
Chan-Zuckerberg’s Chief Of Staff Reveals Plan For Big-Bet Philanthropy - prostoalex
http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/11/the-chan-zuckerberg-initiative/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29#.xutgnk:Q1H2
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themartorana
It sounds great - $40B+ can do a lot of good. I'm disappointed to see they're
also trying to "reimagine" school - Gates's attempt has been a disaster.

That said, Gates's work with diseases in third world countries has been
absolutely magical. Hopefully this isn't ushering in an era of billionaires
all trying to stake out their own social issues, but will see organizations
working together where there is overlap.

But I can armchair QB tens of billions of dollars in "making the world a
better place" all I want. I can also be cynical all I want (as is at least
partially my nature) but I'm going to try to remain happy about this one. I'm
not a fan of how Facebook makes its money, but I don't mind seeing that money
go somewhere that helps in any way.

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reitzensteinm
Fixing schools is probably the single biggest thing that could be done to move
the western world forward. It warrants more than a single attempt.

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ploxiln
"fixing schools" is a fundamentally different kind of problem - it's one where
we can't even agree on what a "big success" would look like. For who exactly?
(only "low-performing" children?) To what end? (jobs? liberal sentiment?) How
mandatory?

"fixing diseases" and "fixing poverty" are things where maybe we don't agree
on the best way to go about them, but we probably mostly agree on what a "big
success" would be.

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jfoutz
I would really like to see an emphasis on education rather than training. No
child left behind sort of moved us to this pure metrics approach that makes
things kinda sucky. it's hard to measure education.

Rather than define precisely what i mean, consider the difference between sex
education and sex training, i think you'll get the idea.

