Anthony Cody is steamed that Bill Gates was invited to be a keynote speaker for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. He knows that Gates will praise them and make them feel good.

But, beware, he says.

No one has done more to damage the profession of teaching than Bill Gates. Cody cites word-for-word the insulting and vacuous comments Gates has made in print and in lectures that undermine teacher professionalism.

No one has done more to foist an obsession with standardized testing on the nation’s children than Bill Gates.

As Cody observes,

“I know that the level of saturation that Gates and his money has achieved make his influence almost like the air that we breath. For that reason, it is all the more important to have a sober assessment of this reality. Scientist Carl Sagan wrote some years ago,

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

“Bill Gates is a charlatan as far as education is concerned. He has discarded the expertise of educators as if it were trash, because it did not align with his concept of how learning ought to be measured and improved. In its place, he has fostered a worship of almighty data. He will come to the National Board singing the praises of accomplished teachers, because he wants to bring leading educators to his side, even as he devalues their expertise and autonomy.”

Now, if he agrees to subject his own children to the same data-driven regime he is imposing on the nation’s children, we might take him seriously. But we won’t hold our breath for that to happen.