Bonum Certa Men Certa

Undereducated by the Billions: Steve Jobs Steps Closer to Bill Gates' Front Groups for Ed Hijack

Steve Jobs
Original photo by Matthew Yohe, modified by Boycott Novell



Steve Ballmer



Summary: Recent articles of interest about corporations and plutocrats seeking to take the education system away from ordinary people, including teachers

THE EDUCATION system teaches the next generation rights and wrongs, indoctrinating kids by shaping their perceptions and thus their behaviour. It is an obligatory tax-funded system because it is essential for a uniform society that thinks alike and obeys orders. Whose orders? Those in power of course. It has always been the case that the rich and powerful passed their own ideology not only to their children but also to other people's children, to the extent that they can afford.



We are appreciative of the Seattle Education blog, which is run by teachers to counter the attack on schools -- the attack by the rich who want to turn teachers into their slaves. In one recent blog post we learned a little about Bill Gates' role in this:

* What is your opinion of wealthy individuals and foundations backed by those individuals offering money to a school district and thus altering the focus of that school district? For example, the Gates funded Seattle Foundation provided money to pay for the expense to have TFA, Inc. in our district for the first year even though the majority of teachers and parents did not want to have TFA, Inc. in Seattle. Where would you draw the line between an individual determining the fate of our school system and a more democratic process?

[...]

The Ed Reform movement that is being furthered by Gates, TFA, Broad and other non-profits is a takeover of public education that has led us in the wrong direction. We need a new school board that will restructure control of the district so that it is exclusively shared by the stakeholders, not powerful special interests acting through proxies.


Another blog post from the same site says:

And “values”? What does that mean? Whether we value public education or not? Whether we value the democratic process or would rather have mayoral control and a lack of transparency that charter schools enjoy while making large profits? That we value our teachers who are part of our school communities rather than a TFA recruit who might be with us for two years and has no teaching experience? That we refer to teachers as teachers and not as “human capital” as NCTQ, LEV and others have referred to the human beings who show up every day doing their best to educate our children while at the same time becoming hemmed in more and more with less and less in terms of support and resources? What are your values Ms. Munn? Receiving a nice pay check by way of Bill Gates, et al? Are you truly with our community or just for the betterment of your own career up the ladder of privatization?


The authorship loves Weil’s term “philanthropirates”, which relates to this other post that says:"Formed in think tanks, by the likes of philanthropirates like Bill Gates, ‘double speak’ is a form of mental discipline whose goal, desirable and necessary to all of those in power, is to be able to believe in two contradictory truths at the same time. Also known as ‘cognitive dissonance’ double speak lies behind the ability of those in power to formulate and thus manage perceptions through the use of language. The ‘Injustice System’ in America is the ‘Justice System’; ‘inheritance tax (for the lucky 1%) is called the ‘death tax’; the Secretary of Defense is really the Secretary of War; the War on Drugs is actually the distribution of drugs; torture is enhanced interrogation while permanent war is is clothed in the language of permanent peace."

Going back to the Seattle Education blog, a more recent and very long blog post asks: "What is your opinion of wealthy individuals and foundations backed by those individuals offering money to a school district and thus altering the focus of that school district? For example, the Gates funded Seattle Foundation provided money to pay for the expense to have TFA, Inc. in our district for the first year even though the majority of teachers and parents did not want to have TFA, Inc. in Seattle. Where would you draw the line between an individual determining the fate of our school system and a more democratic process? [...] We commit to this freeze for a year and use that time to take stock of what we have and where we need to go. “We” are the people of Seattle, without the League of Education Voters, The Alliance for Education, Stand For Children, Seattle Foundation, Broad’s Brood, The Gates Foundation, and all the other outside voices that have been drowning us out. They can all go…away. [...] Besides that, we need a Superintendent who is unfettered by any association with the Corporatists. We don’t need anyone who sits on the Board of NWEA, or has ties to the Broad Academy, or used to work for the Gates Foundation."

Later comes up a resemblance between major polluters and Bill Gates (who invests his money in several major polluters):

The Koch Brothers and Bill Gates, See Any Similarities?



[...]

You could just about replace the words “Koch brothers” with “Bill Gates” in this 11 minute film Why Do the Koch Brothers Want to End Public Education? in terms of what’s been happening in Seattle, a school board in lock-step with the former Broad-trained superintendent and a Student Assignment Plan that brought us back to neighborhood schools and therefore the re-segregation of our schools. The lack of choice for minority students now nicely dovetails into then providing the minority communities with what they think might be their only salvation, charter schools.

[...] Check out this video and see if you see parallels between what has been happening in Seattle if you just replace the words “Koch Brothers” with “Bill Gates”.



From Tennessee comes this analysis of a "corporate education reform". It says that "Tennessee could not be better positioned to become the poster state for embracing Duncan’s federalized extortion racket aimed to bend every community to the corporatized visions of Bill Gates and Eli Broad. Bend or break, take your pick. After all, Tennessee has its own homegrown oligarch as governor, the soft spoken Bill “Pilot Oil” Haslam, who has allowed Gates and Broad to put in charge of Tennessee schools a major cult leader from Teach for America, Kevin Huffman (former spouse of Eduwitch Michelle Rhee). Even though one in four Tennesseeans remain illiterate, the state is and has been a fav of the corporatistas judging Race to the Top and other tax-supported ventures of the U. S. Chamber of Horrors’ Business Roundtable."

Gates' minions, those whom he buys with money, are finding a new 'host' to leech, this time in Florida:

Broad-Trained Superintendent Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson Reappears in Broward County, Florida



[...]

The following article should be a red flag to you about hiring anyone who has anything to do with Bill Gates or the Broad Foundation.

[...]

3. According to e-mail exchanges between NWEA members, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson and Michael Casserly of the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), there was a sizable grant of $3.7 million from the Gates Foundation that NWEA wanted to get their hands on.

[...]

11. The Native American grant program scandal including the time that a grant proposal did not get submitted on time by SPS and the program was not awarded necessary dollars. It would have been a slam dunk to receive the funds but the supe’s own appointee who was to be in charge of grants, missed the deadline. I guess she was too busy trying to keep up with all the money that Gates and Broad were funneling into SPS by way of the Alliance for Education.


This whole 'reform' is further chastised by one who used to be very influential in the US eduction system. One blog post states that the "ed reform movement, titled Race to the Top, that now flourishes thanks to billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad and millionaire hedge fund managers who know nothing about how to educate a child, along with Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education who has no experience in education, and President Obama, who has his children in private school, is based on this policy."

Steve Jobs is joining this bandwagon, leading to protests at Apple stores based on this post which says:

Steve Jobs with Apple has gotten on the ed reform bandwagon and is offering free iPads to Teach for America recruits but of course none to real teachers who have teaching experience, degrees in education and have devoted their lives to their school communities. Nope, this is for the TFA, Inc. recruits with five weeks of training to teach to the test and nothing more. I guess they need some sort of way to track all of those test scores.


Increasingly, Apple has been trying to abduct the curriculum and this subject will be properly addressed here in the future. The above is merely an example among several we've learn about in IRC recently.

Here is one last noteworthy blog post from the Seattle Education blog, which is recommended reading. As we explained earlier, blogs are generally closer to the truth than corporate press.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Throwing Money at Lawyers Can't Stop Us (It Never Did)
Even just trying to censor things can result in the opposite of the desired outcome
BetaNews Has More or Less Died After Experiments With LLM Slop, Is Linuxsecurity Next?
It doesn't seem like BetaNews knows what it's doing, let alone what it talks about
Links 13/06/2025: Journalists Targeted by Cracking, China-Japan and Israel-Iran Tensions Grow
Links for the day
 
Links 14/06/2025: FDA Changes Priorities, Cassette Data Storage From The 1970s
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/06/2025: Steam Next Fest and Thoughts on Gemini
Links for the day
Site/Datacentre Maintenance Next Week
speed things up
Bulgaria: GNU/Linux Near 10%
The Bulgarian market seems to be changing
I Never Spoke to BetaNews. But BetaNews Wants to Ensure I Never Will, Either.
Sometimes just the reluctance to talk about it can say a great deal
Online Search or Large Search Engines Aren't Working Anymore
business models that directly compete with interests of Web users
Holidays and Breaks
I've hardly taken any long breaks since I got married
Danish OpenDocument Freedom
"year of Linux"
When Abusive Law Firms (Working for Microsofters Against Us) Assert That Someone Writing in Social Media About Himself is Confidential Information
There was no reason to throw "GDPR" into 2 SLAPPs; they know it, but the goal was to increase the cost of a Defence and lessen the incentive to challenge the SLAPPs
Links 14/06/2025: Wars and L.A. Distortion Effect
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/06/2025: Historic Ada Design and GeminiSpace.Club to Expire
Links for the day
Links 14/06/2025: India Plane Crash and Middle-Eastern War
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 13, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, June 13, 2025
Gemini Links 13/06/2025: (Not)virtues and Project Yeet Broadband
Links for the day
Links 13/06/2025: US Reduces Nonessential Staff at Baghdad Embassy Ahead of Strikes in Iran, Invasion of California Debated
Links for the day
X11 is Free Software
Whether you agree (e.g. on politics) with the person/s forking it doesn't matter
The More Time Passes, the Better Our Advice on Social Control Media Seems
At the end of the day, any platform you do not control yourself is working for someone else
Twitter (X) is Dying, Now It's Just Like a Mafia-Type Operation of the Man Who Does Nazi Salutes in Public
a form of extortion
UK High Court Blasts Brett Wilson LLP for Misusing "GDPR" After Failed Efforts to Censor Critics Using 'Libel' Claims
No wonder this firm is rapidly shrinking
Recent Blunders in Microsoft GitHub (e.g. Slop-Generated Bug Reports or GPL Violations 'as a Service') Taking Their Toll?
Put bluntly, if you still use Microsoft GitHub, then you're slave to Microsoft
American Imperialism and Microsoft Plagiarism
Techrights will therefore do what Microsoft does not want it to do: it'll write even more about Microsoft
When They Have Nothing Left to Help Advance Abusive Litigation for Microsoft People... Other Than Throwing ~500 Pages of Someone Else's Work Into a PDF
Microsoft is having a very tough year
The Price of Exposing Corruption in Poland (and Elsewhere)
It's easier to participate in corruption than to merely do the right thing and oppose it
Slopwatch and Yet More Holes in 'Secure Boot' (as Usual!), Promoted Inside Linux by the Man We Are Suing
Today's Slopwatch will be short
Gemini Links 13/06/2025: People You've Left Behind, Life Update and OS Changes
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 12, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 12, 2025
Links 12/06/2025: Portland Homeless Deaths Quadruple, COVID Cases Surge in Asia
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part IX: Minimum Wages For You (Experienced Scientist), Alicante/EU Paydays For Me (Unproductive, Corrupt Official)
Does UPRP maladministration extend to the false belief that qualified and experienced scientists can play the role of circus clowns?
"The Liberating Power of Simply Telling People the Truth."
'polite' bullying
Who Imitates Who? Plagiarist as Client (From Microsoft), 'Plagiarism' at the Law Firm?
let's revisit the subject
EPO's Gareth Lord Asked About "Quality and Productivity" or, Put Another Way, Why the EPO Keeps Granting So Many Invalid/Illegal Patents
letter to Lord
EPO's Central Staff Committee (CSC) Scrutinises the Man Who Illegally Grants (and Forces Others to Illegally Participate in Granting) Software Patents in Europe
EPO compels examiners to break the law in the name of obeying illegal "rules" or "orders"
The Latest Rumour Says The Next (as Correctly Predicted Before) Wave of Layoffs at Microsoft is 3 Weeks Away, "Larger Than the First Wave"
Step 2
TV Licensing Used to SPAM Your Postbox, Now It Does the Same to E-mail
First they ask for your E-mail address; then they start nagging you via E-mail
The Toxic Playbook
Either you support Prince Mohammed bin Salman or you're a nazi
It's Possible That BetaNews Got Cracked, But Nobody Talks About It, The Site Contains an Outdated Old Image, No Activity
It's possible that they will never explain what happened to the site and users' accounts
Links 12/06/2025: Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/06/2025: Video Game Diegesis and Steam Next Fest
Links for the day
Why the Militants Have Lost Every Battle Since 2022 (When Attacking My Wife and I in Various Ways, Even Attacking Our Employers)
This takes patience, sure, but at the end most evildoers face the consequences for their actions
Our Priority is Still Tackling Software Patents and Corruption in Patent Offices
Meanwhile we got compliments on our recent articles, which means that they are effective
Politics Will Impact Software Choices
Will those systems respect users' freedom?
EPO: Neglecting Children to Promote American Monopolies by Shielding Them From European Competition
Yesterday the Central Staff Committee at the EPO spoke about another "reform" at the Office
Slopwatch: Another Day, Another Slopfest, LLM Slop Scrapers Slow Down Our Site
We too have some slop issues; this past day this site and the sister site had to answer about 2.5 million requests (not counting Gemini Protocol) and it's slowing things down for everybody
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 11, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 11, 2025