This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 3rd, 2014. I'm Caleb Brown.

Educating young people around the world means empowering parents to make better choices.

And in some of the poorest parts of the world

parents are spending their own money on private schools to get their children

educated.

James Tooley is author of the Cato book The Beautiful Tree. He discussed some of his experiences, the Kato Institute in October.

It was about, it's near 2000. I was a sort of expert on private education.

I'd become an expert, a reluctant expert,

because as we all know, and the accepted wisdom then

was very clear, private education is about the elite. Private education is for the

upper middle classes. And I was on a journey in India in Hyderabad where I did

live for a while, on a mission as they call it from the

International Finance Corporation of Private Arm of the World Bank helping

promote elite private education. I was there doing due diligence for the Indian School of

Business and I was, as I say, I was dissatisfied because my work I felt shouldn't be

about the rich, for whatever reason I felt I wanted to be focusing on what

the poor were doing, but in private education what to do.

So I, on a day off, I went into the old city of Hyderabad. I went to the Charmina here, taking a picture

taken at night, where I'd read in my rough guide to India the slums of the old city were based.

And I went with a hunch about what I might find, but was delighted when I did find the down

a street corner into an alleyway.

I found a low cost private school, a private school in those days charging

...