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Perhaps I'm initially too cynical about what appears at face value to be selfless philanthropy, but I won't consider these efforts to be anything but self-servi

Perhaps I'm initially too cynical about what appears at face value to be selfless philanthropy, but I won't consider these efforts to be anything but self-serving unless they're willing to share data about their successes / failures with other educational institutions and governments.

ageek123 11y ago
How is this self-serving? How does it directly benefit Zuckerberg?
- zo1 11y ago
  At the very least publicity.
- datashovel 11y ago
  $77.4 billion for the Department of Education across the entire US. The article mentions that this $1 billion investment will go toward "free education and free healthcare for low-income students in the Palo Alto area". So comparing the two it's obvious that the investment is going into an unsustainable model. The way I'm thinking about this, that could be for one of a few reasons. 1) They want to pour a lot of money into research and development to figure out how to improve education. Concentrate a bunch of money into one place to figure out how to improve the overall model. 2) They want to show how they can do better than public education system. If they're after #1 I can see no reason why they wouldn't try to give back by sharing data from their research. If they're after #2 then it's obvious they're simply creating a facade (an unsustainable "model" implementation of what primary education should look like). Depending on the results they'd be looking to sway public opinion that private sector can do better than government. Needless to say, #1 is constructive, and #2 IMO is highly destructive.
crdoconnor 11y ago
Well, when the data looks like this... http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model-sucks/ http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model... That could be embarrassing. "Objective" teacher performance measures all seem to be as bad as, if not worse than measuring programmer performance with SLOC. Oddly enough it looks like the proposals he was trying to ram through in New Jersey look like a attempt at teacher union busting. Why Zuckerberg would involve himself in that is a bit of a mystery. While he seems to be the public face, it could be that a lot of the money doesn't come from him.
seunosewa 11y ago
Selflessness is not important. What's important is doing things that are beneficial to society. If you can also help yourself while doing that, there's no shame in that. That's great! Too many people spend their resources on the selfless pursuit of useless things.

ageek123 11y ago

How is this self-serving? How does it directly benefit Zuckerberg?

zo1 11y ago
At the very least publicity.
datashovel 11y ago
$77.4 billion for the Department of Education across the entire US. The article mentions that this $1 billion investment will go toward "free education and free healthcare for low-income students in the Palo Alto area". So comparing the two it's obvious that the investment is going into an unsustainable model. The way I'm thinking about this, that could be for one of a few reasons. 1) They want to pour a lot of money into research and development to figure out how to improve education. Concentrate a bunch of money into one place to figure out how to improve the overall model. 2) They want to show how they can do better than public education system. If they're after #1 I can see no reason why they wouldn't try to give back by sharing data from their research. If they're after #2 then it's obvious they're simply creating a facade (an unsustainable "model" implementation of what primary education should look like). Depending on the results they'd be looking to sway public opinion that private sector can do better than government. Needless to say, #1 is constructive, and #2 IMO is highly destructive.

crdoconnor 11y ago

Well, when the data looks like this... http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model-sucks/ http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model... That could be embarrassing. "Objective" teacher performance measures all seem to be as bad as, if not worse than measuring programmer performance with SLOC. Oddly enough it looks like the proposals he was trying to ram through in New Jersey look like a attempt at teacher union busting. Why Zuckerberg would involve himself in that is a bit of a mystery. While he seems to be the public face, it could be that a lot of the money doesn't come from him.

seunosewa 11y ago

Selflessness is not important. What's important is doing things that are beneficial to society. If you can also help yourself while doing that, there's no shame in that. That's great! Too many people spend their resources on the selfless pursuit of useless things.