Summary: The Gates Foundation is cementing its circle of influence in the education sector, using lots of cash

Microsoft's #1 lobbyist [1, 2, 3, 4] is always trying to control the public message [1, 2, 3]. This also applies to education, as we've shown using evidence in:

• How the Gates Foundation is Used to Ensure Children Become Microsoft Clients
• More Dubious Practices from the Gates Foundation
• Microsoft Builds Coalitions of NGOs, Makes Political and Educational Changes
• Microsoft's EDGI in India: Fighting GNU/Linux in Education
• Microsoft's Gates Seeks More Monopolies
• Gates Foundation Funds Blogs to Promote Its Party Line

The Gates Foundation is adding $1,000,000 for a lobby group to change the educational system to better fit its own interests. It's slush funds for Gates but a lot of money for teacher-activists who are defending the nation's pedagogues.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving the National PTA $1 million to teach parents about education reform.

The three-year outreach program would focus first on an effort to create national learning objectives. Right now, most states have their own set of education standards. But the states are working together to create a new list of learning objectives they can all agree on.

Will any of these objectives recommend that children get trained for use of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office? Or to advocate the use of genetically-modified crops, even in developing nations? These are just hypothetical examples. What Gates does here is valuable to him because he influences both the National PTA and the national education system. Two birds with one stone.

Here is what GatesKeepers makes of it, arguing that "this grant will allow the PTA to oppose teachers who don't like [the learning objectives]."

Gates' hijack of educational systems around the world needs to be stopped, and not just because Free software gets blocked in this way (young people get no exposure to it). ⬆