Mercedes Schneider was not at all pleased that Bill Gates lectured teachers about teaching at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards annual conference. He has never taught but he thinks he knows how to teach. Messing with education is his hobby.
Why was he invited? Schneider thinks he bought the platform by donating millions to the NBPTS.
She takes him to the woodshed and gives him a talking to or a paddling, I am not sure which.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“She takes him to the woodshed and gives him a talking to or a paddling, I am not sure which.”
What you have in this post is Tired Schneider. I fell asleep more than once while writing.
However, Gates’ brazenness made me mad, and I felt compelled to write.
It is possible to have a home-hitting woodshed experience with me via only my “talking to”– just ask my students.
Mercedes, this is beautifully done, as always. Thank you for your tireless efforts.
I actually think that Bill Gates means well but that he is very, very confused on these matters and so doing a lot of unintentional damage. It’s all very, very sad, because he could be a force for great good in the world, and in some areas, he is. I’ve long admired his intellect and capaciousness and desire to give back and make a difference, and so his participation in these damaging deforms–his foisting of this extrinsic reward model on US K-12 schools–is extremely disappointing to me. And, yes, at times, it all makes me furious. When I talk to that fifth-grade teacher who has to give up her novel read-alouds that kids have gotten so much out of through the years because she has to make room for scripted LDC lessons done for test prep, I want to scream, and every time I have to work within the confines of the incredibly amateurish CC$$ in ELA, I have the same feeling.
deutsch29: your off days are better than the best days of Bill Gates.
😏
But you both measure yourselves differently. Think of all those brilliant, cleverly numbered iterations of Windoze, innovation fueled by that infallible numeric substitute for human judgment called forced ranking/stacked ranking.
His data-driven intellect all by itself crushed that teensy weensy little company named after a grape or an orange or something run by an idiot name Steve Tasks[?]!
😜
Although, not strangely, you seem to have grasped something beyond figures that another numbers/stats person figured out a while ago:
“Strive not to be a success, but to be of value.” [Albert Einstein]
So thank you for all your efforts. Your knowledge and integrity have made many of us feel we know you—
“A decent boldness ever meets with friends.” [Homer]
😎
Thankful for Mercedes.
Mercedes, you don’t have to justify yourself. Your facts speak for themselves.
However, I’d like to add thaty those taking money from Gates and partnering with him are just as guilty, just as evil, just as stupid . . . .
He has no business having as large as a say as he does in education because he is not en educator. . . . plain and simple.
I wonder if the ABA or the American Association of for Thoracic Surgery would want Gates having such a dominant voice in the practice of law or thoracic procedures. . . .
Teachers and children are an easy, soft target. . . . .
Robert, thank you for your encouragement. Yes, those taking the money (and handing Bill the right to speak to their organizations!!) are at fault, as well– and even more, since they are compromising their constituency by aligning with Gates.
In my PhD program, I had all A’s except for one B in my last year. I was taking classes, teaching a class (might have been two– I forget), and writing my dissertation. In one of the classes I was taking, I was required to complete an involved group project. I knew I hadn’t the time or mental energy to devote to A-caliber work, so I chose to get a B. It was what was necessary for me to get through, and not being obsessed with grades, I gave little thought to the issue.
Bach to the present: Could I have written a better post? Yes. Am I satisfied with this offering given my exhaustion? Yes.
Warriors get tired, we understand! Wading through the muck and bs of the Gates Brigade takes heavy lifting. With enough methane though, it will blow up if we can just light the matches in the right places. Thank you again Dr. Schneider speaking for many of us.
Sorry but I need to rant about his reference in the speech to “electric plugs”…….
Bill Gates’ Common Core comparison to electric plugs as “motivation” brings to mind the Milgram obedience experiment that has become the most famous study in psychology’s history. There is a relationship. Today, the Common Core “obedience” from it’s supporters and promoters seems to come from people who worship Bill Gates as an “authority”. Like the Milgram experiment, the “voice of authority” can lead people to follow orders and perform in ways that goes against their own nature, even to commit cruel acts on others without conscience awareness of guilt or shame.
Bill Gates may be one of the best authorities on technology, but he is not an authority on child development, education, or psychology. In fact, my observation as an autism specialist is that Bill Gates has classic “Asperger” (High Functioning Autism). This is not to diminish the value of people with autistic qualities, including myself, but it can present some deficits in specific areas of affective functioning, and it does cause certain limitations. It may be this deficit that does not allow him to recognize the psychological distress to children caused by the CCE (Common Core Environment). It may also be the deficit that does not allow him to recognize his own limitations.
There are two conditions that determine psychological abuse: Entrapment & Control.
Both of those conditions are in place in the CCE. Children are forced to attend school, therefore they are trapped with no escape. While in that environment, they are being controlled with a rigid schedule with a domineering teacher using uninspiring, mind numbing, low level, rote memory, test drill that is like torture. They have little opportunity for creative self directed learning, cooperative learning, or imaginative self expression. This chronic stress and feelings of “never fully measuring up” in the CCE is high risk for psychological damage. It is a dismal “work” environment that is joy-less, comfort-less and heart-less. It is this same grim social denial that led to childen working in factories of New England in the 1800’s.
Sitting in a desk for seven hours without healthy physical activity and without ongoing social emotional interactions with peers causes a child to feel isolated and “punished”. The CCE is a “bullying” environment that is causing children to have chronic feelings of “victimization” that are unrecognized and repressed. Young children in this environment are learning to repress their own needs and emotions and perform according to what their teacher/parent wants. A child’s greatest fear is disappointing parents or teachers.
This “self denial” and conditioning of children to repress their emotions is the beginning of the “faux front” that will develop into a personality disorder. The child will build an internal reservoir of repressed feelings of victimization – shame, anger, guilt, helplessness, while outwardly performing well intellectually for the teachers and parents. A child in the CCE will become desensitized and emotionally flat. After some time, it can be observed that they have lost their spirit when they begin to function more robotic. At that point, they have lost imagination, spontaneity, and humor. Their behavior will become more withdrawn or irritable, bored, sad, cry easily, sleep or eating disorders, or impulsive aggression. At the time these symptoms can be recognized, the damage is already done. They are “burned out” and depressed. Without intervention, this chronic traumatic stress will manifest in young adulthood as self destructive or risk taking behaviors that will negatively impact their future and well being. Their intellect may be high from the CCE, but their social/emotional development will suffer severely.
Intellectual development (cognitive) and Emotional development (affective) do not run on the same track. In fact, they develop in different stages at different times, and not always at the same pace with each child. It is “imagination” that uses elements of each, cognitive and affective, when making decisions and perceiving one’s world. It is the emotional development that maintains a person’s “morality”, in addition to their ability for empathy or guilt, and other feelings/emotions. When imagination (spirit) goes away, there can be decisions made with intellect, but without connections to affect: guilt or shame.
When young children are “captive” in an authoritarian school environment that focuses exclusively on “performance” (reward/punishment), their intellectual development will advance, but their social/emotional development will not. Without a “safe” environment that supports healthy social and emotional development from positive behavior modeling, and when forced to function in a “threatening” demanding environment, children’s social/emotional development will not progress but will be stunted. If the insecurity from a “threatening” environment becomes chronic, a child’s emotional development will start to regress (going back to a safer place in early childhood). This delayed emotional development and/or emotional regression will become “hard wired” into a young child’s personality. This invalidating environment in public schools has intensified to what we have today as the most punitive environment in history, and we see increasing evidence in the general population of adults who cannot think for themselves, are slow to mature, and often behave like “children”.
The invalidating school environment has increasingly contributed to the problem that has become a psychological plague in American society: “covert” Narcissistic Personality Disorder. We have many highly functioning intellectual professionals (the best and the brightest) but with immature social/emotional development, which includes a deficit of morals. (think Enron, Wall Street, Politicians, Billionaires, etc). They usually perform well in their work, but their personal lives often reflect their emotional deficits via relationships of codependency. Their codependency is often “covert”, since it mostly impacts their personal relationships with people or “things”, and usually reflects an addiction to either substances (alcohol, drugs, food, sex, gambling, etc), or to work, or to their mates or romantic interests.
The punitive environment in elementary schools is causing many children to have symptoms of High Functioning Autism. This has been a mystery. Mental health professionals all over the country are focusing on the soaring increase in autism, and the co-occurring disorders of anxiety and depression. The early signs of regression and emotional dysregulation that were previously believed to be High Functioning Autism, are now being recognized by more mental health professionals as signs of “traumatic stress”. Both trauma and High Functioning Autism have similar symptoms, primarily regression, dissociation, and constriction. CCE has created an environment of traumatic stress for many children, especially the sensitive children who are often gifted and prone to high spatial intelligence. Their symptoms often include ADHD in addition to the other signs of anxiety and depression. These children, who are most often the creators, inventors, and artists, are the most damaged in the CCE. Like the reference to Einstein’s quote: These children are “fish” who are being measured on how well they can climb a tree.
It is my observation as an educator and mental health professional, that the current school CCE is causing psychological damage to young children on a grande scale. It is causing permanent psychological damage in the form of personality disorders, especially Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. It is also my professional observation that those who designed the curriculum do not have the knowledge of child development or empathy to recognize the psychological damage from chronic emotional distress, which is very gradual and works on the brain like erosion works on soil.
Bill Gates and the other school reform billionaires may be the “best and the brightest” in designing technology and recognizing what constitutes intellectual development, but they are causing harm to the nation’s children by not listening to mental health experts
and child development specialists. It may be their own “narcissistic” personality traits, in combination with those of the general population, that bestowed this “voice of authority”
on them, but they are wrong about what children need. We cannot afford to allow wealth and power to buy “false authority” for determining what children need.
The nation’s most recognized researcher on Borderline Personality Disorder resides in Seattle, and works at the University of Washington. Bill Gates would be wise to consult with Dr Linehan and UW about the impact of CCE on children . This important research from UW, which shows that an “invalidating” environment in childhood leads to Borderline Personality in adulthood, cannot be ignored in light of the statistics on children’s mental health disorders resulting from the CCE. The CCE may enhance some test scores through motivation by fear and intimidation, but our nation will pay a heavy price that Bill Gates nor his cadre of billionaires cannot afford. There is no amount of money that can fix permanent psychological damage to children.
As Frederick Douglass said, “It is easier to care for a child than to fix a broken man.”
If Bill Gates and the other Common Core “voices of authority” continue to ignore children’s greatest needs, and fail to recognize the psychological damage from CCE, they (we) are in effect practicing what the Milgram experiment proved.
wonderful piece, Mimi!
Thank you!!!
For Twitter: Copy and Paste and then ReTweet as often as possible. The shortened link goes to the original post at deutsch29. I use “Bitly” to shorten links.
Bill Gates has a hobby
Messing with public education
Yet he’s not a teacher & has never taught in the public schools
http://bit.ly/1eEocg9
Thanks, Lloyd! Done.
I was hoping he’d be booed during his speech there. Didn’t know NBPTS was cash strapped and desparate. Can’t understand why the NBs would even take his advice for other than money. The national medical boards better beware of his dictatorial leadership.
Another outstanding piece by Mercedes!!!
More on this:
forget the woodshed, the gallows is where I’d like to lead him.
Mercedes,
In an effort to pursue elegance and refinement, it would be much more cultured of us to take Mr. Gates to the outhouse and dunk his face into the latrine . . . .
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
ABC just aired parts of a George Stephanopoulos interview with Bill Gates about the Common Core Standards. Nothing mentioned about substantive professional opposition. Anyone watching the interview clips should realize that Gates is talking through his hat.
Why does every slob with a billion dollars think he knows more than teachers about education?
Great wealth and power act like a virus that infects many among the top 0.01% causing them to be mentally deranged thinking they know how to fix everything. And because they have the money, they go out and spread their own brand of destruction.
What did Christ say on the Cross? Something like: Forgive them Father, for they don’t know what they’re doing.
Lloyd, I always look for your posts. Everything you say and think is spot on. . . . . But I ain’t forgiving any reformer who use junk science and privatization to “improve” education and who use a false narrative to brand almost all teachers and administrators.
Forgiveness has no place here . . . .
Try something more like “An eye for an eye” . . . . .
Don’t mistake what I say as forgiveness. In combat, understanding why your enemy is out to kill you doesn’t stop you from getting them first. It helps you win.
Sun Tzu (544 – 496 BC), the author of the “Art of War” (still studied at West Point and by many successful CEOs), says to keep your enemies close and understand them.
Excellent, Lloyd. Thank you! You’re right . . .