Oprah Winfrey is doing more harm than good in Africa.

Although O is doing the best she knows how from her personal life experiences, I believe she is not qualified to lead the education of the children in Africa.O was born and raised in america as an american. The people and especialy the mothers of Africa have a completly different culture and value system.O is even dressing the girls in uniforms as she was dressed, not in traditional african dress.Is oprah causing more harm than good by educating these children to american standards when africa will never have the resources to sustain an american way of life?Edited by Admin, : Fix spelling error in title.

I suppose that time will tell. At least Oprah is doing something... So we get a sense of her motivation.... and of her vision: I don't see her efforts as failing. Maybe she is not doing it "perfectly" and perhaps she is injecting a sense of false hope, but I agree that the ability to provide education for these kids is the main focus and is overall a good thing. Edited by Phat, : added features

I have to take issue with this bit. First, America doesn't have the resources to sustain an American way of life. If everybody lived as we do in the prosperous West, we would need about four Earths.
Also, I fail to see how education would be somehow wasted on South Africans. SA is a developed country, with plenty of infrastructure and industry. The problem is that the jobs always used to go to the white population. Educating poor kids will help to redistribute those jobs a little more fairly. South African kids don't want to grow up to be subsistence farmers. They want to be lawyers, journalists, biologists and engineers. That is why they need education. Don't patronise them.

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Mutate and Survive

History tells us to never underestimate the potential for well-intentioned people to wreak havoc.--Percy

Education is never wasted, period. It's an ethical goal in and of itself, regardless of whether it is put to "use" or not.Aside from that - nothing will ever improve at all without education. You're operating from a false dilemma, assuming that the only two choices are A) uneducated bare subsistence living, and B) an American lifestyle. You don't need to live like a wealthy American to have improved over the status quo, which is an obviously attainable and worthwhile goal.Differences in culture are irrelevant to education: critical thinking skills, knowledge of science, history, mathematics, the ability to read, all are completely culturally neutral, unless your culture somehow idolizes stupidity.The only time education and culture conflict is when facts contradict long-held superstitions. Of course, eliminating superstitions and giving a greater understanding of how the world really works is part of the point, isnt it. Perhaps they'll take issue with Evolution vs their own flavor of Creation...but then, we have that problem here, too.

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When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.

Off the top of my head the impact of Fundamental Biblical Evangelical Christianity has been the most significant to the improvement of life in formerly pagan Africa than any other factor. The African nations or cultures within nations influenced the most by Biblical evangelical Christianity have been the most free, the most prosperous and the most blessed nations/cultures on the continent of Africa.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Mmmm hmmm.Improvements couldn't possibly be due to education, food supplies, or medicine. no, they must be due to the blessings of your "god."I will grant you that much of the charity work done in Africa is done by Christians in general, and Christian missions in particular.Of course, the AIDS epidemic in Africa has been drastically worsened by "abstinence-only" education and claims for instance that condoms somehow cause HIV and AIDS, and these teachings are religious in nature with no basis in fact.I'd also like to point out that Zimbabwe, a very Christian nation, is a shithole thanks to its president Mugabe. Their superstitions recently allowed them to be hoodwinked by a scam artist into believing that diesel fuel could come from a magic rock when struck with a stick, exactly as Moses did with water in the OT. Turns out a woman had found a misplaced tank of diesel and run a hose, and used an accomplice to turn on the diesel - but Mugabe and his goons bought it after observing the flowing fuel, and paid her a hefty sum of money before the scam was uncovered.Superstitions are bad when they conflict with objective fact, Buzsaw, bar none.

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When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.

I agree with that completely. The white folks over here thought they were doing the Aboriginal community a favour. They still live in poverty today. They have suffered so much and only now are these people being heard. Oprah ain't even asking never mind listening.Edited by paula rose, : No reason given.

Why take issue, Magda? You have highlighted my point exactly. Where does America get all their resourses from? This is just not true. So now the whites are out of work? If we all aspired to these heights and reached these levels of professionalism, do you think the world would be a better place?You know Magda, it is quite possible you have a pair of drapes hanging at your window that I made whilst earning a living for my family. I churned out hundreds that were distributed all over the world. There will be no more sewing machinists. I made jeans and lingerie too. No more cheap mass production. I can't wait. I can make my own clothes.There are far reaching possible disastrous consequences that we are leaving as a legacy for our children. We need to see them now, not wait for the future and learn again in retrospect, or not as the case may be. Wrong again. I matronize them because I am them. Edited by paula rose, : No reason given.

Is she forcing anyone? If not, then she most certainly is asking. Is she forcing conversions to Christianity? Is she moving people off of their land?Your comparison to the Australian aboriginals is one of apples to oranges. Setting up a school is very different from oppressing indigenous people.

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When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.

This was the only comparison I made.

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If we all aspired to these heights and reached these levels of professionalism, do you think the world would be a better place?

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False dilemma.Just because people aspire to reach these levels of achievement doesn't mean all people have the same intellectual potential or drive to reach them, even if we all have the same educational opportunities.Not everyone will want to get a PhD or a medical or law degree. Some people will instead want to become businesspeople, or artists, or whatever.A good education is needed to be a well-rounded person. A good education is extremely helpful in having the knowledge and thinking skills and exposure to varied ideas that enables people to be creative in their careers and lives.I find your implication that we should withold education from people who currently, due to their lack of opportunity to become educated, are the labor pool which produces cheap consumer goods for rich western nations, simply because it would be terrible to not have cheap laborers anymore to be morally repugnant.Brother Guy Consolmagno has this to say about educating poor people: Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

"O is even dressing the girls in uniforms as she was dressed, not in traditional african dress. "Please tell me how many people wear "traditional" african dress on a daily basis, and even more, what is traditional "african" dress? With 53 countries, and 900 million people, do tell me what singular uniform you believe they should be wearing?

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History tells us to never underestimate the potential for well-intentioned people to wreak havoc.

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Iraq and Afghanistan are fine examples of that.Aside from that, I wonder why the 'mighty' Ms. O could not do this for black American children. Edited by ThreeDogs, : No reason given.

Yes, time will tell. I just hope it isn't too late when it does.