This post by Ysette Guevara offers good advice to Bill Gates about curiosity–how it begins, how it grows, how it can be stifled, and why it matters.
Bill recently said in an interview that few children are curious and self-motivated. This blogger was taken aback by Bill’s meager understanding of children and education. Given his background in technology, it is easy to see how Bill could look at education as a technical problem that can be engineered, rather than a problem of human development that requires knowledge, experience, and wisdom.
I hope someone at the Gates Foundation shares this post with Bill. I doubt he reads my blog but I assume that one or more people monitor the blog. Please show it to him.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He has three children. Who raised them? Clueless fellow, that Bill Gates.
I can’t believe anyone would say that. By their nature, children are curious and self motivated. It’s people like him that are turning an entire generation into drones.
I’m curious (hehehe) about the source. In which interview? With whom? When? Thank you.
Gates was interviewed for “Fast Company,” and the link to the interview is there.
Thanks. I’m sorry. I saw the link to the blog post and missed the one for the interview. I’d only had half a cup of coffee at 6am when I read it.
Dr. Duncan was right in that adults can kill the natural curiosity in kids by their actions and demands. Bill Gates doesn’t have a clue about child development.
Let’s not over-analyze this.
He is consistent re education if you accept the obvious: he almost invariably speaks not only FOR himself but ABOUT himself.
Remember, this is the same curious fellow who couldn’t work up the self-motivation [for lack of foresight, experience and smarts] to beat that Tasks guy who produced computerized Oranges or something. And now we have all those StrawberryPhones or whatever they’re called…
🙂
What else would you expect? There is a deliciously apt expression in Spanish [with slight variations]: No pedirle peras al olmo [don’t ask for pears from an elm tree], i.e., don’t ask or expect the impossible.
There is also a saying in Japanese: saru mo ki kara ochiru [monkeys also fall from trees], i.e., even experts make mistakes. And Bill Gates, remember, isn’t even a graduate of the Broad Academy. How low can we set the bar for him?
If it weren’t for his billions, who on earth would listen to him pontificate about education—or anything else?
🙂
So true’
I’m saving the aphorisms for the appropriate occasion. I pepper my speech with bits of Spanish when I am subbing since I am with Latino kids so much. It certainly perks up the middle schoolers ( and it’s fun to watch their expressions). Forty years after my high school Spanish, I am taking Spanish again.
Gates is only curious about: POWER, MONEY, STUPIDITY, IDEOLOGY AND BEING “MASTER CONTROLLER.”
Right on comment.
Gates is just a marketer. He is about himself NOT helping others as he would like others to believe.
Gates needs to come to my classroom sometime. My honors class runs their own “country,” including government and economy. A group decided that the country should have its own banking system and stock market. You should see the self-directed learning and what they’re teaching each other. And that’s just ONE of many examples. I have never seen a student, even the ones who do nothing in classwork, that wasn’t curious about SOMETHING. But that’s not what measured on the stupid standardized tests.