Trust me, as a casual teacher, one of the last places you want to be two days before the school term ends is a demountable classroom without aircon, in charge of 22 Year Nine students, one period before lunch, as temperatures edge past 32’.
That was me, earlier today.
My brief was to encourage the lightly steaming, lethargic scholars to pop out their laptops, watch “inspiring TED talks on topics that interested them and make notes”.
Given the context, this felt like a very unlikely proposition… but I did want to get them thinking, preferably inspired…
The TED talk I played for them is called “How to solve the world’s biggest problems” by Natalie Cargill.
It’s a grand title and it’s absolutely worth a listen, but if you haven’t got 17 minutes, here’s a quick run down.
The world’s problems are vast and potentially depressing. Governments often don’t have the money, time or political willpower to tackle them; corporates don’t want the risk.
In the gap, private philanthropists have often made huge contributions and helped solve problems that otherwise seem insurmountable.
The example from the TED is about private philanthropists in the 60's, led by a bloke called Norman who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His funding invested in the development of more robust wheat crops, providing food for an exploding population and potentially saving millions of lives. There there are plenty of others examples - have a google if you're interested.
But who can be a philanthropist? Only the really wealthy, right?
Wrong. If you bring home more than $60K a year, after tax, you’re in the wealthiest 1 percent of the global population. (Year Nine kids having this realisation is a powerful thing to watch unfold.)
And if those who could afford it gave 10% of $60K annually, and those who couldn’t afford it were offset by those who make substantially more than $60K, we could free up literally trillions of dollars to invest in projects that help solve major world problems.
The Ted Talk goes into the details – it provides costed solutions to problems like food scarcity, a boiling planet, unregulated AI, the possibility of the next pandemic, terrifying stockpiles of nuclear weapons… the list goes on.
My Year Nine class absolutely didn’t want to be hooked… but by the end, most of them were. Because this is genuinely incredible, hopeful stuff!
Imagine if every student in Australian classrooms got the message that we all have the potential to be philanthropists and that collectively, we have the power to be part of the 1% giving 10% to tackle humanity's most urgent and desperate problems?
Imagine if you and I all got the message too?
Have a listen to the TED talk. Let me know your thoughts.
Comments