The Boston Globe skriver om hur fattiga människor, över hela världen, söker sig till privata skolor när de offentliga skolorna inte levererar. Ett exempel från Indien:
[T]he school [MA Ideal]–a private, small-scale venture–is not situated in a plush upper-middle-class neighborhood. Instead, it is tucked away in Kishanbagh, a sprawling slum of low-slung concrete huts, tin-roofed shanties, and bare-bellied children who gambol with skinny, underfed dogs. And the average fee at MA Ideal High School? About $3 per month–one-20th the cost of a typical private school in India.
MA Ideal is part of a grass-roots private school movement that has spread through India in the last two decades. Kishanbagh, a 5-square-kilometer patch of land, has 28 low-cost private schools, while India itself has some 300,000, each a buzzing hive of teaching, learning, and extracurricular activity. These schools offer poor residents across the country an alternative to the inefficient public school system. In Kishanbagh, for example, the local public school is a cavernous building where teachers rarely show up, toilets regularly overflow, and classes are almost never held. In the western world, private schools are associated with high fees and plentiful resources, but Hyderabad’s schools succeed by focusing on efficiency and accountability.
Principals like Mohammed Saleem of the nearby Adams High School say that fierce competition between schools forces institutes to strive toward providing the best education they can. ’’We have to listen to parents because otherwise they will admit their children to a different school. I have to constantly find new ways to keep parents interested in my school,” says Saleem.
Inte undra på att de fattiga söker sig till privata skolor så fort de får en möjlighet. Konkurrensen mellan privata skolor ger nämligen resultat: ”The results have been so impressive that some researchers are now suggesting that low-cost private schools might be the answer to educating the world’s poor”, skriver The Boston Globe.
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Förnuftets kalla och oresonliga röst 
Mycket intressant artikel. Det som slog mig mest var följande:
”He’s telling them about his plans to introduce Genki, a phonics-based teaching method that will help first-generation English learners speak the language more fluently. The burqa-clad mothers are unconvinced, preferring instead the more conventional method of teaching by textbook, but Anwar, with his energy and zeal, manages to be persuasive.”
Jag har ingen aning om ”Genki” är bra eller dåligt, men själva grejen att utbildningsteknik diskuteras inom en liten skola (snarare än inom utbildningsdepartementet) är mycket intressant.