Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Bill Gates Exposed For All To See As An Arrogant, Whiny Elitist

Okay, it's official:

We're onto a new phase of the fight against the CCSS.

News media outlets are no longer buying and using pro-Common Core boilerplate rhetoric in stories on the Common Core, they're no longer framing the CCSS the way CCSS proponents want the standards framed, and they're no longer buying into the marginalization of proponents strategies that CCSS proponents and supporters have used over the last few years to dismiss criticism and opposition to the Core.

Most importantly, they're beginning to report on the man behind the curtain who pushed and promoted the CCSS and brought about a revolution in public education - Bill Gates - and some of that reporting isn't so complimentary.

Today's front page Washington Post story entitled "How Bill Gates Pulled Off The Swift Common Core Revolution" is a devastating expose of how one arrogant elitist/monopolist bribed every major stakeholder organization involved in public education to accept an untested, un-piloted idea that standardized learning standards, tests and teacher evaluations across the nation would improve public education.

Gates is on the defensive in much of the article and comes across as an arrogant, whiny jerk:

In an interview, Gates said his role is to fund the research and development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of Americans. It’s up to the government to decide which tools to use, but someone has to invest in their creation, he said.

“The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get,” Gates said. “And that is a huge challenge. . . . Education can get better. Some people may not believe that. Education can change. We can do better.”

“There’s a lot of work that’s gone into making these [standards] good,” Gates continued. “I wish there was a lot of competition, in terms of [other] people who put tens of millions of dollars into how reading and writing could be improved, how math could be improved.”

Referring to opinion polls, he noted that most teachers like the Common Core standards and that those who are most familiar with them are the most positive.

Gates grew irritated in the interview when the political backlash against the standards was mentioned.
“These are not political things,” he said. “These are where people are trying to apply expertise to say, ‘Is this a way of making education better?’ ”

“At the end of the day, I don’t think wanting education to be better is a right-wing or left-wing thing,” Gates said. “We fund people to look into things. We don’t fund people to say, ‘Okay, we’ll pay you this if you say you like the Common Core.’ ”

Two things to note here - first, the writer uses Gates statements that make him sound illiterate ( “The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids get less good education than suburban kids get..."), something that's already been noted and mocked on the Internet:



Also, Gates' irritation at being challenged comes across in this part of the story, something that we see again later in the piece:

Now six years into his quest, Gates finds himself in an uncomfortable place — countering critics on the left and right who question whether the Common Core will have any impact or negative effects, whether it represents government intrusion, and whether the new policy will benefit technology firms such as Microsoft.

Gates is disdainful of the rhetoric from opponents. He sees himself as a technocrat trying to foster solutions to a profound social problem — gaping inequalities in U.S. public education — by investing in promising new ideas.

Education lacks research and development, compared with other areas such as medicine and computer science. As a result, there is a paucity of information about methods of instruction that work.

“The guys who search for oil, they spend a lot of money researching new tools,” Gates said. “Medicine — they spend a lot of money finding new tools. Software is a very R and D-oriented industry. The funding, in general, of what works in education . . . is tiny. It’s the lowest in this field than any field of human endeavor. Yet you could argue it should be the highest.”

Many CCSS proponents show disdain and scorn for critics and opponents (think Arne Duncan saying critics are just suburban moms shocked to find out their kids aren't as smart as they thought they were), but the head guy in showing disdain and scorn for critics and opponents is Gates.

He's never been much interested in hearing from anybody else when he's been promoting his education initiatives (Gates Foundation people didn't want to hear from small schools critics who pointed out smaller schools often mean fewer class and after school choices for students either) and he's still not interested.

Interestingly, he laments that nobody is putting the kind of money into education R & D that he is, but when it came time to pushing his CCSS, his hundreds of millions of dollars in "philanthropy" ensured that no other ideas about reform would get through.

Carol Burris noted the irony:



Indeed, Gates is a guy who literally made his fortune by crushing all competition and running his computer empire as a monopoly - his call for "competition" in education R & D rings hollow and phony.

As does his defense for why he doesn't send his kids to schools that use CCSS:

 Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama and Arne Duncan are parents of school-age children, although none of those children attend schools that use the Common Core standards. The Gates and Obama children attend private schools, while Duncan’s children go to public school in Virginia, one of four states that never adopted the Common Core.

Still, Gates said he wants his children to know a “superset” of the Common Core standards — everything in the standards and beyond.

“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the standards. “This is philanthropy. This is trying to make sure students have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to say otherwise, in my view.”

But Bill, if the CCSS are so good, you ought to be sending your kids to schools that are using the CCSS - that's called putting your money where your mouth is.

But of course like so many CCSS proponents - from Gates to Duncan to Obama to our own NYSED Commissioner King - the CCSS is all about experimenting on "Other People's Children," not their own.

That hypocrisy comes through loud and clear in this Post piece.

As does the danger of having a country where one filthy rich "philanthropist" can fund his pipe dreams:

“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the standards. “This is philanthropy. This is trying to make sure students have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to say otherwise, in my view.

Sure it is, Bill.

It has nothing to do with your own ego and messianic complex, your need to control everything you see or the money that rolls in to Microsoft as a consequence of the "technocratic" revolution in public education.

Carol Burris also pointed out how defensive Gates looked in the video of the interview that was posted:


Gates isn't used to being put on the defensive by anybody - he's using to hearing "Yes, Bill!" and "You're a genius, Bill!"

That Gates the elitist subjected himself to this interview lets you know just how much trouble the Common Core is in - Gates wouldn't put himself in this position, shilling for the Core, unless he and his minions were truly worried about what was happening to their Common Core agenda.

Three states have dumped the standards, one more is flirting with it, even more states have dumped the common "assessments" that the Gates people wanted to ensure the CCSS would be taught throughout the country and they lost their data tracking program when parent activists were able to kill InBloom Inc.
 
The counterrevolution against Common Core is in full swing and its coming from both right and left - something I bet Billion Dollar Bill and his CCSS proponents never thought they'd see.

This Washington Post article by Lyndsey Layton is an extraordinarily important one - it's where Bill Gates and his operations are subject to "rigorous" scrutiny in the mainstream media and put on the defensive.

You can bet that CCSS proponents and education reformers saw the Post cover this morning and thought, "Oh shit - we've got trouble!"


And they do have trouble - lots of it.

Students, parents and educators are rebelling all over the country over Bill Gates' CCSS revolution, the Endless Testing regime that came with it, and the data tracking programs they wanted to use to ensure it all went off as planned.

There's still much work to be done, including making sure every politician who continues to push CCSS and the Endless Testing regime pays politically for that support, getting the standards pulled from all the states, killing off the testing regime, and forging a new era for public education where all stakeholders get a say in what gets taught and tested - not just the plutocrats and their paid shills.

The plutocrats still have the money and the politicians in their pockets - but as we see with this Gates piece today, the tone of the conversation has turned and where once critics and opponents were mocked in the media as crazies, now it's Gates, his corporate education reformers and their reforms that are on the defensive.

It's a new phase in the fight against corporate education reform.

10 comments:

  1. Bill Gates is not part of the government. He doesn't get to claim sovereign immunity for the harm done he has done by the Common Core implementation. It would be of great public interest to bring a large class action law suit against Bill and Melinda Gates , if for no other reason than to publicize his arrogant misuse of money and power .

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    1. Seems Gates actually owns the gov't - or a good part of it. Bloomberg, Broad, the Waltons, the Koch Brothers and a few other plutocrats own the rest. Therein lies the problem - this no longer a democracy, it's a plutocracy, with the plutocrats using their "philanthropy" to get what they want.

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  2. To complete that sentence, it needs to be added ...to get what they want.....on the backs of the working class, yes, that means us. What used to be known as the middle class.

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    1. No middle class now - there's the plutocrats and the rest of us.

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  3. Poverty , the big white elephant in the room, is what's causing education inequity.While Gates is hugely involved in the destruction of a quality public education, to single him out would be unfair; we must also include his plutocrat cronies. Personally, I'm fine with burning the Walton Family at the stake while Eli Broad, Bloomberg and the Koch brothers cut the kindling for their own fires. If any of these plutocraps really cared about inequity or poverty they'd be housing the homeless and feeding the hungry right here in the good ol' US of A? Why aren't they paying a living wage? Why aren't they making sure US students get a quality K-12 and college education for FREE! An educated citizenry would strengthen our county so why aren't they doing it? They're greedy; that's why. Do any one of them really need another stinkin' dollar? Their children's children don't even need another dollar. At some point it's no longer about money to plutocraps; it becomes control of power. Which one of them will rise to be King of the World! What's really infuriating is that some of the greatest achievements in the 19th, 20th and 21st century were made by inventors and entrepreneurs who didn't finish school, dropped out of college or at least didn't have CCSS and excessive testing. If the US is going to pattern itself on the education systems of other countries, knowing our accomplishments prior to NCLB, RttT and CCSS, why would we continue to do this? Freedom to be creative and collaboration is what made America; not all the crap coming down the pike.

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    1. CCSS is as much about mind control as anything else - dumbing everything down, standarizing everything, sucking out the joy and creativity...

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  4. Bill Gates complaining that not enough money was being spent on Education research left out one very important fact, it is undemocratic to force citizens into an experiment against their will.

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    1. Gates likes to have everything his way. He cares nothing for anybody else's thoughts, feelings or desires. Like Bloomberg, it is ALWAYS about him.

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  5. Gates and his ilk should find a way to create middle class jobs to eradicate the poverty that is responsible for much of the Ed issues here. Instead, they've all off shored for decades, leading to a hollow economy in the US. If kids and families see no connection between school and earning a living, education is weakened greatly. There are few good employment options for the poor and working classes-and I blame Big Business for this.

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    1. He doesn't care about any of that. He cares about himself, his ego aggrandizement and his power. Same goes for the other plutocrats who are "do-gooders" - Bloomberg comes to mind.

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