Why We Should Be Thrilled About Mark Zuckerberg's $100 Million Education Donation

On Wednesday, news broke that the 26-year old founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, would be donating $100 million to the Newark school district in an attempt to help transform public education in one of the most hard-up parts of the country. The gift is a pretty remarkable entrance into the world of philanthropy for the young billionaire, and portends exciting things for the future.

The New York Times was the first to scoop the story. According to their article, the arrangement will see Newark's well known major, Cory Booker, will have a larger role in managing the school district than any Newark officials have since the state of New Jersey seized power from the district in 1995 due to the horrible performance of students and teachers. The gift is supposed to be the first for a foundation that Zuckerberg will set up to focus on education issues.

The news coverage since the announcement has been, if predictable, extremely disappointing. Most of it has written off the announcement as just some PR stunt in the face of the annual release of the Forbes 400, which suggests that Zuckerberg's stake in Facebook makes him the 35th wealthiest person in the country. Even more importantly, these pieces argue the donation is meant to counteract the portrayal of Zuckerberg in the forthcoming movie "The Social Network," which paints him as an arrogant, awkward, sex-crazed jerk, and is based on the largely-fictionalized book "The Accidental Billionaires."

First, I think this is stupid logic. If one thing is clear from Zuckerberg's tenure in the public eye, he is not the type who would spent a hundred million bucks just to look a bit better. You're talking about a guy who has continuously created new features on his product that make his users scream and holler and make the press call him every name in the book, without flinching. Beyond that, it's just patently obvious how stupid a strategy it would be to try to drop this news just to counter negative perception. A piece by the author of "The Facebook Effect" suggests the timing was actually driven by Booker and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey.

Second, I think this is sad. The only thing we seem to love as much as propping celebrities up is tearing them down. The fact that we're so obsessed with this cosmic fame game that the coverage is all about some armchair Freudian analysis of the gift's motivation is depressing. We're spending no time talking about the potential for the gift in terms of repairing one of America's worst examples of the failure of public education. The only major voice I've seen express this opinion is Arianna Huffington.

Here's what I think: It's a powerful, powerful symbol that a 26-year old just gave $100 million to a single school district in a place he doesn't have a personal history with to fight what will surely be one of his -- one of my -- generation's great fights. Can you think of a less sexy way to start giving?

Zuckerberg is going to be a billionaire for a long time. He just brought philanthropy into his life in a major way less than half a decade after starting his company. It took Gates decades to made that leap. That means something, and we should be damn excited about it.

Photo credit: deneyterrio