Suggested Answers - Second Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Answers - Second Short Quiz

Post by johnkarls »

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Each quarter, there is a five-week gap between meetings. During the extra week, we traditionally have a second short quiz.

Question 1

Did our "Federal Magnet Schools" proposal of May 2009 make sense? (For details, please see the materials on this bulletin board for last May)

Suggested Answer 1

Hopefully, you agree that it did.

Question 2

Are there any improvements that could be made?

Suggested Answer 2

Please bring any suggestions with you to the meeting and/or post them on our bulletin board.

Question 3

Since President Obama and Secretary Duncan have failed to lead America to "The Promised Land" with regard to the plight of inner-city children, what can we do as ordinary citizens to make enough of our proposed "magnet schools" a reality that we "light the way"?

Suggested Answer 3

We could start a foundation for this purpose and begin soliciting others to join us with contributions of time, talents and/or treasure.

Question 4

Do our studies last summer of Greg Mortenson's "Three Cups of Tea" (establishing schools in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan) and of David Bornstein's "How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas" challenge us to make enough of our proposed "magnet schools" a reality so that when, hopefully fewer than 40 years from now, there is a President who is willing to consider the child-genocide that is our American inner cities, the solution has been demonstrated and need only be taken to scale as only the federal government is capable of doing?

Suggested Answer 4

Last summer, we were amazed by how a single individual could bring about unimaginable change!!!

Not just Greg Mortenson and his schools in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan/Afghanistan, but also Bill Drayton who single-handedly formed an organization (Ashoka) that provided the “seed money” for 1,820 social entrepreneurs in 68 countries during its first 30 years, each employing then-novel ideas to effect change – including rural electrification in Brazil, child protection in India, assisted living for the disabled in Hungary, care for AIDS patients in South Africa.

Indeed, “seed money” was provided by Bill Drayton/Ashoka for the Grameen Bank which, together with its founder Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for having, over 31 years, made small loans averaging less than $1,000 to more than 7.1 million destitute Bangladeshi villagers, 97% of whom were women. The then-novel idea behind the Grameen Bank was “micro-lending” in which the normal administrative expenses of a bank were eliminated by putting lending decisions and collection activities under a committee of volunteers in each village.

“I look forward to the day when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Bill Drayton and his organization, Ashoka” – Bill Clinton in a speech at the Global Philanthropy Forum in 2007. “Ideas create organizations and ideas blow them away” – Winston Churchill on frequent occasions.

Are we up to the challenge???

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