It can be argued that John Tu has derived much personal satisfaction from his philanthropic work on behalf of the Freedom Writers' program and the Freedom Writers Foundation.
Although Tu is a billionaire today, he experienced difficulties assimilating to Taiwan's strict academic culture during his school days. Tu characterizes himself as a struggling student during those early years. After graduating high school, he moved to Germany to attend college. He states that those years in Germany came with its own challenges; he reports encountering discrimination due to his second-class status as a foreigner in the country.
As a result, in his adult years, Tu chose to finance Erin Gruwell's Freedom Writers' project. At the time, Gruwell's students were characterized as the "unteachables," students so mired in the prevailing culture of gang violence and societal degradation that educators held little hope for their future. Most of Gruwell's students scored poorly on standardized tests and were given little attention by their teachers. Gruwell's project was certainly a risky one, but Tu lent his financial support to the Freedom Writers' project with great enthusiasm.
Tu's support was likely inspired by his own experiences during his student days. In the book, one of the student writers describes how Tu's attentive behavior inspired her with hope.
Since my dad left, I've always felt shunned and that it was my fault. I've always felt like I don't have anything important to say. But here was this man who actually paid attention to me. He wanted to know what I thought about the movie Higher Learning. Who was my favorite panelist? Which part did I like best about Farewell to Manzanar?
Tu not only supported Erin Gruwell's project financially, he also gave the students the gift of hope. In all, it can be argued that the Freedom Writers and their project gave John Tu a sense of personal satisfaction and of having changed the lives of students that society had judged as irredeemable.
https://fortune.com/2013/12/05/kingston-technology-and-the-power-of-memory/
https://moneyinc.com/david-sun-and-john-tu/
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
What do you think the Freedom Writers have given John Tu?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment