11.04.11
Gates Foundation Still Strives for Power Over Teachers
Summary: The obligatory indoctrination system is being hijacked by plutocrats, most notably Bill Gates
With help from Rupert Murdoch’s publications, Bill Gates and his minions speak about changing schools agenda “less success[fully] than we had hoped for.”
That quote actually comes from the publication which Gates routinely visits to influence the coverage, according to one angry journalist from there. Who does the New York Times really serve much of the time? The problem is, Gates has already created a financial dependency (on him) among many newspapers, including those that cover education matters. Apparently Education Next is one he has not ‘bought’ yet because there is backlash against him over there. To quote:
In particular, the Gates interview confirmed two things about the Foundation’s education efforts: 1) they’ve realized that the focus of their efforts has to be on the political control of schools and 2) they are uninterested in using that political influence to advance market forces in education. Instead, the basic strategy of the Gates Foundation is to use science (or, more accurately, the appearance of science) to identify the “best” educational practices and then use political influence to create a system of national standards, curricular materials, and testing to impose those “best practices” on schools nationwide.
Under a similar headline we also found this:
In Part 1 of this post, I described how the Gates Foundation came to recognize the importance of using political influence to reform the education system rather than focusing on reforming one school at a time in the hopes that school systems would see and replicate successful models. No private philanthropist has enough money to buy and sustain widespread adoption of an effective approach and the public school system has little incentive to identify and spread effective approaches on their own.
Faced with the unwillingness of the public school system to reproduce successful models (assuming that Gates could even offer one), the Foundation was left with two solutions to encourage innovation: 1) identify the best practices themselves and impose them from the top down, or 2) encourage choice and competition so that schools would have the proper incentive to identify, imitate, and properly implement effective approaches.
It is good that teachers are being made aware of the truth. Like in many other areas, genuine journalism competes against a well-funded lobbying campaign. █
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girts said,
November 4, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Big mistake that teachers is not using open source and teaching to use open source and Linux. This is way how to stop influence.
Michael said,
November 4, 2011 at 5:58 pm
As someone who has controlled tech in a number of schools, I have never had any outside influence push me to use any tech I did not feel was best for the school. Sure, teachers and staff have needs and preferences and sales folks tell you their stuff is the best, but in the end the decision has always been mine and my direct supervisors. The idea Gates is forcing things, at least in my experience, is silly.
As far as using just open source, that would be as silly as using just Apple or just Microsoft tools. Use what will serve you best (with costs in that equation, of course). When ideology overrides education you have a *big* problem.