Bill Gates 退而不休

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http://dotsub.com/view/1054a5eb-c3e1-4bc8-b890-25c20c33368d
Bill Gates 退而不休
上周我写了一封信，讨论基金会的工作事宜 也分享了一些问题 Warren Buffet 建议我 直言不讳的评价他们工作中好的或不足的地方 并且把这种讨论作成年会的形式 我也期望能吸引更多人参与到解决这些问题的工作中来 因为我认为这些问题都是非常重要的 而且离不开大家的共同参与 换句话说，市场不能指导科学家、 交际家、思想家和官员们 去做正确的事情 只有关注这些事情 有关心此事的英才，和不断加入到这一队伍的人们 我们真的能够取得我们所期望的进展吗？
这个早晨我将与大家分享其中两个问题 并讨论他们的现状 但在我开始前，我要声明我是个乐天派 我相信任何棘手的问题都是可以解决的 这个论点有一部分来源于对历史的回顾 在过去的一个世纪里，人们的平均寿命翻了一倍多。 另外的一个统计 （大概是我最喜欢的） 儿童死亡的数据 近至1960年，那一年总共有1.1亿儿童出生 其中2千万儿童还未满5岁就夭折了 五年前，有1.35亿儿童出生，比过去更多 然而5岁前夭折的儿童不到1千万 从这2点我们可以看到儿童死亡率的降低 这只是个表面的现象 任何一个被挽救的生命都颇具意义
这其中的关键因素不仅是收入的提高 同时还有核心的技术突破 就是我们使用疫苗的范围更广了 例如，在不远的1990年就有400万人 因为感染麻疹而死亡 今天这个数字减少到40万 所以我们真的能实现更多的改变 下一次突破会把1千万夭折的儿童数量再减半 我认为那是在以后不到20年所要打的持久战 为什么？因为仅有少数几种疾病 是导致那些儿童夭折的主要病因 腹泻，肺炎和疟疾
这就引出我今天早上要讲的第一个问题 我们如何阻断由蚊子传播的致命疾病？
这种疾病的历史是怎样的呢？ 作为一种重疾，它已经存在上千年了 事实上，如果我们看一下遗传基因 它是唯一引起基因改变的疾病 住在非洲的人们 为避免疟疾导致的死亡，已出现几种基因的进化 20世纪30年代，死亡率最高时曾超过5百万 真的是一个很大的数字 此病遍布全球 这个可怕的疾病，一直存在于美国和欧洲 但20世纪之前，没有人知道它的病因 直到一个英国士兵发现了蚊子才是元凶 所以它无处不在 有2样工具能帮助降低死亡率 一个是用DDT消灭蚊子 另一个是用奎宁或者类奎宁来治疗患者 这就是死亡率下降的原因
讽刺的是，在温带地区 疟疾已被消灭 那些都是富国 1900年全世界都受疟疾的困扰 1945年，它仍肆虐大多数地方 1970年，美国和大部分欧洲已经摆脱了疟疾 1990年北半球大部分都已安全了 今天大家看到疟疾仅存在于赤道附近
这个结果可以导出一项悖论 由于疟疾仅困扰穷国 所以它得不到像样的投资 比方说，治疗脱发的药物的研发资金 就要超过疟疾 当然，脱发很可怕 （笑声） 富人们倍受折磨 这就是疟疾被撂在一边的原因
但是，疟疾这个 每年夺走上百万生命的疾病 其影响还不止这些 超过2亿人每时每刻都在被疟疾困扰着 所以在疟疾流行区域，经济不可能得到发展 它实在太碍事了 当然，疟疾是由蚊子传播的 我带了一些到现场，就是希望大家也体验一下子 在会场里面也可以听一下它们的嗡嗡声 （笑声） 没有理由只让穷人们体验这种感觉 （笑声，掌声） 放心，这些蚊子没有疟疾
我们已经有一些新办法，比如蚊帐 蚊帐很好用 母亲和孩子可以晚上呆在蚊帐里 那么晚上叮人的蚊子就没辙了 如果加上室内喷洒DDT 和蚊帐一起用 死亡率可以降低超过一半 有几个国家已经做到了 真是太棒了
但我们仍然要小心对付疟疾 因为寄生虫和蚊子都会进化 我们过去对付疟疾的各类工具后来都失效了 最后你只有2个选择 如果你带着正确的工具和正确的方法去到一个国家 并激情满怀的去工作 你可以做到局部的根除 也就是疟疾流行地图在缩小的地方 或者，如果你是半推半就的去工作的 一段时间内你可以降低人们的疾病负担 但最终那些工具会失效 而死亡率将会再次暴增 这2种结局都曾在世界上真实地发生过
现在我们在上升期 蚊帐的资助在增多 新药研发正在进行中 我们的基金会支持了一项已进入3期试验的疫苗 2个月内就将开始应用 如果有效的话这将能挽救超过2/3的生命 所以我们即将拥有这些新的工具
但这些还不足以给出明确的路线图 通向消灭疟疾之路的地图 包含很多东西 需要交际家们来确保充足的投资 达到很高的透明度 并协助传播成功的故事 还需要社会科学家 协助我们去指导90%的人使用蚊帐 而不是70% 我们需要数学家来帮助建立虚拟模型 比如 Monte Carlo，让我们更好的理解各种工具如何相互配合与发挥作用 当然我们需要制药厂的专业协助 我们需要富国的政府能慷慨的资助这些事情 当这些条件都具备的时候 我就非常乐观了 因为我们能够根除疟疾了
现在让我们转到第二个问题 这和前一个问题毫无联系，但同样很重要 这就是：如何打造伟大的老师 似乎这个问题是那种很费时间去考虑 但是答案很易于理解的问题 但事实上，我们并不理解这个问题本身 首先说说为什么这个问题重要 我敢说在座的各位，都曾受教于伟大的老师 我们都受过优秀的教育 这也是我们今天能够在这里的部分原因 是我们成功的部分原因 我作为一个大学辍学生 仍然有过很棒的老师
事实上，在美国，教育系统运作的很不错 在为数不多的地方聚集了很有影响力的老师们 所以排名前20%的学生得到了好的教育 而那20%已经成为世界上的精英 与其他学生相比，这20%的精英 引领了软件和生物科技的革命 使美国保持在世界的前沿
现在这20%精英们的能量 相对来说已经开始渐渐衰减 但更令人关注的是人们得到的教育的平衡性 而这种平衡性的减弱，要比教育整体的减弱更厉害 比如经济领域，现在只有受过良好教育的人 才有机会进入该领域 这亟需改变 通过改变让所有人拥有平等的机会 通过改变让国家变得更强大 并在高等教育相关的 各项领域中都保持在前沿 例如科学和数学
当我第一次看到统计数据的时候 糟糕的现状令我惊愕 超过30%的学生无法念完高中 而这个数据还是被低估的 因为算辍学率的时候 只是对比当年开始上高中3年级的和完成高3毕业的学生数 不会记录上高3之前的情况 而大多数的辍学都发生在高3以前 辍学率被大大低估了 如果高3前辍学也得到记录 辍学率远不止30% 少数民族的孩子，辍学率甚至超过一半 即使读完了高中 如果来自低收入家庭 你只有不到25%的机会能念完大学 如果你是美国的低收入者 你进监狱的机会反而高于 获得大学学位 这完全不公平
如何改善我们的教育呢？
过去的9年中，我们的基金会一直投资于这一事业 很多人在为此而努力工作着 我们做小型学校 我们提供奖学金 我们帮助修建图书馆 诸多此类事情的效果都不错 但随着认识的深入，我们越发意识到 伟大的老师的重要性 我们曾联系过一些 致力于研究老师间差异的人 比如说顶尖的1/4的老师 和最差的1/4之间的差异 以及同一学校内或学校之间老师的差异 结论是这些差异大得难以置信 顶尖那1/4的老师将提高他们班的教育水准 以测试分数作标准 短短1年就可以提高10% 这意味着什么呢？ 如果全美国在2年内 全部由这顶尖的1/4的老师上课 美国与亚洲的教育水平的差距将不复存在 4年之内，我们的教育将超过其他任何一个国家
很简单，我们唯一需要的就是这1/4的顶尖老师 大家会说：“哦，我们应该奖励这些人， 我们要留住这些人， 我们要研究他们的教学技巧并传授给其他人。” 可惜这些事情一件也没有发生
这顶尖1/4的老师具有什么样的个性呢？ 他们是什么样的人？ 你一定以为这些都是很资深的老师 可惜你错了 经过了最初3年的执教之后 老师们的教学水准就不会有多大改变了 即使有，这种改变也非常的小 你或许以为这些老师都有硕士学位 他们都曾回到大学拿了教育学的硕士学位 这个图包含了4个不同的因素 并解释了其各自与教学水准的相关程度 最下面这一条，基本上和教育水准无关的 就是硕士学位
今天的工资激励系统奖励2件事情 一是资历 因为你需要把涨的工资放进你的养老金户头 另一个是用额外的钱鼓励员工去读硕士学位 但这些奖励和成为更好的老师之间没有任何联系 教授美洲文化的老师，由激励产生的影响很微弱 主修数学的数学老师，这种影响较明显 但真正具有压倒性的影响力的，还是你过去的表现 有些人很擅长于这种自我激励 但我们至今仍然没能够 研究这种自身激励的本质 并复制和推广它 从而提高整体的教学实力 或者鼓励具有这种能力的人们留在教学领域
你可能会问：“是不是好老师留下来了，而不好的离开了？” 答案是，比平均水准略高的老师们离开了 而且教育系统本身有很高的人员流动率
现在只有很少数的几个地方，在打造伟大的教师 其中有一个特许学校，名为KIPP “知识就是力量”的缩写 真是难以置信 他们有66所学校，大多数是初中，有一些高中 在里面进行着伟大的教学活动 他们招收最贫困的学生 那里毕业的96%的学生后来拿到了大学学位 而且这些学校里的教学氛围 和普通的公立学校大不相同 这些学校采用团队教学的模式，可以持续的提高教师水平 而且收集数据，也就是测试结果 然后告诉老师 “哇，你让学生的成绩提高了这么多。” 这些学校在全力以赴的提高教师水平
如果你亲身去这些教室体验一下子 刚开始你会觉得很奇妙 我那会儿就坐着想“发生了什么事？” 老师在教室里跑来跑去，现场气氛很high 我想“这里上的是体育课吧， 到底发生了什么？” 那名老师不断的扫视学生们，寻找有谁开小差了 有谁觉得无聊了 而且很快速的喊学生们上黑板写东西 这种环境非常充满活力 因为在读中学的时候，特别是5到8年级 这种氛围能让学生全身心的投入课堂的学习中 并且所有人都能跟得上老师的教学 没有谁会被取笑，也没有学生产生厌学情绪 所有人都参与到这个活动里面 这就是KIPP正在做的事情
那普通学校是如何做得呢？ 普通学校里，没人会去赞扬老师们说他们有多棒 没人收集测验的分数 老师的工作合同里 明文限定了校长进入教室的次数 有时这仅有一年一次 而且还要提前通知 想象一下子在你的工厂里有这么一群员工 其中有些人只是在生产废品 而经理被告知“喂，你一年只许来车间看一次 但你必须提前让我们知道，因为我们很可能会糊弄你 在你来的那一刻，我们会把工作干得很出色。”
即使老师们自己想提高教学水平，也缺乏工具 他们没法收集到测验分数 有一整个系统可以屏蔽这些数据 例如，纽约通过了一项法案 用于提升教学水平的数据在决定该教师是否能留任时 不能被获取和使用 可见，整个系统都走错了方向 但是我还是很乐观的 有些事情我认为是明确的应该做得
首先，还有很多测试正在进行中 而这些能帮助我们认清自己的处境 让我们了解到谁干的好 把他们找出来，并分析他们的教学技巧 当然，数字摄影机现在很便宜 在教室里面放一两个 并告诉老师这个摄影机在持续的录像 这个可以在所有公立学校得到实施 然后每过几个星期就可以让老师们坐下来看录像 他们会说“OK，这里我觉得讲得不错 这里我觉得讲得烂了点儿 给我点建议，如果这个学生再闹事，怎么对付呢？” 然后大家可以一起想出解决问题的办法 然后就可以打造最好的老师，并且给他们加上“角标” 让所有人都知道谁最擅长于教学
还可以把优秀的课程的录像制成易于传播的格式 学生就可以在外出的时候看物理课录像来学习 如果有学生暂时落后了 你可以把录像资料给他们进行复习 事实上，这些免费的课程资料不仅可以在互联网上传播 还可以制成DVD光盘 人们只需要买一台DVD机就可以拥有最好的老师了 如果把这看作是（教师或者学生的）个人系统 我们可以做得更好
现在KIPP的故事被写成了一本书 在这些故事发生的地方 Jay Matthews 这名记者写道“努力学习，友好待人” 我觉得这个观点很美妙 这给人一种优秀教师的感觉 我会给在座的各位每人一本
（掌声）
今天我们在教学领域投入了大量资金 因为我坚信教育是最重要的，是非作好不可的 这样国家的未来才有了保障
但是我很乐观 我认为人们已开始认识到教育的重要性 而且只要方法得当，数百万人的生活将被改写 时间只允许我讲2个问题 还有其他很多类似的问题 艾滋病，肺炎，已经有些人开始兴奋起来了 当我提到这些名字的时候 但处理这些问题所需要的措施很广泛 今天的系统还不能顺利的帮我们实现改变 政府并没有自然的选择正确的方法来处理这些事情 私有企业也没有主动的把资源投入解决这些事情
所以就需要像各位一样的英才们 来研究这些事情，吸引更多人加入进来 大家一起找出解决问题的办法 我相信通过这样的努力，将来一定会有伟大的回报！
非常感谢！ （掌声）
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Bill Gates unplugged
I wrote a letter last week talking about the work of the foundation, sharing some of the problems. And Warren Buffet had recommended I do that -- being honest about what was going well, what wasn't, and making it kind of an annual thing. A goal I had there was to draw more people in to work on those problems, because I think there are some very important problems that don't get worked on naturally. That is, the market does not drive the scientists, the communicators, the thinkers, the governments to do the right things. And only by paying attention to these things and having brilliant people who care and draw other people in can we make as much progress as we need to.
So this morning I'm going to share two of these problems and talk about where they stand. But before I dive into those I want to admit that I am an optimist. Any tough problem, I think it can be solved. And part of the reason I feel that way is looking at the past. Over the past century, average lifespan has more than doubled. Another statistic, perhaps my favorite, is to look at childhood deaths. As recently as 1960, 110 million children were born, and 20 million of those died before the age of five. Five years ago, 135 million children were born -- so, more -- and less than 10 million of them died before the age of five. So that's a factor of two reduction of the childhood death rate. It's a phenomenal thing. Each one of those lives matters a lot.
And the key reason we were able to it was not only rising incomes but also a few key breakthroughs: Vaccines that were used more widely. For example, measles was four million of the deaths back as recently as 1990 and now is under 400,000. So we really can make changes. The next breakthrough is to cut that 10 million in half again. And I think that's doable in well under 20 years. Why? Well there's only a few diseases that account for the vast majority of those deaths: diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria.
So that brings us to the first problem that I'll raise this morning, which is how do we stop a deadly disease that's spread by mosquitoes?
Well, what's the history of this disease? It's been a severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, if we look at the genetic code, it's the only disease we can see that people who lived in Africa actually evolved several things to avoid malarial deaths. Deaths actually peaked at a bit over five million in the 1930s. So it was absolutely gigantic. And the disease was all over the world. A terrible disease. It was in the United States. It was in Europe. People didn't know what caused it until the early 1900s, when a British military man figured out that it was mosquitoes. So it was everywhere. And two tools helped bring the death rate down. One was killing the mosquitoes with DDT. The other was treating the patients with quinine, or quinine derivatives. And so that's why the death rate did come down.
Now, ironically, what happened was, it was eliminated from all the temperate zones, which is where the rich countries are. So we can see: 1900, it's everywhere. 1945, it's still most places. 1970, the U.S. and most of Europe have gotten rid of it. 1990, you've gotten most of the northern areas. And more recently you can see it's just around the equator.
And so this leads to the paradox that because the disease is only in the poorer countries, it doesn't get much investment. For example, there's more money put into baldness drugs than are put into malaria. Now, baldness, it's a terrible thing. (Laughter) And rich men are afflicted. And so that's why that priority has been set.
But, malaria -- even the million deaths a year caused by malaria greatly understate its impact. Over 200 million people at any one time are suffering from it. It means that you can't get the economies in these areas going because it just holds things back so much. Now, malaria is of course transmitted by mosquitoes. I brought some here, just so you could experience this. We'll let those roam around the auditorium a little bit. (Laughter) There's no reason only poor people should have the experience. (Laughter) (Applause) Those mosquitoes are not infected.
So we've come up with a few new things. We've got bed nets. And bed nets are a great tool. What it means is the mother and child stay under the bed net at night, so the mosquitoes that bite late at night can't get at them. And when you use indoor spraying with DDT and those nets you can cut deaths by over 50 percent. And that's happened now in a number of countries. It's great to see.
But we have to be careful because malaria -- the parasite evolves and the mosquito evolves. So every tool that we've ever had in the past has eventually become ineffective. And so you end up with two choices. If you go into a country with the right tools and the right way, you do it vigorously, you can actually get a local eradication. And that's where we saw the malaria map shrinking. Or, if you go in kind of half-heartedly, for a period of time you'll reduce the disease burden, but eventually those tools will become ineffective, and the death rate will soar back up again. And the world has gone through this where it paid attention and then didn't pay attention.
Now we're on the upswing. Bed net funding is up. There's new drug discovery going on. Our foundation has backed a vaccine that's going into phase three trial that starts in a couple months. And that should save over two thirds of the lives if it's effective. So we're going to have these new tools.
But that alone doesn't give us the road map. Because the road map to get rid of this disease involves many things. It involves communicators to keep the funding high, to keep the visibility high, to tell the success stories. It involves social scientists, so we know how to get not just 70 percent of the people to use the bed nets, but 90 percent. We need mathematicians to come in and simulate this, to do Monte Carlo things to understand how these tools combine and work together. Of course we need drug companies to give us their expertise. We need rich-world governments to be very generous in providing aid for these things. And so as these elements come together, I'm quite optimistic that we will be able to eradicate malaria.
Now let me turn to a second question, a fairly different question, but I'd say equally important. And this is: How do you make a teacher great? It seems like the kind of question that people would spend a lot of time on, and we'd understand very well. And the answer is, really, that we don't. Let's start with why this is important. Well, all of us here, I'll bet, had some great teachers. We all had a wonderful education. That's part of the reason we're here today, part of the reason we're successful. I can say that, even though I'm a college drop-out. I had great teachers.
In fact, in the United States, the teaching system has worked fairly well. There are fairly effective teachers in a narrow set of places. So the top 20 percent of students have gotten a good education. And those top 20 percent have been the best in the world, if you measure them against the other top 20 percent. And they've gone on to create the revolutions in software and biotechnology and keep the U.S. at the forefront.
Now, the strength for those top 20 percent is starting to fade on a relative basis, but even more concerning is the education that the balance of people are getting. Not only has that been weak; it's getting weaker. And if you look at the economy, it really is only providing opportunities now to people with a better education. And we have to change this. We have to change it so that people have equal opportunity. We have to change it so that the country is strong and stays at the forefront of things that are driven by advanced education, like science and mathematics.
When I first learned the statistics I was pretty stunned at how bad things are. Over 30 percent of kids never finish high school. And that had been covered up for a long time because they always took the dropout rate as the number who started in senior year and compared it to the number who finished senior year. Because they weren't tracking where the kids were before that. But most of the dropouts had taken place before that. They had to raise the stated dropout rate as soon as that tracking was done to over 30 percent. For minority kids, it's over 50 percent. And even if you graduate from high school, if you're low-income, you have less than a 25 percent chance of ever completing a college degree. If you're low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn't seem entirely fair.
So, how do you make education better?
Now, our foundation, for the last nine years, has invested in this. There's many people working on it. We've worked on small schools, we've funded scholarships, we've done things in libraries. A lot of these things had a good effect. But the more we looked at it, the more we realized that having great teachers was the very key thing. And we hooked up with some people studying how much variation is there between teachers, between, say, the top quartile -- the very best -- and the bottom quartile. How much variation is there within a school or between schools? And the answer is that these variations are absolutely unbelievable. A top quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class -- based on test scores -- by over 10 percent in a single year. What does that mean? That means that if the entire U.S., for two years, had top quartile teachers, the entire difference between us and Asia would go away. Within four years we would be blowing everyone in the world away.
So, it's simple. All you need are those top quartile teachers. And so you'd say, "Wow, we should reward those people. We should retain those people. We should find out what they're doing and transfer that skill to other people." But I can tell you that absolutely is not happening today.
What are the characteristics of this top quartile? What do they look like? You might think these must be very senior teachers. And the answer is no. Once somebody has taught for three years their teaching quality does not change thereafter. The variation is very, very small. You might think these are people with master's degrees. They've gone back and they've gotten their Master's of Education. This chart takes four different factors and says how much do they explain teaching quality. That bottom thing, which says there's no effect at all, is a master's degree.
Now, the way the pay system works is there's two things that are rewarded. One is seniority. Because your pay goes up and you vest into your pension. The second is giving extra money to people who get their master's degree. But it in no way is associated with being a better teacher. Teach for America: slight effect. For math teachers majoring in math there's a measurable effect. But, overwhelmingly, it's your past performance. There are some people who are very good at this. And we've done almost nothing to study what that is and to draw it in and to replicate it, to raise the average capability -- or to encourage the people with it to stay in the system.
You might say, "Do the good teachers stay and the bad teacher's leave?" The answer is, on average, the slightly better teachers leave the system. And it's a system with very high turnover.
Now, there are a few places -- very few -- where great teachers are being made. A good example of one is a set of charter schools called KIPP. KIPP means Knowledge Is Power. It's an unbelievable thing. They have 66 schools -- mostly middle schools, some high schools -- and what goes on is great teaching. They take the poorest kids, and over 96 percent of their high school graduates go to four-year colleges. And the whole spirit and attitude in those schools is very different than in the normal public schools. They're team teaching. They're constantly improving their teachers. They're taking data, the test scores, and saying to a teacher, "Hey, you caused this amount of increase." They're deeply engaged in making teaching better.
When you actually go and sit in one of these classrooms, at first it's very bizarre. I sat down and I thought, "What is going on?" The teacher was running around, and the energy level was high. I thought, "I'm in the sports rally or something. What's going on?" And the teacher was constantly scanning to see which kids weren't paying attention, which kids were bored, and calling kids rapidly, putting things up on the board. It was a very dynamic environment, because particularly in those middle school years -- fifth through eighth grade -- keeping people engaged and setting the tone that everybody in the classroom needs to pay attention, nobody gets to make fun of it or have the position of the kid who doesn't want to be there. Everybody needs to be involved. And so KIPP is doing it.
How does that compare to a normal school? Well, in a normal school teachers aren't told how good they are. The data isn't gathered. In the teacher's contract, it will limit the number of times the principal can come into the classroom -- sometimes to once per year. And they need advanced notice to do that. So imagine running a factory where you've got these workers, some of them just making crap and the management is told, "Hey, you can only come down here once a year, but you need to let us know, because we might actually fool you, and try and do a good job in that one brief moment."
Even a teacher who wants to improve doesn't have the tools to do it. They don't have the test scores, and there's a whole thing of trying to block the data. For example, New York passed a law that said that the teacher improvement data could not be made available and used in the tenure decision for the teachers. And so that's sort of working in the opposite direction. But I'm optimistic about this, I think there are some clear things we can do.
First of all, there's a lot more testing going on, and that's given us the picture of where we are. And that allows us to understand who's doing it well, and call them out, and find out what those techniques are. Of course, digital video is cheap now. Putting a few cameras in the classroom and saying that things are being recorded on an ongoing basis is very practical in all public schools. And so every few weeks teachers could sit down and say, "OK, here's a little clip of something I thought I did well. Here's a little clip of something I think I did poorly. Advise me -- when this kid acted up, how should I have dealt with that?" And they could all sit and work together on those problems. You can take the very best teachers and kind of annotate it, have it so everyone sees who is the very best at teaching this stuff.
You can take those great courses and make them available so that a kid could go out and watch the physics course, learn from that. If you have a kid who's behind, you would know you could assign them that video to watch and review the concept. And in fact, these free courses could not only be available just on the Internet, but you could make it so that DVDs were always available, and so anybody who has access to a DVD player can have the very best teachers. And so by thinking of this as a personnel system, we can do it much better.
Now there's a book actually, about KIPP -- the place that this is going on -- that Jay Matthews, a news reporter, wrote -- called, "Work Hard, Be Nice." And I thought it was so fantastic. It gave you a sense of what a good teacher does. I'm going to send everyone here a free copy of this book. (Applause)
Now, we put a lot of money into education, and I really think that education is the most important thing to get right for the country to have as strong a future as it should have. In fact we have in the stimulus bill -- it's interesting -- the House version actually had money in it for these data systems, and it was taken out in the Senate because there are people who are threatened by these things.
But I -- I'm optimistic. I think people are beginning to recognize how important this is, and it really can make a difference for millions of lives, if we get it right. I only had time to frame those two problems. There's a lot more problems like that -- AIDS, pneumonia -- I can just see you're getting excited, just at the very name of these things. And the skill sets required to tackle these things are very broad. You know, the system doesn't naturally make it happen. Governments don't naturally pick these things in the right way. The private sector doesn't naturally put its resources into these things.
So it's going to take brilliant people like you to study these things, get other people involved -- and you're helping to come up with solutions. And with that, I think there's some great things that will come out of it.
Thank you.
(Applause)