The Philanthro-Baron Has No Clothes
How mega-foundations are undermining our public schools and eating away at our democracy
Philanthro-barons like Bill Gates have more power and influence than ever before.
Reader: it is well established that the richest Americans have billions of ideas for how to improve our failed and failing public schools. In fact, by the time you finish reading this sentence, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Mark Zuckerberg and the Walton family will have generated one new school improvement idea each, not to mention a substantial amount of interest on their substantial fortunes. But not everyone is convinced that the growing influence of these “philanthro-barons” over our schools and our democracy is such a great development. In a new article entitled “Plutocrats at Work,” writer Joanne Barkan paints a disturbing picture of mega-philanthropy gone wild. EduShyster recently interviewed Barkan to find out why she’s so concerned about the new breed of philanthro-baron.
Writer Joanne Barkan paints a disturbing picture of mega-philanthropies gone wild.
EduShyster: You write that the original big philanthropies like Carnegie and Rockefeller were kept on a pretty tight leash. What’s different about today’s breed of mega-philanthropists?
Barkan: When the original philanthropies were being set up in