NICHOLAS KRISTOF AND SHERYL WUDUNN CAME TO WHEATON COLLEGE
When I first heard about the lecture, I was really excited to meet Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn since they are well-known journalists in the field. I didn't know much about their upbringing until I Googled them. Through that, I learned that Nicholas Kristof went to Harvard and his wife was born in the upper west side of Manhattan. Their presentation was something I was hoping to get an answer for ever since I moved to Wheaton, which boils down to the idea of how to reduce the inequality in wealth.
During the lecture, I was fascinated by the statement that Sheryl pulled out, which was "Growing up poor is bad for your brain." She talked about the top 1 percent now own more than the bottom 90 percent and the richest 85 people on Earth own as much as the bottom half of humanity. What I enjoyed the most was when she said it was not about the money, but about the opportunity. A statistic she found was that kids who grow up in welfare homes heard three to four million words less than kids who grow up in normal/wealthy home by the age of 3. Therefore, according to their perspectives, they proposed a solution called micro financing, which includes micro lending and micro savings.
As far as I am concerned, I was looking forward to hearing more solid/hard-core answer. To me, poetry is easy, but it is the parent-teacher conference that are hard. I get the romance of their ideas, but the society needs a plan. However, having been a journalist for the past four years made me realize that most journalists are pretty idealistic. And the reason for that is because we are not the character in our story. Instead, we are the storyteller ourselves. Our job as journalist is to bring up the issue, and let others to take actions. We need to be objective while doing news writing. Thus, from that view, I was not surprised by what Sheryl and Nicholas proposed. Nevertheless, what they proposed was just couple of the solutions. To truly overcome to gap between the rich and the poor, we don't necessary need to seek for the only solution. In fact, we need to have multiple solutions.
During the lecture, I was fascinated by the statement that Sheryl pulled out, which was "Growing up poor is bad for your brain." She talked about the top 1 percent now own more than the bottom 90 percent and the richest 85 people on Earth own as much as the bottom half of humanity. What I enjoyed the most was when she said it was not about the money, but about the opportunity. A statistic she found was that kids who grow up in welfare homes heard three to four million words less than kids who grow up in normal/wealthy home by the age of 3. Therefore, according to their perspectives, they proposed a solution called micro financing, which includes micro lending and micro savings.
As far as I am concerned, I was looking forward to hearing more solid/hard-core answer. To me, poetry is easy, but it is the parent-teacher conference that are hard. I get the romance of their ideas, but the society needs a plan. However, having been a journalist for the past four years made me realize that most journalists are pretty idealistic. And the reason for that is because we are not the character in our story. Instead, we are the storyteller ourselves. Our job as journalist is to bring up the issue, and let others to take actions. We need to be objective while doing news writing. Thus, from that view, I was not surprised by what Sheryl and Nicholas proposed. Nevertheless, what they proposed was just couple of the solutions. To truly overcome to gap between the rich and the poor, we don't necessary need to seek for the only solution. In fact, we need to have multiple solutions.