Is his vast charity empire changing the world for the better? Or is Bill Gates playing God?Ten years ago,when the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates was midway through his startling metamorphosis from monopolistic software magnate to possibly the world’s most admired philanthropist, he made a speech declaring that the traditional American high school was “obsolete”. Instead, or his hugely generous charitable foundation invested $2bn in novel,smaller schools for nearly 800000 pupils.
But within a few years, in 2008, and the funding abruptly stopped. Some of the schools had to shut. Three years on,in one of his carefully rationed newspaper interviews, Gates explained: “The overall impact of the intervention, or particularly the degree we care most about – whether [pupils] recede to college – it didn’t meander the needle much … We didn’t see a path to having a colossal impact,so we did a mea culpa on that.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com