Give It Away | Microphilanthropy Blog

Give It Away #3
More Money & He Knows What To Do With It

After last week's Passover-themed blog link to a "TED Talk" video about slavery and freedom, I started digging deeper into the TED.com archives. I thought that perhaps some other intellectual heavyweight or prodigious activist had spoken from that podium about philanthropy, how private citizens like ourselves can change the world by redistributing our wealth. A simple string search turned up a talk by the world's second richest man, William Gates III, on how he feels that his donor dollars would best be spent. With a net worth of fifty-three billion dollars and climbing, I'd sure like to know who's cashing in his charity cheques!

In the first few minutes of his talk, he explains the primary objective of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: to combat society-paralyzing diseases in the Third World. They are worthy of his consideration, he says, because they slide through the cracks of the capitalist commodities market. Poor people can't afford to pay for costly medicines, so more research money gets thrown at male-pattern baldness than at murderous malaria! I'm actually a chrome-dome myself, so I can sympathize somewhat with the follically-challenged philanthropists that put their money where their hair isn't. Still, it's embarrassing that in this day and age, people on the planet are still dying off from diarrhea. So thanks, Bill, for picking up the slack.

Gates then goes on to talk about the second-largest recipient of his benefactor bucks: teachers. He laments the sad state of American schools, lagging behind Europe and Asia, and asserts that the number one factor that consistently improves student scores is teacher training. I'm not entirely sure about the actual methods that he recommends for high-tech professional development, mind you. He believes that cameras in the classrooms will allow teachers to learn from their own mistakes and other instructors' successes, but for me it evokes the spectre of Big Brother pedagogy. Regardless of the medicine that he is prescribing, though, I can't argue with his overall diagnosis: that better teachers make better students, and better citizens, too.

I did another quick web search on JGooders.com and found a few projects that aim to improve educators. There's a retraining program for Jewish school teachers in the Former Soviet Union. Another cause wants to equip every teacher in Israel with their own laptop computer. A third project aspires to improve practices and raise standards for Israeli teachers. So if you agree with Bill Gates when he says that support for the teaching profession is the most important catalyst for progress in the industrialized countries, then you might consider funneling some funds of your own into those areas. And if you are intrigued by how Mr. Midas himself came to these ideas, and how he intends to make them manifest in the world, check out the original video and his post-lecture Q & A session.