problem that exists—and they provide a
third
major opportunity for outsiders to assist with the education market. How can poor parents judge whether one private school in their community is better than another and whether it adequately serves the educational needs of their children? Typically, my research showed that parents use a variety of informal methods, such as visiting several schools to see how committed the teachers and proprietor appear. Or they talk to friends, comparing notes about how frequently exercise books are marked and homework checked. Importantly, I found that if parents choose one private school but subsequently discover that another seems better, they have little hesitation in moving their child to where they think they will get a better education. Even parents who don’t bother with these kinds of judgments or exploring the different options benefit because some (perhaps most?) parents
do
bother. The less concerned can free ride on the choices of the more concerned. And since school proprietors know this, they ensure that teachers show up and teach, and they invest any surpluses in school improvement, to ensure parental satisfaction. Although not all parents discharge their educational responsibilities with care and wisdom, private school managers must cater to those who do. This is another way in which the market deals with a problem—apathetic parents—that bedevils public school systems (since public schools provide no economic incentive for their principals to cater to the demands of well-informed parents).

Some might think that this is all well and good, but parents, even concerned parents, don’t know
what education is
—they themselves may be illiterate, for instance—so can’t possibly judge what their children are getting. But I think this is misguided. Particularly at the primary school level—the level of most concern in this book—the nature of what constitutes a desirable education isn’t that hard to understand. Parents believe it should be about becoming literate and numerate, well-behaved, and well-equipped for adult life, employment, and future studies, and for fine things like democracy. All these elements can be relatively readily discerned using the informal methods described above.

So there
is
an information problem, but there are plenty of ways of circumventing it.

But this solution doesn’t quite satisfy me. Because I know that in markets I’m faced with all the time—markets with as great or even greater information asymmetries—I can rely not only on these kinds of informal methods of judgment, but can fall back on a much stronger tool in making my consumer decisions. I don’t know anything about computer software or hardware, Internet searches, digital cameras, commercial airlines, or car maintenance, or even much about food and clothing, to name a few market decisions I’ve been faced with in recent days, and so for which the information problem rears its ugly head. Of course, I could become deeply informed about each of these areas, but life is too short. I could look at consumer guides like
Which?
magazine or the specialized press in each of these areas. But I don’t. But still, in general, I manage to purchase all the necessary goods and services in a way that usually works fine for me, without much effort to overcome the information asymmetry.