Oprah celebrates her class of 2011

[tabatha]

Oprah Winfrey makes no apologies for spending millions on an elite school for underprivileged South African girls. But she's also looking for ways to make her money stretch further to help more struggling people.

Winfrey spoke on Friday on the eve of the first graduation at her school. Of the 75 students who started at the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in 2007, 72 will graduate on Saturday.

All are headed to universities in South Africa and the United States to pursue studies such as medicine, law, engineering and economics.

Across South Africa, more than half a million members of the class of 2011 disappeared before the 496 000 remaining took their final exams. Only a quarter of those who graduated did well enough to qualify for university study.

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-01-13-oprah-celebrates-her-class-of-2011

[tabatha]

1. Thank you, Oprah

"South Africa is struggling to overcome the inequalities of apartheid, which ended in 1994. There are too few schools at all levels, and many lack basics such as libraries and are staffed by undereducated teachers."

South Africa went to the dogs BEFORE 1994.

[lamp_shade]

2. Bravo, Ms. Winfrey.

[CrawlingChaos]

3. no applause from me

I'd much prefer we tax billionaires like Winfrey appropriately rather than leaving vast oceans of cash at their disposal for vanity projects like this one. Oprah's "leadership academy" represents a hugely inefficient use of resources -- absurdly lavish, designed to produce a handful of fledgling elitists rather than provide educational opportunities for the largest possible number of girls. Imagine - all those millions spent so a handful of luxuriously kept students can be forced to listen to that idiot Oprah and her cadre of self-help morons via satellite.

Oprah has played a huge role in dumbing down this country. For the love of god let's not hold her up as someone to be admired.

[tabatha]

4. Sorry, I believe this was of value to South Africa.

Even if I think it was too large. It was not excessive in comparison to other elite White South African schools.

Praise from Nelson Mandela
One of the academy's most vocal fans has been Nelson Mandela, who called Winfrey his hero because she understood that South Africa's gains in democracy would be nullified unless future generations were educated. He was quoted in Time magazine as saying:

The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls—located near Johannesburg and educating girls in Grades 7 through 12—is therefore a wonderfully appropriate gift to the people of South Africa, one that will endure over many lifetimes. When I went to the opening of her school, I looked at the shining faces of these young women and thought every one of them has the potential to be an Oprah Winfrey. The school is important because it will change the trajectory of these girls' lives and it will brighten the future of all women in South Africa. Oprah understands that in Africa, women and girls have often been doubly disadvantaged. They have had the curse of low expectations and unequal opportunities.[27]

Praise from Bill Clinton
The academy was honored by Bill Clinton when he featured it in his book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World as an example of how to give back to the world. Clinton predicted that the school would change the lives of many young women and interviewed Winfrey to find out why she decided to build the school. Winfrey explained that caring teachers "made education an open door" for her and that she wanted to help girls who grew up like her, "economically disadvantaged, but not poor in mind or spirit".[28]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oprah_Winfrey_Leadership_Academy_for_Girls

[KansDem]

6. Chris Hedges has a similar opinion...

Addicted to Nonsense

By Chris Hedges

Will Tiger Woods finally talk to the police? Who will replace Oprah? (Not that Oprah can ever be replaced, of course.) And will Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple who crashed President Barack Obama’s first state dinner, command the hundreds of thousands of dollars they want for an exclusive television interview? Can Levi Johnston, father of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s grandson, get his wish to be a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars”?

The chatter that passes for news, the gossip that is peddled by the windbags on the airwaves, the noise that drowns out rational discourse, and the timidity and cowardice of what is left of the newspaper industry reflect our flight into collective insanity. We stand on the cusp of one of the most seismic and disturbing dislocations in human history, one that is radically reconfiguring our economy as it is the environment, and our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd.

What really matters in our lives—the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke—doesn’t fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism.

Celebrity worship has banished the real from public discourse. And the adulation of celebrity is pervasive. The frenzy around political messiahs, or the devotion of millions of viewers to Oprah, is all part of the yearning to see ourselves in those we worship. We seek to be like them. We seek to make them like us. If Jesus and “The Purpose Driven Life” won’t make us a celebrity, then Tony Robbins or positive psychologists or reality television will. We are waiting for our cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and celebrated. Nothing else in life counts.

--more--
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/addicted_to_nonsense_20091129/

[tabatha]

7. Nelson Mandela has more of an idea what kids in SA need than Chris Hedges

[Whisp]

5. good on Oprah

I know a lot of people think she's the debil but I don't believe that at all. She is a caring and thoughtful person and I admire her.