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The Beautiful Tree
- A Personal Journey into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themsleves
- Narrated by: James Foster
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Everyone from Bono to the United Nations is looking for a miracle to bring schooling within reach of the poorest children on Earth. James Tooley found one hiding in plain sight. While researching private schools in India for the World Bank, and worried he was doing little to help the poor, Tooley wandered into the slums of Hyderabad's Old City. Shocked to find it overflowing with tiny, parent-funded schools filled with energized students, he set out to discover if schools like these could help achieve universal education.
Named after Mahatma Gandhi's phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India, The Beautiful Tree recounts Tooley's journey from the largest shanty town in Africa to the hinterlands of Gansu, China. It introduces listeners to the families and teachers who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves.
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What listeners say about The Beautiful Tree
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Abdussalam Abdullateef
- 01-26-16
One of my best book for 2015
A most read for any concern mind about education for poor, most especially in African. It shows how foreign aid on education is been channels to wrong side.
4 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-06-15
Excellent Book
This book was just awesome. Although not an economics book, it's full of economic lessons. And it shows vividly that intentions don't always equal results and that government can often muddle things up when it tries to do good. Incentives matter. Always.
Before listening to this book I have little doubt that if I had ever considered the question (which I hadn't) I would have assumed that poor kids in the countries that Tooley studied cannot possibly attend private schools. I stand corrected.
4 people found this helpful
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- Dr. Pablo Fetter
- 02-12-17
A rare gem: educational, entertaining and inspiring
The Beautiful Tree is the amazing real-life story of my friend James Tooley, who uncovered the education revolution taking place in emerging markets through low-cost private schools...
A rare gem that manages to be at the same time educational, entertaining and inspiring, this book should be required reading for education professionals!
James, BTW, put his money where his mouth is, and went on to start multiple low cost private schools in different emerging countries. This provides a practical validation to his research and puts James in the rare category of people that have succeeded both in academia and entrepreneurship.
Great work James!
2 people found this helpful
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- LibertyReader
- 09-24-16
A Truly Inspiring Story
This is a great story that tells the story of a movement that is changing the world.
The triumph of private schools over government monopoly will be looked back on by historians as one of the seminal events in the 21st-century in the advancement of human freedom.
2 people found this helpful
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- Meghann A. Ribbens
- 05-04-21
This is a must- listen!
If you have children, work with children, know any children or have ever heard of children, please listen to this book.
1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-26-21
Reassesing public schools in developing countries
A splendid book. The main theses:
- Lots of poor people are using private schools to educate their children.
- Lots of officials and development "experts" were unaware of this. Those who were aware dismissed the schools.
- Most parents believe private schools are better, even though they have to pay for them. The author finds that on most quality parameters, this is true. And then, the private schools cost a fraction of what public schools cost.
- In India, the current public school system had been established by brittish colonialists, supplanting a older system of private schools (which had been so effective that their style of teaching (peer-based) had been copied by english schools).
1 person found this helpful
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- Douglas Morton
- 12-20-20
Revolutionary and Mindblowing
I cannot recommend this book enough. This is the kind of book that will change your entire worldview about how the world works. The data is in. The empirical evidence is here. We do not need government for education. The free market private sector can easily handle all education and schooling, even for the poor.
1 person found this helpful
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- Houssem Hajlaoui
- 08-13-20
Eye opening!
The brilliant discovery of James Tooley about how low cost private schools in poor countries are solving the shortcomings of the failed public education system.
1 person found this helpful
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- jamie
- 01-21-19
The truth about education
Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know the truth about education. The story is engaging, enlightening and encouraging!
1 person found this helpful
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- Mr. James Emmans
- 01-17-20
I read this book thinking it was about trees!
This type of book I would not normally choose to read, I lazily downloaded a book about trees but found it was about education and its politics.
I found it a uplifting and eye opening book, especially the injustices in undeveloped countries education systems.
Most people would get a lot out of this book.
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Excellent book for budding education professionals
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-17
By: Jonathan Kozol
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The Smartest Kids in the World
- And How They Got That Way
- By: Amanda Ripley
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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How do other countries create "smarter" kids? In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these countries for one year.
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a Wanna-be fiction writer avoids the subject
- By Niall on 11-23-13
By: Amanda Ripley
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The New Trail of Tears
- How Washington Is Destroying American Indians
- By: Naomi Schaefer Riley
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The tragedy of our Indian policies demands reexamination immediately - not only because they make the lives of millions of American citizens harder and more dangerous - but also because they represent a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with modern liberalism. They are the result of decades of politicians and bureaucrats showering a victimized people with money and cultural sensitivity instead of what they truly need-the education, the legal protections, and the autonomy to improve their own situation.
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From a Native American
- By Cal L on 03-09-19
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Whatever It Takes
- Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America
- By: Paul Tough
- Narrated by: Ax Norman
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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What would it take?That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children, not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a 97-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America.
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Aboslutely terrific!
- By Anthony on 09-21-10
By: Paul Tough
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Radical
- Fighting to Put Students First
- By: Michelle Rhee
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Part memoir, part manifesto, Radical is this fearless advocate's incisive, intensely personal call-to-arms. Rhee combines the story of her own extraordinary experience with dozens of compelling examples from schools she's worked in and studied-from students from unspeakable home lives who have thrived in the classroom to teachers whose radical methods have produced unprecedented leaps in achievement. Radical chronicles Rhee's awakening to the potential of every child, her rage at the special interests blocking badly-needed change, and her recognition that it will take a grassroots movement to create outstanding public schools.
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Good read after seeing Waiting for Superman
- By Marie on 04-10-13
By: Michelle Rhee
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A Singular Woman
- The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother
- By: Janny Scott
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, "what is best in me." Here is the missing piece of the story.
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What a Woman!
- By darswords on 10-11-11
By: Janny Scott
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The Why Axis
- Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life
- By: Uri Gneezy, John A. List
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Uri Gneezy and John List are like the anthropologists who spend months in the field studying the people in their native habitats. But in their case they embed themselves in our messy world to try and solve big, difficult problems, such as the gap between rich and poor students and the violence plaguing inner city schools; the real reasons people discriminate; whether women are really less competitive than men; and how to correctly price products and services. Their field experiments show how economic incentives can change outcomes.
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Really enjoyed understanding the why
- By Amazon Customer on 10-31-17
By: Uri Gneezy, and others
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A Personal Odyssey
- By: Thomas Sowell
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the gritty, powerful story of Thomas Sowell's life-long education in the school of hard knocks, a journey that took him from Harlem to the Marines, the Ivy League, and a career as a controversial writer, teacher, and economist in government and private industry. It is also the story of the dramatically changing times in which this personal odyssey took place.
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Thomas Sowell: An American treasure!
- By Wayne on 06-30-20
By: Thomas Sowell
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How Schools Work
- An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation's Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education
- By: Arne Duncan
- Narrated by: Arne Duncan
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on nearly three decades in education - from his mother’s after-school program on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in DC - How Schools Work follows Arne as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests, and even the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun member of President Obama's Cabinet.”
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Strayed off topic regularly.
- By RWC on 08-28-18
By: Arne Duncan
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"Multiplication Is for White People"
- Raising Expectations for Other People's Children
- By: Lisa Delpit
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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As MacArthur award-winning educator Lisa Delpit reminds us - and as all research shows - there is no achievement gap at birth. In her long-awaited second book, Delpit presents a striking picture of the elements of contemporary public education that conspire against the prospects for poor children of color, creating a persistent gap in achievement during the school years that has eluded several decades of reform. Delpit reflects on two decades of reform efforts that have still left a generation of poor children of color feeling that higher educational achievement isn't for them.
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Largely nonessential for practicing teachers.
- By Michael on 05-19-19
By: Lisa Delpit
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The Prize
- Who's in Charge of America's Schools?
- By: Dale Russakoff
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools - and to solve the education crisis in every city in America - it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their plans soon ran into a constituency not so easily moved - Newark's key education players, fiercely protective of their billion-dollar-per-annum system.
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Well-researched - Provides Good Answers
- By Denyse on 01-11-16
By: Dale Russakoff