I saw an annoying report on "Good Morning America" yesterday in which Diane Sawyer stared with worshipful adoration at Oprah Winfrey while they discussed the $40 million school Winfrey has been building in South Africa. But that's pretty much the way everyone in the press treats the woman, and it's her money. She can spend it however she likes, and there are worse things than education. Later in the day, my Newsweek came, and it had a story about the same subject that was only slightly less annoying because it was only slightely less reverential (half the time it referred to her as Winfrey, half the time as Oprah; only Hillary gets similar treatment). But there were a few remarkable passages, including this one:
More than 3,500 girls applied for 152 spots—that's a 4 percent acceptance rate. (Harvard accepts about 9 percent.) Oprah interviewed all of the 500 finalists herself, though the students weren't told they'd be meeting her. Most were understandably stunned when they walked into the interview room. One girl opened the door, took one look at her and declared: "You're so skinny in person!" Oprah asked the various South African tribes and communities to nominate girls with exceptional leadership potential; her plan is to educate the best and brightest and hope that, after being Oprah-cized, they will lead their country out of poverty. To weed through the finalists, she asked each applicant a series of questions about her background and dreams. Some had questions for her, too. Lesego Tlhabanyane blurted out: "Do you spend $500 to get your eyebrows done?" Oprah laughed—and admitted her to the school. A girl with moxie is exactly what she's looking for.
The best and the brightest? That is so elitist, so non-inclusive, so judgmental. You mean the right thing to do isn't to just take everybody and teach to the middle, leaving the slowest and the smartest both on their own? You aren't afraid of offending the "fairness requires we treat everyone the same regardless of the outcome" crowd? You actually think it's possible that by encouraging the best and the brightest you might be helping everyone, a sort of trickle-down education effect, because those will become the leaders capable of moving the whole country forward?
Way to go, Oprah Winfrey.
Comments
My guess is, she's gonna catch a lot of "flak" for not doing this in Chicago, or Detroit or somewhere here.
If we attempted to do this here, Oprah would be the first to condemn the process.
I wish people stop hating on Oprah. Everybody needs to look at the fact that she is providing a chance to 152 students who otherwise would not have this chance to go to school and educate themselves. Here in United States we have a much better cahnce to go to school and become successful, it is usually our own choices that may henderd our outcome. These people have a messed up government, way beyond what our government is. People are people no matter where we come from, if we need help then we must provide the help that is needed. Oprah has done alot for people in USA... her Angel Network has built homes for many peolpe and proceeds from her Oprah video will go for that network. So stop trash talking her!!!! It is her money and there are some rich people who don't even think about helping peolpe who are in need unless it benefits them. At least Oprah is helping these young ladies so they can one day benefit themselves as well as their country!!!
Miranda, I don't have a problem with her helping anybody, all I pointed out is a lot of folks here in the states will say she should help her own before helping another nation.
Outrageous. Hilarious. First, its her money. She can do what she wants with her money. Second, its her money. Third, its her money..... There is not one place (country, certainly not America) in this world where utopia exist. She wants the best and brightest...so does Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Goldman Sachs, Sears, every institution imaginable....so please write all of them and tell them the same....Please find something important to criticize Oprah Winfrey about.
She is helping her own. She's helping humankind. The idea that we have no obligation to fix things beyond our own backyards is just plain unChristian. Bill Gates is spending his money in other parts of the world as well. Say, maybe we could get some rich foreign do-gooder to invest in educating Americans. Ya think?
The comments posted here are unbelievable. Perhaps Diane Sawyer looked on in awe because she was fully present in a historic moment! A moment whose magnitude requires awe and admiration. Oprah does contribute to local (us) charities. I hope that all who are critisizing have reached into their own pockets an done some little thing to help other than wag their hateful tongues!!!
True, Oprah is helping her own.
In fact, out of the 152 recruits to her new program in South Africa, only two are Caucasian. She knows it, and she defends it.
Oprah explains the apparent affirmative action engine beneath her project by saying that the percentage is merely in sync with the percentages of Blacks vs. Whites in South Africa. But she also admits that she believes the Blacks deserve significant extra effort in the catching-up department.
Lord ! Lord! Lord! Oprah done done it again, better than the car give away.
By the way, Nicole. A perspective which differs from one's own does not automatically equal hateful tongue-wagging. If it did, your view would be automatically characterized as hateful tongue-wagging by everyone whose comments you describe as "unbelievable."
I do feel that it is slightly elitist, but overall she is helping 152 kids to a better life, and thats more than what most people can say when they put their $2 in.
In case it wasn't clear, I was praising Winfrey, or at least what I take to be her admirable attitude about the benefits of education done right. My remarks about the fawning press were not about her but about the unseemly excesses of our celebrity-worshiping culture. Considering some of the reaction to the fairly tame criticisms in the comments, I rest my case.
As to WHAT Oprah does with her money, I repeat that it is HER money. She might spend hers in ways that I would not spend mine -- I might want to improve education in Kentucky, for example, or give South African boys a leg up, too -- but that comes under fair comment, and we may respectfully argue about our differences. There are many ways in which the world is not as good as it could be, therefore many ways we can choose to improve it. I much more admire someone who spends her money to choose her path of improvement than I do a government that takes too much of my money to improve it in ways that I mostly disapprove of.
No argument from me. The easiest way to dilute a fortune invested in such a project is to spread it too thin in hopes of being all things to all people so that the benefactor winds up giving no individual more than lunch money.
Oprah knows what her goal is with this experiment and she has defined it well I'm sure for her own staff and for everyone outside who has an interest.
I look forward to the result, which I believe will be very significant. This kind of innovation is likely to grow into an effective tool used regularly to solve endemic problems wherever opportunity is strangled.
Oprah, who has obviously been paying attention during her years of increasing corporate success, now demonstrates an impressive amount of expert understanding of what will work and what probably won't, when one is seeding and nurturing seriously disadvantaged young people to enable them simply to reach their natural and unfettered potentials under their own power.
Oprah very possibly has created a practical and inexpensive model destined to graduate countless future classes of highly capable people in impoverished nations who will go on to influence many thousands more, like a stone's ripples on a lake.
If this program works, it will show millions of others intent upon breaking the cycle of inevitable deprivation in the world that a solution is available now -- which at $40 million for a vanguard class of 150 is positively dirt cheap, when compared with endlss international aid and perennial welfare programs.
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Please excuse any typos. No time to edit...
I've just retired after forty years of teaching at a community college and am willing to teach at Oprah's South African girls school. Anybody know how I can get in touch with her?
Karen, I imagine you could start with Harpo Productions in Chicago, but my guess is, as tough as Oprah was vetting her potential students, she's REALLY going to be tough vetting potential teachers. Good Luck, it would be a wonderful opportunity.
Why can't people look at the positive part of this venture in anticipation of the succes of the school. Oprah was right when she said that many children in American schools are intersted in "material things" not education in it's broadest terms.