02.06.12
Gemini version available ♊︎Bill Gates Indoctrinates Youth in the United States and India, Critics Speak Out
The Gates Foundation is waging war on public interests
Summary: Backlash against the Gates Crusade to brainwash the young minds all around the world
MONOPOLIST extraordinaire Bill Gates wants a monopoly on children’s minds, so in his crusade for control he is trying to buy the agenda (curriculum) and organisation of US schools. It’s a form of privatisation of a $500,000,000,000 per annum system. Lots of money can be made there at the expense of taxpayers, taking away the very little that the middle class has got left.
This problem is well understood by an increasing number of teachers, despite the fact that Gates is bribing some of the education press to spread good wishes on him (we gave some examples in the past). The man who made a living by breaking the law is currently exploiting US poverty and an imbalanced system where Gates and his pals get richer and everyone else goes broke. Here is what happens in Philadelphia schools:
Last week, Philadelphia became the latest in a long list of cities to be courted by Bill Gates, when his “Great Schools Compact” was presented for consideration to the School Reform Commission. Bill Gates has taken on a reputation as a school reformer as well as philanthropist, dispensing money throughout the country for struggling schools in economically distressed cities while imposing changes in policies and procedures in those locales. Sounds like just what the doctor ordered.
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Diane Ravitch, in her recent book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education,” describes how Manuel High, one of Denver’s oldest and most prestigious schools, was forced to divide itself into three separate schools because of the “small school” agenda Gates was pushing at the time; the ensuing disruption caused the school board to close it temporarily. Mountlake Terrace High, just outside Seattle, suffered the loss of many teachers and administrators in 2004 after being forced to split into five separate schools in order to receive the Gates funding.
Into the Philadelphia School District’s state of fiscal desperation rides Bill Gates. Who can say “no” to free money when you are so deep in the hole? But the money is not free, and the price is the democratic procedure in the city and the state under which the community and its elected leaders make informed decisions about its schools.
From the same blog we gather more information about more of Gates’ lobbying groups that push this agenda:
We know that LEV is heavily funded by Gates who is all about charter schools. LEV has showcased over the last year all of the “Stars” of the charter school industry as well as Wendy Kopp of Teach for America Inc. who staffs charter schools with teaching temps. LEV is now, by the way, championing the online learning industry, another cash cow for businesses and corporations including Microsoft.
This is helping Mr. Gates sell Microsoft lock-in and train children this way. For shame.
He is hijacking the voices of American parents, simply because money can buy anything. A Parents Across America member speaks out about it in a letter:
I am a parent with two children in Portland Public Schools. I have been a PTA member for five years and recently came onto our PTA board as a legislative co-chair. I am writing to see if there is any possibility of the PTA dropping its affiliation and funding from the Gates Foundation. I know that must sound shocking that a parent wants less funding, but the reason is that the Gates Foundation is supporting and pushing education policies that are NOT good for our schools and children. If you are not already familiar with well-regarded experts like Diane Ravitch, Stephen Krashen, Deborah Meier, and other groups like Parents Across America and the national Save Our Schools movement, please become familiar with them to realize that there is a growing body of people completely alarmed and speaking up against the policies Gates and his front groups like Stand for Children and others are pushing. For lack of a better term, it is the corporate education reform movement and it is NOT good for our kids.
As far as I can tell, our Oregon PTA hasn’t really gotten on-board with advocating for some of the things Gates supports, such as expansion of charters, on-line learning, data-driven models, merit pay, etc. I hear in Washington state, it is quite different. Apparently the PTA there is pushing for charters schools.
I think we have some really wonderful people who are a part of their PTA, and I would love to see PTA grow. A group that is truly genuine and has parents and teachers working together is a worthwhile thing to support. However, the policies of Gates do not do this. I am thinking that PTA accepted or went after this money due to desperately needed funding. When you look at the grant Gates gave to PTA, it says it is to support education reform, and then you see the focus on the Common Core Standards on the National PTA page and it is just so disappointing. Common Core, as it is now, will line the pockets of Microsoft and testing companies, while narrowing the curriculum and lowering engagement levels of our kids.
Sue Peters, writing for the same blog, notes that:
We still have many challenges ahead of us in Seattle, and Washington as a whole, the biggest being the gathering, moneyed forces that are pushing for charters. We still have the Gates Foundation right here in Seattle, so as long as that foundation pushes for and bankrolls discredited, failed reforms, those of us in the parent activist community will have our work cut out for us.
This form of class warfare ought to worry anyone who was in school or sends his/her children to school. While the press is bribed to take the side of the occupiers, children’s minds are being occupied with this ludicrous idea that those who exploit them are in fact looking after them. Meanwhile, profitable monopolies are established on the back of a taxpayers-funded education system. Socialising the cost, privatising the profit. Bill must be a genius.
We previously showed how state-funded laptops [1, 2, 3, 4] which were supposed to run free software turned into taxpayers-funded Microsoft indoctrination instruments. Richard Stallman is being quoted in the Indian press today as saying wise words:
The Tamil Nadu government may be trumpeting its scheme to distribute computers for free to students but it is setting a poor example for what a state should do, says American software freedom activist Richard Stallman.
“It distributes laptops loaded with non-free software to children, teaching them to be dependent on paid products. It creates a system of digital colonisation,” Stallman, who has waged a storied battle against software giants like Bill Gates, said in an e-mail interview to The Times of India. He criticised the state’s ambitious free laptop scheme that hands out computers with the Windows operating system.
Stallman, who will be in Chennai on Monday to deliver a lecture on free software at IIT-Madras, said he is appreciative of the efforts of Kerala and Karnataka, states that have extended support to the free software movement by moving schools to GNU/Linux operating systems and including lessons on them in the syllabus. “Karnataka put the system in place in high schools a couple of years ago,” he said.
“Please keep up the good work,” Stallman said to me last night in an E-mail (regarding this site). As some people may have noticed, the FSF refocused on education last week. Can we save the next generation from greedy sociopaths who buy consent from the press? █
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
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