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:

.@BillGates @carolburris Yup - "less good." Kinda like Windows 8.
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) June 8, 2014

.@perdidostschool @BillGates I think Clippy was even lesser good.
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

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:

"I wish there was a lot of competition" said the man who got in trouble for crushing Microsoft competition :)
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

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:

.@LyndseyLayton does a tough interview w/ an intimidating bill gates . Watch body language in video http://t.co/3U9N1hm3yy
— Carol Burris (@carolburris) June 8, 2014

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!"

this will be quite something on the anti-cc list servs and sites pic.twitter.com/FxAoBxvct8
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) June 8, 2014

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.

Is Obama Losing?

I see that quite a few national polls have swung in Mitt Romney's favor since he trounced Barack Obama in a political debate last week.

I see that some swing state polls have begin to swing in Romney's direction too.

Of course I know that just two weeks ago, the media and the political establishment had all but written the election off as a win for Obama, so I have a difficult time seeing how one bad performance in a debate could swing the polls that much.

But I do know one thing.

The arrogant, out-of-touch elitist who showed up at the debate - I'm talking about the one with the "D" after his name, not the "R" - needed a wake-up call and maybe the swing in polls is just that.

I am a Democrat who has only voted for Democrats going back to 1988 (1986 if you count local elections.)

I am NOT voting for Barack Obama this year.

First of all, I don't consider him a Democrat.

Anybody who wants to gut Social Security and Medicare, hand out billions of dollars to the Too Big To Fail Banks while creating a mortgage relief program that screws middle and working class homeowners, renominates Ben Bernanke at the Fed, nominates Timmeh Geithner at Treasury (Goldman's man on the job!), promotes the privatization of the public education system through his Race to the Top program, jails Bradley Manning for years without any charges  wages war against whistleblowers with a tenacity the Bushies couldn't even muster, declares he has the right to assassinate any American any time anywhere if he declares them a "terrorist," puts together a "kill list" of "terrorists" he wants assassinated, and drops drone bombs on innocent men, women and children in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere is not a Democrat to my mind.

That kind of guy is a Republican and I won't be voting for him, no matter who is running against him.

Secondly, Obama is one of the most arrogant pricks on the planet (if you don't think so, take a look again at the debate and read the accounts of how he had refused preparation for it and told his aides afterwards that he thought he had won.)  He truly is a narcissist who is convinced of his own righteousness and awesomeness and just can't understand why everybody else doesn't agree with him.

As a teacher who has watched Obama vilify my profession, I know that many teachers have tried to tell this man about the damage Race to the Top is doing to education and students.  Obama is pushing unproven, unpiloted measures like teacher evaluations tied to test scores onto the whole nation and is unwilling to listen to anybody, even an expert like Diane Ravitch, who tries to tell him he is wrong to do this.

Sometimes Obama just seems completely out-of-touch about the consequences his policies are having.  For example, he said during the State of the Union this past year that teachers need to stop teaching to the tests, that children deserve an education that is not limited by this kind of rote learning, and yet, Obama's own RttT policy ensures that this kind of teaching will happen because it promotes standardized tests in every grade, K-12, in every subject, and ties teacher evaluations to the scores.

Is Obama unaware that this is the consequence of his policy when he says that teachers should stop teaching to the test?  Is he actually aware of this and dissembling when he says this?

Dunno the answer to these questions, but I do know that there are two possibilities:

Either Obama has no idea the damage that is being done by his education policies and pursues them anyway or he does know and he lies about them.

Either possibility disturbs me and is pretty much emblematic of his whole presidency and indeed himself as an individual.

That was on display at the debate where he looked bored, pissed off to be there, and frankly mad that the rest of the country didn't already see the brilliance of his policies and call the debate off before it started.

So it's hard to know if the poll swing in recent days means much or if it's just the media making a horse race out of what seemed to be a rout in the making, but I do know one thing.

If the poll swing and the drubbing Obama is taking from the media, Dems and Democratic supporters alike serves to wake this arrogant, elitist, out-of-touch man from his "awesomeness fantasies" about himself and his policies, that's a good thing.

That still won't make me vote for him.

I don't vote for pro-privatization, anti-labor war criminals who murder innocent men, women and children on a "kill list."

But maybe a wake-up call will mean Obama will stop listening to only himself and start listening to some of the people who supported him in '08 who he know seems to disdain.

And if that happens, maybe, just maybe, a second Obama term won't be as damaging as the first one was.