美文欣赏：比尔盖茨夫妇讲座 我们如何放弃财富

　　【采访导读】1993年，比尔·盖茨夫妇把在海滩上散步，做了一个重大的决定：将微软公司挣得的财富回报社会。在与克里斯安德森的谈话中，夫妇俩谈论了他们在比尔和梅琳达·盖茨基金会的工作，他们的婚姻，他们的孩子，他们的失败，还有他们回馈社会获得的满足感。

　　【采访内容节选】

　　Melinda Gates: This is in Africa, our very first trip, the first time either of us had ever been to Africa, in the fall of 1993. We were already engaged to be married. We married a few months later, and this was the trip where we really went to see the animals and to see the savanna¹. It was incredible. Bill had never taken that much time off from work. But what really touched us, actually, were the people, and the extreme poverty. We started asking ourselves questions. Does it have to be like this?

　　梅琳达·盖茨：这是我们第一次旅行，在非洲拍的。我们俩都是第一次去非洲，那是1993年的秋天，我们已经订婚。几月后，我们结婚了，我们想通过这次旅行看看野生动物和热带草原。真是太美了。比尔和我从来没有放过这么长的假。但是真正让我们深受触动的是那儿的人，那儿的贫穷。我们开始扪心自问，一切只能是这样吗？

　　Bill Gates: Well, we decided² that we'd pick two causes, whatever the biggest inequity was globally, and there we looked at children dying, children not having enough nutrition to ever develop, and countries that were really stuck, because with that level of death, and parents would have so many kids that they'd get huge population growth, and that the kids were so sick that they really couldn't be educated and lift themselves up. So that was our global thing, and then in the U.S., both of us have had amazing educations, and we saw that as the way that the U.S. could live up to its promise of equal opportunity is by having a phenomenal education system, and the more we learned, the more we realized we're not really fulfilling that promise.

　　比尔·盖茨：我们决定选择两个方面：任何世界上最不公平的事，这指的是垂死的儿童，营养跟不上的儿童，因为高死亡率发展停滞不前的国家，国家人口剧长，孩子病得太重，他们没法受教育养活自己。这是世界的情况，而在美国，我们夫妻俩都受过良好的教育，我们看到美国实现“机会平等”这一承诺的途径就是其良好的教育体系。我们了解的越多，就越深刻地意识到我们并没有完全兑现我们的承诺。

　　So this is a story largely of vaccines³. Smallpox⁴ was killing⁵ a couple million kids a year. That was eradicated⁶, so that got down to zero. Measles⁷ was killing a couple million a year. That's down to a few hundred thousand. Anyway, this is a chart where you want to get that number to continue, and it's going to be possible, using the science of new vaccines, getting the vaccines out to kids. We can actually accelerate the progress.

　　所以这个故事主要说的是疫苗。以前，每年有几百万的儿童死于天花。现在我们摆脱它了，死亡数变成了零。每年有百万人死于麻疹，现在这个数字是几十万。总之，在这张图表中，如果你让数字继续下去，就有可能利用新疫苗技术为儿童提供疫苗。我们可以加快这个进程。

　　Because we built this thing together from the beginning, it's this great partnership⁸. I had that with Paul Allen in the early days of Microsoft. I had it with Steve Ballmer as Microsoft got bigger, and now Melinda, and in even stronger, equal ways, is the partner, so we talk a lot about which things should we give more to, which groups are working well? She's got a lot of insight. She'll sit down with the employees a lot. We'll take the different trips she described. So there's a lot of collaboration⁹. I can't think of anything where one of us had a super strong opinion about one thing or another?

　　因为我们从零开始建立了它，这是一种绝妙的伙伴关系。微软早期，我曾和保罗·艾伦有那种伙伴关系。微软的成长期我有史蒂夫·巴摩，现在微软更强了，梅琳达以一种更稳固，更平等的方式成为了我的伙伴。我们谈论了很多，哪些事情更应该重视，哪一个团队运作的很好？她有很多深刻见解。她能和员工打成一片。我们各自出行，就像她说的，我们也有很多合作。我想不出有哪件事一方的主张特别强烈。

　　Well, I would say a huge lesson for us out of the early work is we thought that these small schools were the answer, and small schools definitely help. They bring down the dropout¹⁰ rate. They have less violence and crime in those schools. But the thing that we learned from that work, and what turned out to be the fundamental key, is a great teacher in front of the classroom. If you don't have an effective teacher in the front of the classroom, I don't care how big or small the building is, you're not going to change the trajectory¹¹ of whether that student will be ready for college.

　　我想说的是一个深刻的教训，工作早期，我们以为小规模的学校就是解决办法，当然小规模学校有一定作用，可以减少辍学率。学校内的暴力事件和犯罪比较低。但是我们从工作中学到的，也是最重要的一件事就是课堂上必须有个好老师。如果没有有效率的老师，无论教室大或小，你都不可能改变学生是否已经准备好上大学的轨迹。

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