Tim Farley, concerned educator and parent in upstate Néw York, found a commencement speech delivered by Bill Gates in 2007. Much to his own surprise, he was inspired by Gates’ advice and thought it was relevant to the problems of today.
Tim Farley writes:
———————-
Diane,
I was researching some quotes to add to an upcoming Academic Awards night and stumbled upon these words of advice from Bill Gates:
Bill Gates at Harvard University,
2007
“In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue — a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them. Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on big inequities. I feel sure it will be one of the great experiences of your lives.”
Although many of us “activists” were not in the audience at Harvard in 2007, his speech seems to have resonated with so many people from across the country. It appears that many have taken his words of advice: “take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it; Be activists. Take on big inequities. I feel sure it will be one of the great experiences of your lives.”
The issue that many have decided to take on was Bill Gates’ plan to use big data to standardize our schools, teachers, and students. They decided that their children and their children’s teachers should never be reduced to a number and that by doing so, it causes a “great inequity”. So, what to do? We found “others with the same interests” and used “the growing power of the internet to get informed” to “see the barriers” and together, we found “ways to cut through them”.
My, what a difference a year makes. A year ago, few had heard of Common Core, data mining, APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review), and “high stakes testing”. Now, unless you live under a rock, everyone has heard of Common Core and it is the number one issue in the country. Many feel that the Common Core standards are a de facto nationalization of educational standards and an over-reach of our federal government. There is also much evidence that the standards themselves are developmentally inappropriate and do not take into account the needs of our special education students. The Common Core State Standards have been heavily financed by Bill Gates (some estimates are over $2 billion for the creation and promotion of the standards).
With regard to data mining, as of a month ago, inBloom shuttered its doors. inBloom, a non-profit company based in Atlanta, Georgia was a data mining company that Bill Gates single-handedly financed with $100,000,000. It was reported that they no longer had any “clients”. The demise of inBloom was due in large part to Leonie Haimson’s efforts. Leonie is the Executive Director of Class Size Matters. She and many others spoke out about their concerns that our children’s most sensitive data was in serious jeopardy and may have been used as a marketing tool. The citizens got informed, organized, spoke out, wrote to their elected officials, testified in front of their legislative bodies, and demanded that this practice end.
States all across the country are re-evaluating VAM (“value added measure”) and coming to the realization that “VAM is a sham”. The use of student test results to evaluate teacher effectiveness unnecessarily places much pressure for the teachers to “teach to the test”, which leads to the narrowing of the curricula. Parents have also realized that high stakes testing does nothing for their children and can actually be harmful. This realization has sparked the Opt Out Movement, where parents refuse to allow their children to be used as a part of this scheme. Regular moms started Facebook pages to inform the public. Peg Robertson from Colorado, Sandy Stenoff from Orlando, and Jeannette Deutermann from Long Island are just a few of the moms who paid attention to what was going on and decided to do something about it.
I recommend Bill Gates give more speeches and practice less philanthropy in areas outside his area of expertise. His speech to the Harvard graduates in 2007 is so relevant today. Thank you Bill Gates for giving so many people a game plan to stop you from the great inequities that you created.
We will win this fight because “we are many and they are few” (Diane Ravitch).
In Solidarity,
Tim Farley
Education Activist
Diane Ravitch's blog 
🙂
So we have been dealing with people who think they could easily become a “specialist” in education just by reading the Internet, since Gates said so? Too bad Gates didn’t learn, and tell others, that they must first become educated consumers of information.
To what might one compare the gulf between Gates’s vision of intrinsically motivated, independent, innovative thinkers tackling big problems with determination and drive and the twisted, narrow, distorted, regimented, authoritarian extrinsic punishment and reward system that he has forced upon our PreK-12 schools and that he wants to force on our colleges as well?
Is there a chasm, an abyss, that great in the entire known universe?
the Grand Canyon?
the Marianas trench?
the 9th circle of Dante’s Inferno?
the vast Antarctic wasteland?
Pascal’s terrifying empty spaces between the stars?
The empty space between Arne Duncan’s nonfunctioning ears?
Maybe the last of these.
Of course, he was talking to the sons and daughters of other oligarchs like himself. The rest of you–will, those young men and women will let you know what they come up with after they have tackled the big problems and come up with the decisions for you and your children.
cs: well, those young men and women
Excellent letter!!
With education activists such as you Tim Farley, Diane Ravitch, Leonie Hamson, Mark Naison, Kevin Glynn, Carol Burris, so many, many more from our communities and those of us in the trenches, we will not let America’s children down. Here we are ready to win back our schools! Thank you for such an awesome lesson from the past. We must hit that Common Core DELETE button. NOW!
well said
And how will we be able to successfully follow that advice to spread the word and create a public discussion if net neutrality vanishes and the Internet is turned over to corporations?
Right now, the chairman of the FCC is considering doing just that and Tom Wheeler was appointed to run the FCC by President Obama in November 2013. Wheeler is the one who proposed this change because of Corporate pressure from Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. Wheeler’s background is from that same industry. Obama put a fox in the hen house.
What Wheeler is considering fits Obama’s obvious agenda to turn over everything that is public (for instance, the public schools, public health care, the VA and now the Internet) to for profit corporations and funnel all that tax money to those same corporations putting them in charge instead of the White House and Congress. The Constitution and Bill of Rights is there to protect the people from its own government but it doesn’t protect the people from CEOs and corporations.
It seems to me that this is a Machiavellian and insidious way to destroy the people’s democracy so they have no voice. What happens when there is no net neutrality and corporation are in charge of what flows over the Internet?
If you want to keep net neutrality, everyone who reads this should quickly send an e-mail to your elected representative and let them know what you want. Some members of Congress are actually on our side. How many, who knows.
People should let their voices be heard by signing a petition to support Net Neutrality, such as this one: http://act.credoaction.com/sign/verizon_netneutrality
I think that we should be pushing to have the FCC regulate the Internet AND cable TV as utilities, since they both function as such, are owned by the same providers, and are swiftly becoming monopolies.
signed
This discussion made me think about this article http://www.nationofchange.org/let-s-stop-searching-messiah-and-build-movement-1401029353. It talks about building a populist infrastructure (as leoni did). I’m a teacher in NY and we gave seen our supposed “liberal” governor tear appart public schools in our state. But what is our union doing? Breaking appart with infighting and petty concerns. Oligarchy us here, whether we like it or not, and unless we come together as educators, advocates and put aside insignificant differences and pull together, US as we know it. Will no longer exist. I grew up in a communist country under a dictator (Cuba). Although I’m an avowed liberal, I cringe at Obama and Cuomo’s policies. We need to be like the koch’s create a network of grassroots organizations that communicates why these policies are bad for 99% of Americans
“In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue — a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. You can make that inequity absolute. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the corporations that you with or for to buy politicians and solidify command and control over “those people” and the training of their children, and when you encounter problems, there’s always PR.
Don’t let complexity stop you. You really don’t have to understand any of this. You just have to work with and for the guys with the real power, with guys like me. Instill fear. Stack rank. End innovation. Monopolize. For money is power–and power–raw, absolute power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Sorry, a correction of my translation from the Rheeformish tongue spoken by Mr. Gates:
“In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue — a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a financially invested dilettante with regard to it. If you make it the focus of financial speculation, that would be phenomenal. You can make that inequity absolute. But, as my own case illustrates, you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the corporations and/or financial institutions that you own or work with or for to buy politicians and solidify command and control over “those people” and the training of their children, and when you encounter problems, there’s always PR.
Don’t let complexity stop you. You really don’t have to understand any of this, and you don’t even need your own capital. You just have to work with and for the guys with the real power, with guys like me. Instill fear. Stack rank. End innovation. Monopolize. For money is power–and power–raw, absolute power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Gates’ rhetoric is not inclusive in which lay people have difficulty reading between the lines, because for a long time, it has been one sided. However, more and more people are coming to a realization about his agenda through the Internet, word of mouth throughout the community, etc.
Most businesses focus on the work that they do without regard to the consequences that it has on others, thus creating competition, domination, various gaps and narrowmindedness. There is not doubt that Gates’ agenda will come to a halt thanks to watchdogs like Diane, Mercedes, Anthony, etal., who have raised visibility to disseminate the truth. Then what?
The one solution to the current state of education is to develop long-term strategy goals that involve community, businesses, and government as it “takes a village to raise children”. For education to do what it is supposed to do for every child is depended on its society. The success to educating all children will only happen if decision-makers work shoulder-to-shoulder with its community (parents, teachers, educational researchers, mental health dept., child development psychologist, child and family advocacy, businesses, etc.) to establish common long-term goals based on past failures and successes. Every school has different needs that must have the required supports in place to education their students.
Our educational system is dependent upon the involvement of many, yet teachers have shouldered their responsibilities. Allowing government to run like a business in regards to education is a lesson we are learning. Allowing businesses to run education as we all know is fraudulent.
Here is Gates’ 2007 Harvard graduation speech on video (in five segments), with written commentary from me on the first two segments:
I’m surprised he didn’t say bend over and take it, cuz here it comes, now you’ll cowtow to the 1%ers.
I actually think that this fellow really does mean well. Seriously. He thinks that engineering the Pearson/Microsoft takeover of US education is a win/win for him AND for the country. He’s going to make a lot more money, and people are going to be better trained. I once heard an interview with him in which lamented the difficulty of getting anything done in Washington because it was not like Microsoft, there being so many moving parts. Well, he has now secured control of all those parts. He’s going to show everyone the way.
His monoculture will be so much more effective than this messy ecology we’ve had.
But he is deeply, deeply out of touch with how actual people work. He doesn’t understand motivation, for example, intrinsic motivation and the fundamental need that people have, even very, very young people, for personal autonomy–to be the locus of control in their own lives–which they balance with another fundamental need, for belonging, community, love. He, who has been so driven by external reward which has been, for him, IDENTICAL to internal, instrinsic reward, doesn’t understand that external punishment and reward systems are inherently repulsive and demotivating for people. He doesn’t have a clue that he is creating conditions that will lead ineluctably, inevitably to mediocrity and decline. Totalitarianisms carry the seeds of their own destruction because they are distant and venal and stupid and end up being a shallow, sick game that everyone plays. However, their fall is long and hard, and they fall down upon the heads of the people.
Gates has so much power, now, because he is the wealthiest non-sovereign human being who ever lived, that he is not about to do any unlearning of the monopolistic, authoritarian habits of thought and action that have made him so wealthy, for he is surrounded, of course, by sycophants and toadies whose sole job is to tell him what he wants to hear. And so he has become a grotesque and is doing extraordinary damage, and so this man who actually believed that he was trying to do some good is creating, for himself, a name that will live in infamy.
Bob Shepherd: ah yes, Bill Gates, who understands the human heart and mind as no other. Speaking strictly for myself, whenever I hear of or read about the worst business practice called “stack ranking” (aka forced ranking/rank-and-yank/burn-and-churn), I think of Mr. Microsoftie Himself.
Just a sample from a VANITY FAIR article I have cited several times on this blog.
[start quote]
By 2002 the by-product of bureaucracy—brutal corporate politics—had reared its head at Microsoft. And, current and former executives said, each year the intensity and destructiveness of the game playing grew worse as employees struggled to beat out their co-workers for promotions, bonuses, or just survival.
Microsoft’s managers, intentionally or not, pumped up the volume on the viciousness. What emerged—when combined with the bitterness about financial disparities among employees, the slow pace of development, and the power of the Windows and Office divisions to kill innovation—was a toxic stew of internal antagonism and warfare.
“If you don’t play the politics, it’s management by character assassination,” said Turkel.
At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
[end quote]
I know you will be shocked—SHOCKED and AMAZED and AWED!—to know that Mr. Bill Gates was not affected in any way, shape or form by this toxic elixir that almost everyone else UNDER HIM had to drink.
W. Edwards Deming had this pegged decades ago: “Management by fear would be a better name.” [For the source, see a comment by me yesterday under a posting that starts “Edushyster.”]
Strangely [?], this practice is now called VAMania and is all the rage among the leaders of the self-styled “education reform” movement.
And they have profound knowledge of the human heart and mind too. Just ask “Dr.” Steve “Strap Up Head Injuries” Perry. Now there’s a fellow that will warm the cockles of anyone’s heart…
Rheeally!
But not really…
Keep speaking out here and elsewhere. Frederick Douglass knew how powerful that can be:
“Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
😎
This is precisely the system that has been forced upon every PreK-12 teacher and student in the country. And now they are going after the colleges. It’s sick and evil, and all decent people will work to stop it.
I keep having this fantasy, beyond all reason, that Gates will have an Ebenezer Scrooge in “The Christmas Carol” movement and awaken with a burning desire to create teacher-led, decentralized schools based in respect for autonomy, intrinsic motivation, and human differences.
I do not detest Bill Gates. I think of him with great sadness. All that wealth, and yet he seems to me profoundly sick and twisted spiritually and emotionally. It cannot be pleasant to be such a person. I do not even despise the politicians and business people who buy into the new national stack ranking system. They are ignorant, for the most part. Confused. I can almost forgive them, for they know not what they do.
I reserve my absolute contempt for the Vichy educrat collaborators with the invariant summative standardized testing stack-ranking system. Those are the ones who know better, really, but have sold out our children for the big paycheck. The ones who have learned to speak doubly because it profits them. Shame on those people.
I very much hope that when this has run its course, when EVERYONE is clear about all the damage that was done, those collaborators will be remembered for what they did, for those books that they wrote on “unpacking the standards,” for the op-eds they wrote about “setting a higher bar,” for all the harm they did to children.
People, in CEO or Board positions, assume that an audience understands that their words and actions, are not linked. They don’t fault themselves, for pragmatic decisions, inconsistent with their verbiage. “Walking the talk”, is a notion, of the 99%. It doesn’t enter the minds of the guys in the executive suites.
The view, is one of four cultural perspectives, that differentiate people who hold top positions in organizations, from the rest of us.
In the common man’s talk, that means these fakes say what the people want to hear and then do what will profit them the most and that often hurts the people who were foolish enough to believe them.
Don’t keep us in suspense! Let’s hear the others!
OK. I’ll take a stab at them.
Innate superiority. Some are born with the right stuff. Some are not. Nature red in tooth and claw. It’s in the genes, baby. There are natural-born leaders–a few of us–and there are sheep–those people. They are very, very fortunate that we provide for them, but one has to be careful there, for if you encourage them too much, they proliferate and everyone loses.
Personal merit. I got where I am because I worked for it. Sure, I was born to enormous wealth and educated at the best schools and was handed at job at McKinsey by the fellow at my father’s club, and I started this company with that loan from Aunt Hildegarde, and the whole thing was someone else’s idea, and I hired the people who did the work and had the ideas, but hey, I’m a self-made person.
Competition. There are winners and losers. This whole thing is a competition, a race to the top. Cooperation is for sissies. It’s all about beating the other guy because there is only so much to go around.
Sophistication. They smell, those people. They are uncouth and ignorant. They have no breeding and do not and cannot appreciate the finer things in life. The only way to maintain any standards whatsoever is to keep the rabble out.
A note of background, the people at the top object to a characterization that they are unethical.
One of the 4 cultural differences, posted previously- people at the top speak from whatever role, they hold. A lawyer doesn’t consider it unethical to argue for a guilty client. I heard a university president speak in Columbus, in a role representing Ohio’s public universities. He convincingly made an argument that branch campuses should be consolidated into their affiliated universities. Then, on his own campus, the next week, the president was persuasive in an argument that the branch campuses should remain independent. Different views, based on different roles, allow executives to present points, while not vesting themselves in outcomes.
The third cultural difference, is described as sin of omission vs. sin of commission. The person at the top thinks, if he commits a wrong, it is unethical but, bearing witness to a wrong, does not compel him to act. Some states have enacted good Samaritan laws to bring legal clarity to the subject.
Fourth, the people at the top don’t make friends. They make allies.
There is no implied loyalty. As an example, the feds wanted a young guy at Enron, a Wharton grad, to roll over on his boss. The guy left a suicide note, in which he said he didn’t want to betray the people at the firm. It was tragic because he didn’t understand the rules of the game. Others at the firm would have implicated him. There was no expectation of loyalty.
The differences explain the multiple marriages and estranged relationships that executives often have, with their children.
It’s a set of values that facilitate promotions but, they don’t integrate well into family life.
The cultural norms have a beneficial effect in taking emotion out of the business setting.
Linda – I believe that divorce rates for corporate executives are actually lower than for the general population.
Bob – I can’t claim to have an extensive knowledge of corporate CEO’s but I have known a few and your description of them doesn’t at all jibe with those I have met personally. The ones I have met were not uncouth and ignorant. Several had PhD’s. They certainly did not smell. The description that would apply most generally to them was that they were high IQ workaholics.
Bob, you don’t seem to be capable of objectively evaluating reality.
Jim, I was not describing corporate executives. I was describing what people of the privileged class typically think of others–of the masses.
Jim is right about divorce rates among CEOs. 9.81 percent. Pretty low. Among Forbes 500 CEOs, 52 % were Republican, 17 % Independent, and only 2 % Democrat or Libertarian. Almost 100 % went to one of 6 schools. Most had Bachelor’s degrees. Most did not have advanced degrees.
How many inherited their fortune?
It seems bizarre that you would think, Jim, that I would make such a preposterous claim. I have known quite a few CEOs. They smelled very nice, typically. They could afford to. And they didn’t spend much time mucking around under cars or cleaning out sewage pipes.
Jim,
The data on multiple marriages is about 5 years old. Do you have a more recent source showing a different trend?
Bill Gates is the poster boy for what happens when we abandon the arts, and humanities from education.
Sorry, should read, “Bill Gates is the poster boy for what happens when the arts and humanities are eliminated from education.
Tim Farley wrote:
“A year ago, few had heard of Common Core, data mining, APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review), and “high stakes testing”. Now, unless you live under a rock, everyone has heard of Common Core and it is the number one issue in the country.”
Judging from the lavish print space Chicago area newspapers devote to the National Hockey League playoffs for the Stanley Cup, one might be led to believe that the number one issue in the country is somehow related to the Cup.
Nowhere is this priority more evident than in the over-the-top coverage of the Chicago Blackhawks’ quest for the Cup by the Daily Herald in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago.
Apparently put under a “rock” are seemingly low priority letters to the Editor, for example, see the appended, yet-to-be-published letter, “Common Core and Value Added Measure: The Gates’ Factor,” that was submitted to the Daily Herald on April 28, 2014.
The letter appears as Appendix 5 in the CLIPS Guest Commentary “School Wars 2014: Conflicts over K-12 Education Technology, CCSS, and VAM” that can be accessed at
https://collegeathleticsclips.com/news/schoolwars2014conflictsoverk12educationtechnologyccssandvam.html
The commentary was updated to enhance the argument against the widespread commercialization of K-12 education as well to introduce readers to:
1. Devra Davis’ concern about the unmet need to investigate the potential danger to the brains of young school children to the electromagnetic radiation emanating from wireless products that are part and parcel of this commercialization, and
2. Mercedes Schneider’s new book, A Chronicle of Echoes.
The updated text is an extension of my remarks that were prompted by the widespread criticism leveled at Common Core State Standards and Value Added Measures that have continued after posting of his Commentary “Revisiting ‘A Nation Still at Risk’”—now re-posted at https://collegeathleticsclips.com/news/schoolwars2014conflictsoverk12educationtechnologyccssandvam.html
Frank G. Splitt
Former McCormick Faculty Fellow
McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
Northwestern University
Evanston. Illinois
http://thedrakegroup.org/authors/splitt
————————–
Common Core and Value Added Measure: The Gates’ Factor
Heidi Reich, a courageous New York public-school teacher expressed her views on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and high-stakes testing in a letter that was recently published in the New York Times. Reich’s truth-telling letter exposed serious problems with CCSS and her state’s failure to provide support for teachers whose jobs will depend on high-stakes testing. What’s going on here?
To begin, Bill Gates, of Microsoft fame and fortune, has a near obsession with testing based on an old management adage: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. The adage is flawed in the sense that it is not really applicable to the measurement of teacher performance. Nonetheless, the Gates Foundation provided enormous financial backing for the development of the beleaguered CCSS and the discredited Value Added Measure (VAM) that are used to evaluate teachers via student test scores.
It should come as no surprise that CCSS and the VAM are simply manifestations of Gates’ thinking. It’s part of a grand strategy to profit from the widespread commercialization of K-12 education. Unfortunately, this commercialization comes with horrific unintended consequences—the death of both the teaching profession and public schools.
The un-checked expansion of be-all-end-all, K-12 Education Technology is a good example of the destructive power of too much of a good thing. Computers, iPads, and the like will never be a substitute for a caring teacher no matter how great the technology and no matter how immediate the access to massive arrays of digital libraries. Students are human beings, not automatons.
America’s overall health and well being is dependent on educational leadership that can help render an educated and skilled citizenry—human capital with plenty of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) in the mix.
Frank G. Splitt
Mt. Prospect
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that a college drop-out would be given the opportunity to give the graduation speech at Harvard?
I always admired Bill Gates as an example of someone who followed his unique passion, who followed his bliss, who didn’t give a hoot about the degree, the label, the imprimatur.
It’s a tragic irony that this man is the one attempting to impose regimentation, standardization, centralization, homogenization, on our educational system.
He, of all people, should know better.
@Dienne… how true your words are.. a drop out speaks at Harvard. Yet Gate’s had a special connection to Harvard as he dropped out from there! I find it more ironic that Gate’s “Harvard education” did not follow a rigid protocol which is the very structure of common core and its high stakes testing components that he so promotes. Gates was given ample time to use Harvard’s then state of the art “super” computer (for its time) while he was a student. He was brought before the admin board I think for having brought a friend in without permission to use this computer (friend who helped him formulate the Microsoft). But I think he got off the hook with the admin board. And then as the tale is known.. he dropped out and the rest is computer history. So Gates is basically a do as I say but not as I do kinda guy.
“Three bling for the educrats under the sky,
Seven for the edubullies who on teachers throw stones,
Nine for mere teachers doomed to die,
One for the Snark Lord on his dark throne
In the Centres of EduExcellence where the shadows lie.
One BlingRing to rule them all, One BlingRing to find them,
One BlingRing to bring them and in the darkness bind them
In the Board Room of Gates where the shadows lie.”
–Redacted by KrazyTA from various ultrasecret eduinvestor coven meeting recitations of “The Lord of the Blingring,” book DCLXVI of the Blingringelungenlied.
For more on classic Rheeformish songs and spells, see “Prosody of Financial Statements and Other Rheeformish Poetry” in “Grimoires and Other Rheeformish Literature,” Appendix 10 of the Rheeformish Lexicon.