Mercedes Schneider, a high school teacher in Louisiana who holds a Ph.D. in research and statistics, here reviews Bill Gates on education. Although he never went to public school, never taught anywhere, never studied education, and dropped out of college, he is listened to with reverence when he talks about education. Why?
Why do people listen? Schneider explains. What is his vision of education for our children? Does it align with what he wants for his own children? How is he using his billions to redirect education? Is this what we need or want?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s explained here fairly well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBHZFYpQ6nc
The easy answer is wealth and the “prestige” of a company he co-founded.
But I think there’s more to why he won’t shut up. Gates was a gifted, self-centered brat. Talented for sure, and driven. That’s not speculation.
But for all the dominance of Microsoft, its success is not built on anything but mediocre products. Microsoft may have more market share, but Apple is the most valuable company. Anywhere. That’s gotta hurt.
So Gates is still the gifted, second-rater. So maybe he just keeps on trying too hard to reach for the ring.
I’ve just read The First Tycoon. Gates is no Cornelius Vanderbilt. But Vanderbilt destroyed some second-raters like him.
Money buys credibility, even in fields that the person knows nothing about. Gates is about control. If he truly believed in education he would’ve donated money to a very good education school and then sit back and let them do their job. If Gates believes something is true, it’s true.
Gates really needs to learn what genuine research shows about the importance of human interactions in learning, because it is so contrary to his blind faith in technology.
In a study of children from English-speaking families tutored in Mandarin at age nine months, “The researchers expected the children who’d watched the videos to show the same kind of learning as the kids tutored face-to-face. Instead they found a huge difference. The children exposed to the language through human interactions were able to discriminate between similar Mandarin sounds as well as native listeners. But the other infants—regardless of whether they had watched the video or listened to the audio—showed no learning whatsoever.”
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/baby-brains/bhattacharjee-text
Teacher Ed –
Thank you for this excellent article!
Thanks for sharing Teacher Ed. I spent 9 years working in homes with at-risk infants and their families. It was called Early Intervention. Although it’s hard to quantify what positive effect I had on these children, I believe that the home visits did make a difference for many of these families. What most people fail to realize is that the home environment plays such a huge role in whether or not students come to school prepared to benefit from the education available to them. I learned to suspend judgement, look past my preconceived attitudes, and recognize whatever positives there were on these high poverty homes. The sad part is that schools are ill equipped to overcome the barriers these children bring with them to school. It is definitely not impossible to overcome these barriers, but our education system isn’t given the resources necessary. No amount of rigor or standards will help high poverty children overcome these barriers to learning. Early intervention is the key. But the path that is being chosen now for Preschool education will do more harm than good because it will focus on developmentally inappropriate academic skills rather that setting the foundation for curiosity and social skills. More of the same test and punish, labeling kids as failures before they have a chance to mature.
If I were a billionaire” (from Fiddler on the roof”)
If I were a billionaire
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I’d VAM-the-teacher-bum
If I were a Gates-ly man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
If I were a Billy-Billy Gates
Daidle deedle daidle daidle man
I’d build a big card house with rooms by the dozen
Right in the middle of the school
A Common Core with real shaky floors below
There would be one wrong staircase just going up
And one even wronger coming down
And one more leading nowhere, just for show
I’d fill the DOE with turkeys and geese
And ducks for the towns to see and hear
Squawking just as noisily as they can
And each loud “pa-pa-geeee! pa-pa-gaack! pa-pa-geeee! pa-pa-gaack!”
Would land like a trumpet on the ear
As if to say, “Here lives a Gates-ly man.”
Oy
If I were a billionaire
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I’d VAM-the-teacher-bum
If I were a Gates-ly man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
If I were a Billy-Billy Gates
Daidle deedle daidle daidle man
I see my wife, Melinda, looking like a billionaire’s wife
With a proper Founda-tion
Supervising grants to her heart’s delight
I see her funding think tanks and strutting like a peacock
Oy! What a happy mood they’re in
Scheming after teachers day and night
The most important men in DC will come to fawn on me–
They will ask me to advise them
Like a Col-e-man the Wise–
“If you please, Bill Gates?”–
“Pardon me, Bill Gates?”–
Posing standards that would cross a teacher’s eyes–
Ya va voy, ya va voy voy vum
And it won’t make one bit of difference
If I answer right or wrong–
When you’re Gates, they think you really know
If I were a billionaire
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
All day long I’d VAM-the-teacher-bum
If I were a Gates-ly man
I wouldn’t have to work hard
Daidle deedle daidle
Daidle daidle deedle daidle dum
Lord who made the Common Core and VAM
You decreed I should be what I am–
Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan
If I were a Gates-ly man
Priceless!!!
Oh, that is processor. Just the right amount of the original, too. Love it.
Priceless, not processor. I seem to be having problems with technology today…
Why do people, media listen? Obvious. He has money and the Supreme Court has said that money is speech so the people with the most money have the most speech – at least the most influential speech.
Hooray for the Supreme Court. The elected George W, passed Citizens United, allowed states to disenfranchise those voters who the moneyed interests did not want voting.
Indeed. our “democracy” is alive and well.
Priceless, not processor!