Bill Gates was on the treadmill one day, watched a video about history that he liked, and invited the professor to meet with him to talk about growing his approach into something that everyone could see. Now as this story in the New York Times explains, Bill Gates’ favorite way of teaching world history has been turned into a course that is being marketed to high schools across the country.
“As Gates was working his way through the series, he stumbled upon a set of DVDs titled “Big History” — an unusual college course taught by a jovial, gesticulating professor from Australia named David Christian. Unlike the previous DVDs, “Big History” did not confine itself to any particular topic, or even to a single academic discipline. Instead, it put forward a synthesis of history, biology, chemistry, astronomy and other disparate fields, which Christian wove together into nothing less than a unifying narrative of life on earth. Standing inside a small “Mr. Rogers”-style set, flanked by an imitation ivy-covered brick wall, Christian explained to the camera that he was influenced by the Annales School, a group of early-20th-century French historians who insisted that history be explored on multiple scales of time and space. Christian had subsequently divided the history of the world into eight separate “thresholds,” beginning with the Big Bang, 13 billion years ago (Threshold 1), moving through to the origin of Homo sapiens (Threshold 6), the appearance of agriculture (Threshold 7) and, finally, the forces that gave birth to our modern world (Threshold 8).”
This is my favorite line in the article: “As Gates sweated away on his treadmill, he found himself marveling at the class’s ability to connect complex concepts. “I just loved it,” he said. “It was very clarifying for me. I thought, God, everybody should watch this thing!”
Yes, if Gates loved it, why shouldn’t everybody “watch this thing!”
Now, let me say up front that the course may indeed be wonderful, engaging, provocative, and informative. I have not seen “Big History” and cannot judge its quality.
But there is something unseemly about a history course sponsored by the richest man in America. This is akin to research on cigarettes and cancer sponsored by tobacco company.
I am quoted in the article asking whether the course will discuss or even mention the robber barons or the problem of income inequality. How will it treat the rise–and decline–of labor unions? I can think of many topics that would make the sponsor uncomfortable.
Please read the comments, especially the readers’ picks. Many share my concerns.
On this point, read Mercedes Schneider’s latest post, wherein she reports that the Gates Foundation funds mainstream media outlets and Gates himself regularly meets with representatives of the media he gives money to. I don’t know, it doesn’t sound right to me. If he is giving millions to major news outlets, won’t that affect their coverage of the Gates Foundation and Gates himself. Will they dare criticize their sponsor? This has a bad smell.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Everything Bill Gates touches now has a very foul odor to me. I don’t trust him, or his foundation, and I want him to take his money elsewhere. Quit trying to fix what isn’t broken.
The entire “education” NYT Magazine today looks cringeworthy. Another article on Eva Moskowitz. I made need a few shots of Bushmills before tackling this.
I didn’t read it because I read Too Big To Fail in an attempt to understand why the financial system collapsed, and I thought Mr. Sorkin was way too deferential to CEO’s and financial industry people.
We give too much credit to the opinions of CEO’s, I think. They’re really just individuals, and it’s not like the US private sector is this model of 100% excellence and (particularly!) high ethical standards.
They could use some “reform” themselves. Maybe they should clean up their own side of the street before “improving” the rest of us. It’d be good for the country and business is supposedly the sector they understand.
My favorite quotes from the article were a little different:
“Most kids experience school as one damn course after another; there’s nothing to build connections between the courses that they take,” says Bob Bain, a professor of history and education at the University of Michigan and an adviser to the Big History Project, who has helped devise much of the curriculum. “The average kid has no way to make sense between what happens with their first-period World History class and their second-period algebra class, third-period gym class, fourth-period literature — it’s all disconnected. It’s like if I were to give you a jigsaw puzzle and throw 500 pieces on the table and say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not going to show you the box top as to how they fit together.’ ”
And what the students said:
“I felt that it was great to be able to have your own opinions and then share it with everyone and take in other people’s opinions and use everything that you compile to create new theories and new ideas, and in a way create your own sense of your own belief system,” said Benjamin Campbell, a senior. One of his classmates, a junior, overheard him and chimed in: “At first I hated it, because I was like, ‘I hate science.’ But it actually just opened my perspective that I never knew about. I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, and then I grew to love the class.”
Yeah, I really wish Diane would simply confine herself to taking issue with the funding of this course rather than the content of it. For all she knows, maybe it’s a wonderful program. She could say something like, for instance:
“Now, let me say up front that the course may indeed be wonderful, engaging, provocative, and informative. I have not seen “Big History” and cannot judge its quality.
“But there is something unseemly about a history course sponsored by the richest man in America. This is akin to research on cigarettes and cancer sponsored by tobacco company.”
Dienne,
It seems to me the content is the important part, but that is just me.
It’s about megalomania–leaping from “everybody should watch this thing” to a mandated curriculum. Gates is turning into Henry Ford.
Exactly!
Teaching Economist, So all your arguments against CCSS are due to the content?
Janinelargent,
I don’t actually have any arguments against the CCSS. I am a poor judge of the ELA standards. The math standards seem like a good start.
I am convinced, however, that my state will not come up with anything appreciably better.
This history curriculum might work for some kids and be certainly interesting for adults; however, jumping all over history without some coherent sequence would confuse the daylights out of my students. Not to mention, this course is completely outside of ANY history core in any state. For Bill Gates, who seems to think that following a set curricula no matter the student or the situation is akin to following holy writ, I find it curious that he would push such an unorthodox was of teaching history.
Dienne: correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t the subject of the posting and his proposed course of action fall under the category of—
Another vanity project of a charter member of the BBBBC [BusyBody Billionaire Boys Club]?
Kind of like his Other Great Big Idea, “stack ranking” [aka “forced ranking” aka “rank-and-yank” aka “burn-and-churn”]— ya know, that turned it so gosh darn well…
😎
TE, re-read Threatened Out West’s comment. Big History, which I am quite familiar with, doesn’t connect with History standards. If you compared World history to IB or AP World History courses, you would see starkly different items.
In essence, Big History is more about science than history for much of it. The correlating book is very short but it spends the bulk of its time on the earliest stages of the history of the planet (not human history but rather geological history).
Big History spends very little time on political, social, environmental, cultural or economic history. Almost none in fact if taught in relation to the pacing of it.
I have recommended the book to students who are interested in science. But the contention that it “connects” to all these other subjects is deeply false. It’s really more of a science discipline approach than anything. It’s good for a narrow group of students but it doesn’t provide anything of real interest to a majority (huge majority) of high schoolers.
Besides, why would Gates, who endlessly drones about personalizing education, be so insistent that EVERYONE should learn history this way? It should be an option but certainly not widespread.
Steve,
It is unclear to me that Threatened’s post is at all inconsistent with my post about the NYT article (As my post was written and posted before Threatened’s post appeared, I was unable to read threatened post even once before I posted).
TE, my post was designed to note that EVERYONE should not necessarily learn history this way. (You seem to find one passage in post replies and try to carve an argument out of that rather than considering the main thrust of the post. Great for debate club methods, not so much for conversation.)
Big History does not hit at standards for teaching history. It’s a very specific type of history and would be useless to anyone studying social, political and economic history in particular. I’m not saying Big History is a poor course. It’s fine. But it’s narrow (ironically considering it’s title).
I also debunked the quote about connecting history to all other disciplines. It connects to science almost exclusively.
C’mon, man. At least try to discuss topics directly rather than cherry-picking and causing distractions. Ravitch’s point was this: Big History might be a nice course but it’s silly that a single man, on his treadmill, watching videos, with no experience in education, should have any influence on education. And that’s true. Gates’ hobby has become our problem repeatedly (CCSS, VAM and other items). TE, you don’t teach K-12. You have not grasped how his “thoughts” have affected teachers.
For instance, I have a deep and abiding in Game Theory. I’ve read several books on it. I think Game Theory classes should all follow my recommendations for how to teach it. I’m also a decent golfer. I think the PGA should instantly introduce my ideas on how to improve the sport. See how ridiculous that sounds?
Steve,
My point is that you should not base your support or opposition to a course based on who had the original idea or who supports it. You should base it on the quality of the course itself.
Steve,
You missed the point. This conversation was not a debate on the content of Big History. (which BTW has much to be debated) It was a conversation about why one man’s opinion holds so much sway simply because he has gobs of $$$$.
TE, I get that. But you still have not addressed the main point: how does one person who has no experience in a field have such an outsized influence on that field?
Gates ha s an epiphany about a video series he watched? How much has Gates not seen that is as good or better?
This is the point. Not whether Big History is a good course.
Point well taken. Do we have to seriously consider every opinion of a man simply because has more money than God?
Also, I had no trouble understanding Diane’s point of view on the matter (not a review of Big History)
I knew it was only a matter of time before we had Robots Rewriting Human History … it’s like 1984 2.0 …
One of my favorite parts of the articlle was Joe ( “who’s got skin in the game?”) Klein’s outrage and dismissal of inquiries into Bill Gate’s motives. I would not want that unctous snake oil salesman, Klein, defending me……
It’s just so clubby and insidery.
The issue is whether Gates has an outsized influence on public policy because of his fame and wealth. The defense from a member of the same insider club is, “I know him and he’s a great guy!”
We’re not supposed to have to rely on his being a good or bad person. I don’t know if he’s bad or good. That isn’t the question. The question is does he have outsize influence on US public policy because of his fame and wealth. People who know him swearing it’s all well-intended or benign or even positive doesn’t answer the question.
article….sorry for the typos, I need reading glasses……more than I care to admit….
The mainstream media is now just a series of infomercials to sell us products to distract us.
Keith,
A little off topic, but a week or so ago, I caught a morning news segment on network television purporting to discuss which potato chips are healthiest. FYI, the healthiest brands contain only potatoes, oil and salt. Go check your chips. I’ll wait. Are these people for real?
Gates’ arrogance is astounding. David Christian’s work is brilliant, and I strongly recommend “Maps of Time.” A course in “Big History” would be very exciting for many high school students, but it in no way substitutes for the careful consideration of historical evidence and analysis that good teachers can share with students. Nor does it fulfill the requirements for study of economics and civics that at least New York still holds dear. In fact, it’s a great way to teach a unified, interdisciplinary, science and social science curriculum withOUT advancing student preparation for citizenship, a hallmark of quality social studies curricula and sequences.
Remember, Gates has predicted the eradication of global poverty in twenty years. He has no understanding of his own role in the growth of global income inequality and corresponding suffering. In addition, it appears he has learned no lessons at all from the catastrophe he unleashed on public education, its employees, children, families and communities.
NY Educator,
Poverty and inequality are two possibly related, but different things.
Poverty is usually thought of as an absolute standard. An individual is considered poor if they spend less than $1.25 a day on consumption a day. About a billion people in the world are in extreme poverty. Twenty years ago about two billion lived in extreme poverty. Poverty is the source of great suffering in the world, and the good news is that there is much less now.
Inequality is a relative measure of income distribution. The two can easily move in different directions. In China, for example, we have seen a massive decline in poverty at the same time that we have seen a massive increase in income inequality.
“Poverty and inequality are two possibly related, but different things.”
Really, Tarum???
Duane,
I don’t know what you mean by Tarum, but poverty and inequality are two different things. Think about the most extreme example. If no one had any income, we would have complete equality of income and everyone would be extremely poor.
I recommend a look at John Bodley’s “The Power of Scale: A Global History Approach.” The book is not without flaws, but it does a nice job of laying out the implications, for the masses, of the consolidation of power and wealth by a few, at the expense of the majority. I haven’t yet gotten all the way through Piketty’s Capital, but I suspect that’s a great source for a similar analysis. Then there is the post WW II literature on the “development of underdevelopment” and corresponding the debates about neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism.
Yes, you can have “poverty” without income inequality, e.g. the “poverty” of simple societies, or a communist regime. But once you introduce income inequality into the picture, at a large scale, “poverty” takes on another dimension altogether.
I question your assertion that there is “much less” suffering in the world today, originating in poverty. Seems to me that when I look at news stories about just about anywhere, Latin America, South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the United States, I see an overwhelming struggle for basic survival–food, shelter, fuel, access to clean water, everything. Global climate change, drought/flooding/deforestation etc., continue to threaten the survival of millions and the challenges will likely only increase in coming decades. Even according to our own, American measures (in school systems, eligibility for free or reduced lunch) poverty is increasing.
What is your source for your assertion that poverty and concomitant suffering are declining???
NY Educator,
I suspect your perception of changes in suffering are colored by your only reading about the state of the world today, not comparing the state of the world twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago. In just the last 20 years, one billion people in the world have left extreme poverty. In 1990 about 43% of the population living in the developing world lived in extreme poverty (defined at the time as consuming less than $1.00 worth of goods and services a day), in 2010 that had dropped to 21% (and the poverty line increased to $1.25).
Here is a good article on those recent changes: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not
If you look at changes over a longer time period the reduction in poverty is even more profound.
I don’t see how stating that income equality and extreme poverty can move in different directions, sheds light on a more optimistic view from which we can view the latter.
If I am poor, i cannot provide for myself, so it matters not a wit to me if others can. Now of course they could help me with welfare but that does not solve my big problem, being able to support myself. It is better than nothing but in the long run, less income equality and less poverty would be the best to make this world a more inhabitable place, in terms of people’s needs being met.
I guess it comes down to megalomania versus generosity: Gates seems to enjoy sitting above, dispensing money in a matter to control others… And sometimes help them, but ALWAYS, control them.
He controls education, he controls what world health matters are intervened into, would it not be possible to control, I doubt that he would be interested.
I am curious why, if he does not want to control, he does not just anonymously donate to causes he believes in. Then the help would not be tainted.
Titleone,
Think about a country that is overwhelmingly agrarian, with most people engaged in subsistence agriculture. The income distribution in that country is relatively equal because the vast majority have little. As the country becomes more industrial, some of the folks from the rural sector move to higher productivity jobs in the cities and become relatively wealthy. The society has a more unequal income distribution and less poverty.
You could force a more equal income distribution by keeping more of your folks in the rural country side (the hukou system in China is an attempt at this), but it will increase poverty in the country.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx “China, for example, we have seen a massive decline in poverty at the same time that we have seen a massive increase in income inequality.”
China’s increase in equitable outcomes is related to the hollowing out of our middle class. It gives me no satisfaction to know that the lowering of our boats is raising the boats in China. I for one am not ready for global socialism.
S&FF,
Are you saying that globalization is, in effect, world socialism? If so, I think that is in a deep, fundamental sense, correct. It is not a view that is commonly held here, however.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx TE, I think globalism ultimately puts the world on a path toward global socialism. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is very far off, and contingent upon humanity not destroying itself in the interim. We are probably simply in one of the countless prerequisite iterations wherein nations attempt to maintain or improve political stability via trade. However, stability through trade cannot be achieved where one of the parties to the arrgt is unstable within. Political stability has as many faces as there are countries, each with its own culture/ history/ expectations.
Our particular and short history suggests our stability has rested on the power of the common people to govern. We flirt dangerously with political instability as we move toward extreme levels of inequality combined with a the loss of upward mobility, the sense that the game is rigged, that the public has no meaningful vote.
“A course in “Big History” would be very exciting for many high school students, but it in no way substitutes for the careful consideration of historical evidence and analysis that good teachers can share with students.”
Yes, sounds like this could (I emphasize “could” as I have no knowledge of the program myself) be a good elective. But it would in no way replace a history course that would teach not historical facts so much as explore how do we “know” what we think we know about history and how to approach conflicting versions.
I agree entirely.
It’s also not clear to me that it’s intended to replace traditional history courses. Or traditional science courses, either. It seems like something that could only work as an additional course that tied together key concepts from an array of courses, including physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, and history, which would probably best function as prerequisites. And of all those, history would probably the prerequisite with the least amount of overlap with “Big History.”
Frankly it sounds like a college-level course or perhaps an interesting high school elective offered by one teacher who had a particular interest in this approach. I’m also not sure how many high school teachers (or college professors, for that matter) would be able to teach it well.
What it really sounds like is basically what it is now: A great DVD series and a good use of “online learning.”
It sounds fascinating to me, and I would love to see a DVD of it. BUT, I would never teach it to my 8th and 9th grade history and geography students. It would be too overwhelming. But what does Bill Gates care? I’ll probably get stuck with this curricula in a few years.
Amen, Threatened out West!
I appreciate your awareness of what is not present in the course.
Painful to be forced to attend the miseducation of Bill Gates. Everything I have read about him was that he often refused to participate in his schooling or do his assignments, from private K-12 to college. His mother made sure that he got what HE WANTED TO DO. Then dropped out because…he was so brilliant and had to spread his brilliance across the world. Lah did ah!
Now, he is learning what many of us already know. Good for him! But, his painful journey into scholarship, while having tons of wealthy time on his hands, suddenly dictates what MUST go on in every US classroom, again ignoring teachers. See the Pattern? Has always dissed his teachers, knew best and now his $Zill give him the right to dictate the WORLD. Scary Stuff.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I so agree. However the world full of immature scions of wealth. I am not holding my breath for that to change. It is up to the citizenry to see that gross wealth is taxed down to size and spread among the rest of the populace.
I’ve seen a few of the Big History videos, or at least parts of them. The ones I’ve seen are very good. The content was pretty standard ‘history of the universe” stuff, but the videos were well done.
Much more grave than a history course, I’m afraid, is seeing the same arrogance played out in his tax deductible (and profitable) world health dominance. Protests are rare, but one got out in 2008:
“Dr. Kochi, an openly undiplomatic official who won admiration for reorganizing the world fight against tuberculosis but was ousted from that job partly because he offended donors like the Rockefeller Foundation, called the Gates Foundation’s decision-making “a closed internal process, and as far as can be seen, accountable to none other than itself.”
Moreover, he added, the foundation “even takes its vested interest to seeing the data it helped generate taken to policy.”
Please watch the audience during Melinda Gates speech at the 67th World Health Assembly in May 2014. At minute 15:38, you’ll hear her tell how her Foundation will track and evaluate each country’s national health plan, then “work with world donors” to support the most cost-effective ones, which are best aligned with the Gates Foundation’s “Every Newborn Action Plan”.
If you’re wondering what in God’s name is wrong with the World Health Organization, and why nobody (besides Unicef and Doctors Without Borders) can lift a finger for the West Africa Ebola epidemic, start here. Watch their faces as she speaks; it looks like there is a cobra in the room.
Egomaniac? Megalomanic? Well, if Gates is doing it, should not we all? Should not we all wear the best clothes, travel in the best style, eat the best foods, live in the finest homes, send our kids to schools where they are treated with respect and have the world at their fingertips, instead of what he and his ilk are trying to do to “the rest of us?”
Anyone who pays attention to Gates is well…not thinking. Gates is a marketer of BAD ideas and products.
Bill Gates needs to stay out of education, period. Just because he’s rich doesn’t mean he knows anything outside of the itty-bitty sliver of how he made “his” money. He’s astonishingly ignorant and arrogant.
Bill Gates had a blog. I don’t know if he writes it, maybe he does. Anyway, here he is interviewing an award-winning public school teacher:
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/What-I-Learned-From-the-Teacher-of-the-Year
I know he probably has handlers and PR people and all that, he is, in fact, “a brand” which I don’t think he would deny and they probably worry about appearing anti-teacher ,but still. I don’t think you’d see the Netflix guy or the Amazon guy or the Facebook guy or the Walton Family heirs or the Enron guy sitting for a lesson from a public school teacher.
At least he thinks it’s important to be portrayed as listening 🙂
The problem with this, to me, is that Gates sees something he likes then stumbles into the process with little or no understanding that what is being offered fits within a specific subset of historians (the Annales School). The Annales School, which has included the likes of Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Jacques Le Goff and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has a very specific outlook–not to say that it is wrong, but that using works from these authors requires an understanding of what may or may not be disputed by another type of historian. They are noted for taking the “long duree” view of history (for example, Le Goff has argued that the Middle Ages do not end until the Industrial Revolution) and focusing on mentalities of societies or historical periods–i.e., where the historian acts as part anthropologist or social psychologist.
Makes me wonder what would have happened had Gates saw something by Eric Hobsbawm instead while on his treadmill.
Or Jean Gebser!
David,
You are way too intelligent for Bill. Maybe next time, he’ll catch Donald Duck and we will all be forced to watch that.
Is “Big History” aligned with the Common Core? Is Gates going to fund the assessments and get the contract to score them? Has David Christian ever taught history to middle schoolers or high schoolers? What is Bob Bain’s real life experience teaching in a public secondary school? Will STEM now be known as SHTEM? Can Gates explain to Arne Duncan how studying world history will make young Americans college and career ready? When Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of public libraries across this nation did he also dictate the titles purchased by the librarians?
Questions from a frustrated middle school social studies teaching professional.
History, as you know GST, is not in the CC per se. It’s an appendix in the ELA section. It’s primarily skills and not content based, and, as a result, it would be possible to teach “history” using the CC without ever actually teaching any history AT ALL. A district official in my district has actually managed to do that in the state history course. It’s simply a list of skills with, perhaps, a little state history thrown in, if the kids are lucky. It’s sickening. It reminds me of the destruction of history in George Orwell’s 1984.
As I begin yet another year of teaching in Pennsylvania under the watchful eye of Governor Corbett’s Dept. of Standardized Testing and Data Analysis (formerly known as the Dept. of Education) I will try to keep reminding myself that, as Orwell wrote, ignorance is strength.
Good set of questions. Obvious you know what you are talking about, Thanks.
I didn’t realize that Gates was funding a history curriculum of his own, but when grading Regents exams this past summer, I realized he is now part of the curriculum. This is from the August NY State Global History Regents. It’s one of the documents students must refer to when answering an essay question describing the effects of global issues on children and governments, groups, and/or individuals attempts to reduce the effects:
Millions of children in developing nations die from diseases like pneumonia, measles and
diarrhea that claim twice as many lives each year as AIDS. Vaccines prevent these basic
illnesses. Bill Gates pledges billions of dollars to vaccinate the world’s children. Problem
solved. But it’s not that easy.
Money alone won’t rid dirty water of parasites that can blind and cripple. It won’t fix bad
roads that keep people from getting care. It won’t end the political corruption and violent
unrest that erase health advances. It won’t stop a population explosion that contributes to poor health. It can’t even prevent a rat from gnawing through the power cord of a refrigerator used o store vaccines in a remote West African clinic.…
In late 1998, Gates donated $100 million to create a program dedicated to getting new and underused vaccines to children in the poorest countries. A year later, he gave a stunning $750 million to help launch a new superstructure for improving childhood vaccinations, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI)—a coalition of international public health agencies, philanthropists and the pharmaceutical industry.…
Gates knows that vaccines can’t do it all, not when a regional hospital in Nigeria draws its
water from an open pit in the ground. Or where a 6-year-old Ivory Coast boy with a leg twisted by polio faces a life of begging because his mother couldn’t afford a trip to a clinic for vaccines. Or where a broken board on a bridge can halt the shipment of medicine for days.…
Source: Tom Paulson, “Bill Gates’ war on disease, poverty is an uphill battle,”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 21, 2001
Bill Gates has a child-like quality about him. Very impulsive. Very self-centered and arrogant. ” Mommy, I just have to have that pony (Big History course), and every one else should have one too!”
In this case the course actually sounds like it would be a very interesting elective, possibly an AP course, that would, however, require a very strong and diverse skill/knowledge set by the teacher.
Even a blind squirrel occasionally stumbles upon an acorn every now and then.
Teachers in the elementary grades have little time to teach Social Studies, Science or the Arts due to the continuing push in ELA and Math and test-based accountability. It is the policies that Gates has been funding that are preventing our students from having the opportunities to approach learning in the inter-connected manner that “Big History” uses. All we hear is how important it is for students to think critically and solves problems, yet every policy Gates supports leads us further and further from a system that provides student centered learning and opportunities for authentic experiences.
Yep –which of his minions will bring this to his attention?
Diane has this wrong and will soon work that out when she looks into this matter further.
There are many reasons to take umbrage with billionaires dabbling in education and clear reasons why we should be vigilant and skeptical. However, David Christian’s ‘Big History’ and the support given by Gates is an example of how state schools can be resourced ethically with great course curriculum materials. I believe that Gates was genuinely intellectually excited – as I was – and has done some good here. I recommend that you listen or watch ‘Big History’ – as Gates did – before making a judgement. It is absolutely brilliant and an antidote to balkanised, limited and intellectually impoverished curriculum.
My thoughts and many links: http://www.darcymoore.net/tag/big-history
At what point does Bill Gates become an American Rupert Murdoch, using his money to create the world of his choosing – with him as prophet/overlord
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx My husband, a fair-minded independent & life-long corporate engineer, had this comment: “they should tax this guy properly and let the government handle education.”
That says it all, to my mind.
Yes! Except that Gates and his ilk are the government today.
Has your husband been reading how Arne Duncan (“the government”) has been handling education? He may want to amend his statement.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The problem with the current DOE needs to be answered with legislative action at many levels. There will always be Duncans.
Maybe, instead, he could create an operating system that doesn’t bite as badly as Windows 8? You know, the thing that he’s SUPPOSEDLY really good at? Stop turning this profession and the education of the next generation into your personal hobby.
oy vey,,what’s next? We already have nixed fiction, have far too much math, and now history that includes the big bang theory. I find it a little hard to digest that one human being could be allowed to influence the curriculum of millions upon millions of kids. It’s simply intolerable and has to stop. sigh. love, Julie
I was attracted to history as a very young person because I enjoyed reading about past events and famous people, good and bad, and their life stories. As a child I craved heroes and these were my heroes – government leaders, sports figures, musicians, artists, scientists, writers, military figures. For some reason I had to know their stories and I devoured biographies at home and excelled in my history classes. I majored in history in college and pursued a teaching career in public schools because I wanted to share the stories I loved with my students and hopefully win a few converts to my passion. I have always encouraged my students to want to read history simply for the pleasure of learning about the past and those who lived in it, famous and not famous.
I don’t believe this is what Bill Gates is selling with his new entry into the field of history. He is selling technology, and Dr. Christian’s videos may be a wonderful adjunct in an advanced class or in college, but it is not a history course for beginners who need the content, the stories, first, in my humble opinion, if they are to get anything out of the video set Gates is selling.
Gates seems to think that history is about science, or technology, or the making of complex conclusions, or even the future, and it is about all those things, but in a public school it should first be about the past, and it should inspire the children we teach to learn about what came before them, and to become inspired to emulate the good, and to recognize and fight the evil in their own times. Howard Zinn said it best: “History is important. If you don’t know history it’s as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything and you have no way of checking up on it…[history is a protective armor against being misled.”
Gates has misled us repeatedly with the common core, VAM, and expensive and unnecessary technologies in our schools. He can continue to spend his vast resources on his personal reformist whims, but we know the history, and I hope we won’t be misled again.
Exactly, GST! I totally agree.
It’s always interesting when these people outside of K-12 education stick their noses in.
Big history is an interesting approach. We live on a very old planet. MOST of our history is PREHISTORY. We are what we are, to a large extent, because of our PREHISTORY. For example, our ways of understanding the world and of dealing with one another were formed in small, closely knit bands. For most of human history, there was none of the isolation of a family in an apartment or in a house in the suburbs of the sort so common today. Many of our modern problems result from living in ways that are very, very unnatural for us, and there is much, much to learn from looking at things on a longer timeline. Much of the most fascinating stuff that I know has to do with deep deep history. It’s fascinating, for example, that some scientists have speculated that the Cambrian explosion was due to the emergence of protoconsciousness in ctenophora and like creatures. There are great papers by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg dealing with that. Fascinating stuff that gets at the roots of matters of great import to understand ourselves.
But Bill is doubtless unaware of the fact that ALMOST ALL guidelines sent by educational publishers to writers of textbook materials call for them to avoid references to deep history for fear of offending the sensibilities of fundamentalists who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old. I have seen, literally, thousands of sets of such guidelines, and they almost all contain such a prohibition. Bill would not know that it is ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE to find references to Neolithic or earlier human peoples in K-12 textbook materials except in passing in a few world history textbooks, and even those materials treat the subject very, very gingerly and as briefly and vaguely as possible (“People long ago. . . .”) The world history texts typically start with “the first cities.” Well, that was already really, really late in the game.
For all but a small, small fraction of our time on this planet, we were hunter-gatherers living in bands. And we were mostly gatherers, not hunters. Hunting was a small part of our activity, in most places, and provided very little in the way of calories–certainly not the staples of the diet.
I’m a big fan of Deep History. But public schools in the U.S. today can’t teach it. If they did, there would be an uproar that would make the controversies over the teaching of evolution or of values clarification or of sex education look tiny. That’s the reality today.
I don’t, personally, think that there is a conflict between having a religious or spiritual sensibility and outlook and beliefs, on the one hand, and a commitment to modern scientific and historical understandings, on the other. Bill doesn’t, himself, have a religious outlook. He is an atheist and a scientific amateur–in the delightful root sense of that word–not a practicing scientist but one who loves popular science.
But his isolation from the rest of the populace means that he doesn’t grok how different his worldview is from those of vast numbers of American parents. There’s a reason why the textbook companies issue those guidelines.
cx: fascinating stuff of great value for understanding ourselves.
“guidelines sent by educational publishers to writers of textbook materials call for them to avoid references to deep history for fear of offending the sensibilities of fundamentalists who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old.”
I found this very interesting. Do you have an example you could link or upload?
When confronting “history” I have generally presumed that to mean human history. There is a plethora of known facts in written and artifactual, human history. My concern is that “big history” is more science than history and implementation of it would limit the amount of time available to contemplate human history and how it relates to where we are and where we are going.
Certainly, a continued growth in our understanding of evolution, specifically what our species may eventually evolve into, if thay can be manipulatec and if there is some perceived endpoint would be fundamental to human history, but Big History (only read a few pages) feels a blurring of the distiction of science and history is heavy on “prehistoric” not historic and time constraints would significantly limit a students opportunity to study written and artifactual human history.
FLERP, contracts with publishers always prohibit sharing specific items from project guidelines with others. Being a lawyer, you will appreciate that. But anyone who has freelanced a lot in this industry will be able to verify what I have said. You have only to look through some K-12 world history or world lit texts to see what I mean about the almost complete lack of treatment of deep history. Literature has its origins in orature, and those origins are recoverable and fascinating and of enormous import for what is going on when we tell stories. But that’s a subject that gets very short shrift in K-12.
I appreciate it, I just want to see it!
When students are assigned to a school by street address, the least offensive education is the one the students get.
Bill Gates discovered America.
Bill Gates was the first man to walk on the moon.
Bill Gates was the first president of the USA.
Bill Gates landed “The Microsoft” on Plymouth Rock.
Bill Gates dated Cleopatra. (Okay I’m not buying that one. Cleo had better taste in men.)
you forgot one:
“Bill Gates created the Heavens and the Earth”
The Bible even says so: “In the beginning, there was the (Microsoft) Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
I am hoping some reconsider the situation in light of what Big History actually offers teachers and students, rather than the general politics of the situation, to make an ‘on balance’ evaluation: http://www.darcymoore.net/2014/09/08/big-history-gates-ravitch/
Here is my favorite paragraph:
“As I walked to the subway, I thought back to my conversations with Gates. Big History may one day become an heir to Western Civ or World History, but that didn’t seem to be Gates’s goal; it was more personal. Really, Big History just seems like a class he wished he could have taken in high school. But he wasn’t a billionaire then. Now, a flash of inspiration on the treadmill might just lead to something very big.”
How sad for America that the Gates of the world are making important governmental policy decisions. Just because you can make money doesn’t mean you have a clue about human nature, what drives it and what is beneficial.
Jeannie Kaplan
Two things:
1. Author Andrew Ross Sorkin seems to think that synthesizing concepts and knowledge from different disciplines is radical and rare in secondary education. In fact, it’s common – ask any World Language teacher – you teach the language, its sociology, its histories, its cultures, its food and recipes, its advances in sciences. Real teachers do this everyday, but neither Gates nor Sorkin asked any teachers about the practice.
2. This was designed by and taught by a real live college professor using digital media to enhance his class. All good – for college students. But high school kids are NOT college students and won’t become them by imagining this is so and insisting on it through technology. In the same way that CCSS insists on kindergartners reading, this thinking gets us to the NAEP proficient scale being used to label kids as failing. Not only are the metrics poor, they are flat-out wrong.
Christine,
I think the line between a high school and a college student is fuzzy at best. Many high school students successfully take college courses.
That some can is not a rationale that all must.
Christine,
I didn’t see anything in the article that suggested that “all must”. Where did you get the idea that this was to be a required course for high school graduation? The article specifically says that the course was pitched to individual schools, not districts or state departments of education.
Pardon if we’re a bit skeptical. The last tim Bill Gates thought something was a good idea we got CCSS!
That’s how it always starts…
Steve,
And how it often ends as well.
I have taught a limited version of Big History. It is an excellent evolving curriculum. If you like AP World history, which I also teach, you would like the human history part of Big History. it is the same philosophy of history, and certainly did not originate with either Christian or Gates. I disagree with much of what the Foundation stands for in terms of education, but this is first rate. And no-neither Big History nor AP World get into robber barons-neither is history on that scale.
Jerry, how does Big History treat income inequality, wealth inequality, the Great Depression, the labor movement?
I’m not usually a fan of everything Bill Gates has proposed educationally and I agree that to a large extent he is a decision maker in chief about all he promotes in the public sphere which has some very negative aspects, yet I do think that all of his or anybody else’s idea(s) needs to judged on its merits, “Big history” as an teaching idea strikes me as having merit enough to enter the conversation ought to be judged independently of its promulgator. And on the issue of its merit, Ms. Ravitch writes: “Now, let me say up front that the course may indeed be wonderful, engaging, provocative, and informative. I have not seen “Big History” and cannot judge its quality.”
Steve,
I don’t think any history taught in school should have a corporate sponsor or a sponsor with a giant ego.
Why can’t people understand the point of this particular blog? There may be valid arguments for or against “Big History”, still it is frightening that one man’s personal opinion could hold such great sway over public education policy.
Note to Bill: I am pleased that you have this passion. That’s what teaching kids is all about. Get the heck out of education and allow teachers to create their own courses and pursue their passions with students and see what amazing things will happen outside a one-size-fits-all, standardized curriculum. Give me the high school with the teacher fascinated by big history who is teaching that. The one with the teacher who is fascinated by the Russian revolution who is teaching that. The one with the teacher who is fascinated by wave motion or paleontology teaching that. The one with the teacher with a passion for Greek drama or Shakespeare teaching that. The one with the teacher with a passion for applying statistics to current events and contemporary problems teach that.
Why? Because what we can most teach is our passion for what we, ourselves, love learning. At our best, we are models to students of what learners are and of what they can be.
One doesn’t get that from a standardized curriculum preparing students for standardized tests.
Will the kid who graduates from high school having taken courses in wave motion, Russian history, and Greek drama and geopolitical demographics have a spotty education? Yes. News flash: we all have spotty educations. But that student will have learned a few things deeply, from people who care about them, and most of all, that student will have learned what learning is really about. That student will have learned about joy in learning.
This will not happen under a standardized regime.
So, Bill, let your interest in Big History be a wake up call to you. It’s completely incompatible with the kind of educational system that your money is creating.
The above article contains several non sequiturs which undermine the authors point of view. Bill Gates is not like a tobacco company, robber baron, or some one who, because he is rich, would not have a general social consciousness and sense of fairness to those who form unions or are otherwise at the low end of the economy. Nothing in his personal history indicates this. In fact, I see more of the opposite. What I see him guilty of, as far as this issue is concerned, is just general naivete about education. What he marvels at is not new at all. In many cases it is a good thing and many teachers incorporate other disciplines into their math, science, and language courses. Remember the Jacob Bronofski series way back? The Ascent Of Man was watched by almost everyone. The episode dealing with the Holocaust tied the Nazi death camps with particle physics (“This is what happens when we think our ideas are absolute”)
So far, Mr. Gates has not been helpful to education, but I feel others have been cynical about his motives
Nino, when one man is worth $80 Billion, he must take care not to throw his weight around. His education initiatives are monumental failures but everyone is willing to go along even when they know he is wrong. With $80 Billuon comes the requirement to go carefully into domains of which you are ignorant.
There is nothing naive about a wealthy man who believes his opinions so wise that he uses his billions to fundamentally change education not only nationally, but globally as well; forcing his ideas on a populace who have clearly stated “no thanks”. Naive? I don’t think so.