A teacher sent me this letter offering helpful advice to Bill Gates. He hopes that someone will see it on the Internet and pass it along to Bill.
Dear Mr. Gates,
“I don’t know many business leaders who are satisfied with America’s schools. In fact, just about every CEO I know is worried that this country simply isn’t producing enough graduates with the skills they need to compete globally.” – Bill Gates
I find it ironic that you opened your notes with this remark just prior to a story was published about two hundred wealthy and famous Wall Street figures to the Kappa Beta Phi dinner in New York City. It consisted of a group of wealthy and powerful financiers making homophobic jokes, making light of the financial crisis, and bragging about their business conquests at Main Street’s expense. The reporter who witnessed this dinner didn’t mention any CEO’s worried about the plight of the American schools.
As a 7th grade middle school Social Studies teacher in Carmel, NY, I never thought about the need to satisfy business leaders. I focus on teaching students to value American History and to question the choices that have been made in the past. Since the Industrial Revolution, business leaders have been given enormous opportunities in this country and throughout the world. The technology has made American lives remarkably more convenient but certainly at a price to our environment and to economic equality.
As a teacher, I am worried that this country simply isn’t producing enough CEO’s with the moral and ethical skills they need to create a sustainable future. The news is constantly reporting on chemicals being leaked into drinking water or how the CEO of McDonald’s makes $8 million a year compared to his employers making minimum wage and yet nothing gets done to make it better. The Common Core Standards do not address how our future CEO’s will be prepared to make compassionate and ethical decisions that will benefit all of humanity.
The public is skeptical about Common Core because they see the individuals who are backing this privatization of education. The public views the standardized testing and modules being produced by Pearson Corporation as products that Americans are being forced to purchase. These tests will not produce the leaders with the collaborative and innovative skills to solve the problems of the 21st century. The public views Common Core as a marketing scheme designed to make a few CEO’s and the shareholders billions of dollars. Your foundation money has bought off our elected officials and teacher unions but the public outcry remains.
Mr. Gates, I’m sure that you are an excellent CEO and I hope that your heart is in the right place when it comes to your educational endeavors. I am offering you insight into why you are facing backlash about Common Core. K -12 education is a very human and personal experience with complicated interactions that Common Core is trying to standardize and dehumanize.
Our American experience is to be individuals who make our own decisions about our lives and our children’s education. By your remarks you are making it very clear that your priority is only to care about CEO’s and not the American public. It is not a myth that the business CEO’s are primarily concerned about profit and are going to benefit the most from Common Core implementation. It is a fact. In the future, please come clean with the American public and admit to the flaws of Common Core. If you are committed to improving American education, it will require collaboration and an understanding of United States history.
Thank you for your time. I hope that this response from a Social Studies teacher will help you. Please feel free to contact me if you would like my insight on teaching in a public school.
Sincerely,
Keith J. Reilly
Thank you Keith! So very well said and I totally agree with you.
Same here. Thank You Keith!
Excellent letter, Mr. Reilly! As someone once said: “Education is for life, not for livelihood.”
Well done Mr. Reilly. I’m sure Mr. Gates will reach out to you shortly — NOT!
I did my student teaching in your district 40 years ago – glad to see it is still home to passionate, knowledgeable professionals.
This was very well said – however, I pray that you edit it before sending. The grammatical errors send the wrong message!
I have to agree. On this blog, the rush to get the words out sabotages any real attempt to edit. It is too easy to hit that button sending feelings into cyberspace without review. I can think of many times when I might have rethought the wisdom of a particular post if I had sat on it for awhile. This letter, however, has to be squeaky clean. Let the 7th grade English teachers have at it before passing it on.
Kindly stated…
I thought this was dead-on, and explains a lot about why US business leaders spend such an enormous amount of time blaming public schools for everything under the sun:
“To hear Mr. Obama explain it, one would think that full employment in 2007 turned into the lowest rate of employment among working age adults in 40 years in 2013 because of America’s teachers falling down on the job – the failure of public schools to prepare students for radical structural changes in the job market. He downplays the Wall Street/Fed created financial crisis or his administration’s mishandling of the recovery effort. Nor does it have anything to do with downsizing, outsourcing, and the business world’s discovery that productivity can rise by paying workers less and resorting to temps. As for the financial squeeze on school districts, this too was laid at the door of greedy teachers unions who resisted having their salaries cut or their contracted pensions slashed. They became scapegoats for a condition stemming from the protracted Great Recession and the austerity mania that his rhetoric and actions helped to promote.”
Bill Gates could tour the country and talk about how US business interests are obsessed with short term gains over long term investment, and how they pay executives giant salaries while pushing down on wages for those below that level, but he doesn’t.
It’s his ACTUAL area of expertise, as a CEO. Yet he doesn’t lecture on that. Wonder why not?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/the-american-public-schoo_b_4804416.html
Corporations aren’t concerned with moral and ethical issues, especially ones with money. But I have to give it to Bill, he really fooled the American people by claiming his philanthropic title.
I agree though that CCSS leaves out humanistic issues and that learning that cannot take place if students aren’t emotionally bought in. But then again the CCSS reflects the evil philosophy of corporate executives. They would rather students be self-centered & narcissistic imitating Uncle Bill and his followers. We focus on ending the cycle of poverty. Let’s begin examining the sic cycle of people with money running the country.
YES
Bravo Mr. Reilly!
It’s funny, too, because that would probably play very well with the public, if US business leaders accepted some responsibility for their role in income inequality and the disappearing middle class.
I think it would actually be very heartening to people and perhaps lift some of the gloom out there. They could push it like they’re pushing the attack on public schools- something grand, like “A Return to Excellence for US Businesses”, or , “Recommitting to American Values” 🙂
I just don’t get any sense that there’s even a recognition that there might be some shared responsibility here, that their approach and practices over the last 30 years might had something to do with this. To me, it sounds like finger-pointing from people who don’t want to accept responsibility or change anything about how they do business.
Chiara Duggan: the “choice not voice” [thank you!] crowd is steadfastly oblivious to its own double standards.
Mr. Microsoftie himself, Bill Gates, with his miracle “elixir of failure” called stack ranking/forced ranking/rank-and-yank/burn and churn.
Link: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer
Strangely [?], he and others at the top weren’t forced to eat the same toxic poisoned apple.
Hypocrisy? Survival mode? Self-awareness? Lack of self-awareness? Best business practices for him? Worst business practices for almost everyone else?
All of the above.
He hasn’t got a clue. And he’s just fine with that…
😃
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Thank you, Keith, for writing in words how most of us feel! Your letter was well thought and written…..I hope Bill Gates responds. Perhaps you could address it to The Walton family, Rupert Murdoch and the likes….
It’s very frightening that Pearson, clearly a right-wing publisher with a privatization agenda, is the publisher of this material. Also, don’t for a minute think that we don’t have skilled graduates who could fill the so-called gap that corporations are talking about. Simply put, they use that excuse to bring in foreign computer techs, and engineers because they can get away with paying them less. These plutocrats don’t really care about the education of our children–their bottom line is cheap labor. Common Core is frightening because thinking skills, history, civics, literature, the arts, creative thinking, are all left out. I see that with my 8-year-old granddaughter. Every day she walks in the house with two sheets of silly math problems–and that’s it–no paragraphs to analyze, nothing to do with thinking or analyzing skills–it’s really disgusting. And she’s bored to death with school. Luckily, we as grandparents and her very dedicated aprents are willing and able to enrich her life outside of school, but for kids who don’t have that, they’re just empty shells of learning who come out and play computer games.
Pearson is right-wing (as in Big Corporation) but left-wing (as in ideological bent in materials.) What a conundrum.
Mr. Bilious is deaf to anything but the sound of KA-CHING❢ in his stock portfolio and the only feedback that’d nurture a course correction would be the sound of that going from KA-CHING❢ to ka-ching to dead silence.
The American public school system is not supposed to be in service of CEOs, with a purpose of winning a global financial competition. CEOs should have absolutely no influence on our school system–their only job is to create value for their shareholders, and taxpayers and voters should not allow them to hijack the public schools for that end.
The American public school system is supposed to be in service of the people and the nation, with a purpose of creating informed, engaged, and productive citizens.
Here’s an anecdote about the morality of CEOs. ExxonMobile CEO Rex Tillerson aggressively promotes environmentally disastrous fracking to gain profit Exxon’s shareholders, but he joined a lawsuit to block fracking in his own neighborhood because it will harm his $5 million property value. Rex Tillerson and ExxonMobile should not have any input in the public school system.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/21/3316881/exxon-ceo-protests-fracking/
you forget why public education was introduced to this country, and the purposes/values of the model that was chosen to be inflicted on the general populous…
Bill Gates is a plutocrat, like the founding fathers of public education, merely trying to put public education back on its original tracks, in the process making sure his colleagues maintain power/control and maximum profits off it (and our kids)
Agree
Exactly what is happening all over in the Giant CEO world.
Their mothers know not what they are doing. ..but we do.
Yes- thanks for referencing Exxon CEO. I just learned of that yesterday. As someone who has been following the news & doing some volunteer work to fight fracking, this tidbit strikes me as yet more proof that some people are self absorbed/greedy to the extent of depraved indifference: The deadly problems associated with fracking were good enough for others, but not this guy.
Their nerve is without bounds.
Superb letter, Keith!
The Idea of preparing CEO’s in public schools to be moral and ethical will not work because most of them are coming from elite private east coast schools. Therefore, we do not have to worry because these teachers will never teach the new common core standards and use the new associated tests and thereby, these students will be able to think creatively and outside the box. Bill’s paying $30,000 a year for his children to attend one of these elite schools.
Not all of them are products of private schools. Not all of them were raised with no morals other than “me first.” That aside, I am still looking for a CEO to come forward and admit the direction in which we are being driven is antithetical to a democratic society.
Reblogged this on Teachers' Letters to Bill Gates and commented:
Dear Bill and Melinda,
Are you out of touch with those who do not travel in the circles of American CEO’s?
Do we need to do an intervention for you, CEO’s and the rest of the 1% corporate edreformer vulture philanthropists?
We hope you listen to Keith Reilly’s advice.
Thank you, Diane and Keith for posting these great suggestions!
Teachers, what do you think? Is Keith on the right track?
Susan & Katie
Co-authors, Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates
Teachers’LettersToBillGates… you both have a wonderful blog… love reading it! Just a thought… at year’s end perhaps you should print out each and every letter you’ve written in hard copy and send it special delivery to Gates! Clearly he culls what he reads on the internet and does not want to hear from real teachers. Perhaps a “REAL” package of letters will assist him in doing this necessary action!
Perhaps Real Human Teachers , Educators,and Parents sent along with the Real Letters.
“Signed-Sealed and Delivered”..hmm That is Obama’s favorite song
Bill needs to see the Human Side of Education.
He has no Clue.
I think Bill’s heart was in the right place when he began his campaign to help education…but by relying on Big Businesses to fix the Schools was the worst mistake he has ever made.
Bill said it would take 10 years to see if the CC$$ works..
How can we steal 10 years of children’s lives? How?
10 Years of Lab Rats..10 years of going round in circles.
10 years of trying to persuade the Portly ,Political ,Greedy $$$hungry…….CEO’S who say anything and do anything for a Piece of the Green Mountain with total disregard for the children of this nation!
Makes me sick!
Thank-you, Mr. Reilly. I do believe that public education is our last chance for democracy in this country. Also, I don’t believe that I’m overstating the case. Mr. Gates and his ilk (ick?) are pleased to sell our children, their schools, and their futures to the clueless, greedy plutocrats, whom our culture seems to revere.
Thank you Ms. Ravitch for taking the time to share my letter. Your books and research inspire and educate me to get involved in this crucial issue of privatization.
Bill and Lord Coleman need a Big Brother show style challenge. They must enter their friend’s store, WalMart, with some common core workbooks and stay and teach the huddled masses, until they all can pass the smarter balanced tests. Best of luck to the masters of education.
LOVE your response, TC.
From an article written in the Washington Post by an ex-teacher who became a lawyer. Good reading. Maybe Get s should read this!!
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/22/you-think-you-know-what-teachers-do-right-wrong/
Thanks Deb
Great article.
Tears for the Teachers..
cc Melinda…
Well, i guess the point of this whole letter to Mr. gates is ” give me your money you evil one percenter”. Amazing how all these teachers know is to complain and ask for more $$$
Read and watch to see a discussion about TAG including tweets contributed to The Stream on al Jazeera news.
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-latest/2014/2/21/teach-for-americamakingthegrade.html