Anthony Cody has been a persistent critic of the hubris of the Gates Foundation. Not long ago, he managed to get an agreement from the foundation to engage in a debate about the foundation’s agenda, what it is and what it should be. That debate became the basis for Cody’s recent book The Educator and the Oligarch. Cody wants the foundation to pay more attention to experienced educators, not so much to economists and theoreticians who don’t know much about the realities of classrooms today.
In this post, he holds out hope that the foundation might display a new humility because of the recently expressed views of its new CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellman, who taught for two years in Uganda. She was quoted saying,
On a very practical level, that time in Uganda was a lesson about what it takes to work successfully in a different culture. “I learned about what it really takes to work at scale in a poor country. As a western academician, as a Gates Foundation person, the first thing you should be doing is listening and learning. And have a huge sense of humility about what you don’t know,” she said.
I googled Dr. Desmond-Hellman, and I must say, she has an extraordinarily impressive resume. I think her appointment signals that the Gates Foundation will review and increase its investments in public health, especially in impoverished nations.
It is not clear where she might take the foundation’s top-down, heavy-handed education agenda, which has so far produced no results and tremendous hostility towards the foundation. Bill Gates said in 2013 that “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” It seems that the many teachers and principals who have been fired, the wreckage caused by the foundation’s love of standardized testing and data, are simply collateral damage while Mr. Gates waits to figure out, a decade from now, whether “our education stuff” is working.
I am betting on Sue Desmond-Hellman. Something tells me that her life experience is broad enough and deep enough to warn her away from evidence-free experimentation with people’s lives. I may be wrong, but I will take a wait-and-see attitude and hope for the best. Sue, I’m counting on you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“I think her appointment signals that the Gates Foundation will review and increase its investments in public health, especially in impoverished nations.”
I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Gates has already done a fair amount of damage to public health in the developing world, despite the reputation to the contrary. From what I understand, they handle public health just like they do education. It’s all about tech solutions and they know best. Locally generated solutions, whether they’ve been working or not, are tossed out the window like so much bathwater, along with veterans in the field.
Thank you. He’s not just good at making money; he’s good at PR. So many people fooled.
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com.
So much for reform urgency: “Bill Gates said in 2013 that “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” Yet incalculable damage has and will be done during that time. One hopes that change is in the air at the Gates Foundation.
It’s really unfortunate that Cody is repeating this woman’s lies with such credulity, and wishing for the Gates Foundation to spare us here, and instead turn it’s predatory faux-philanthropy on Africa with our blessing.
Desmond-Hellman has not nee “teaching” in Uganda. She’s been working to take Monsanto’s colonialist exploitation of Uganda to scale. This is a continent whose people have no way to fight her, because they are under attack from all sides. Just as the Gates Foundation has done here, she has been imposing corporate domination on their ministries. How do we come to ENDORSE her effort to harvest profit from the medical and agricultural infrastructure of a real people, with real human rights.
I have to choose only one link, so let it be to the current Gates campaign to impose a proprietary GMO monoculture on African farmers, from above. The banana is one of the most reliable and nutritions crops grown anywhere in Africa. This profit-driven agenda does nothing to improve nutrition, and risks great harm to the health and economy of the Ugandan people.
http://afsafrica.org/afsa-open-letter-opposing-human-feeding-trials-involving-gm-banana/
While my husband was a post doc in international health at UC Davis, in the nineties, I took large amounts of beta carotene and donated several horse syringes of my blood, to be exposed to cigarette smoke. Beta carotene isn’t just a precursor molecule to vitamin A, but to a whole raft of retinoids, many of which are pro-inflammatory and carcinogenic. We got that paper out just as a group in Finland discovered their beta carotene trial had raised the cancer rate dramatically in their study of smokers.
The forced introduction of this proprietary crop, to replace a staple food source, is scientifically unconscionable. There are important and specific medical objections. Scientists trying to say so are facing the same kind of retaliation and repression we face here, as educators. I’m trying to make it clear I’m not attacking anybody’s integrity, but only their gullibility. However, at some point we in the West have a responsibility to the rest of the world’s peoples, when our favorite billionaire philanthropists are given free reign to exploit them for profit under our tax laws.
Thank you chemtchr for keeping on top of all this and keeping us informed. It’s tough to keep up with Gates – he’s so good at manipulation and controlling his image and he’s got his fingers in so many pots. He does such a wonderful job of convincing so many people of all the wonders of his “humanitarian” programs. I know enough to always be skeptical of anything “good” coming from the Gates Foundation, but not always enough to know the specifics. Keep beating us over the head.
Thank you for the information chemtchr.
from the link supplied above….
“Africa, the USA, and indeed the rest of the world, do not need GM crops. These crops divert resources away from more locally appropriate and controlled agricultural solutions to nutritional concerns. If indeed the aim of those involved in the promotion of the project is truly to combat Vitamin A deficiency then surely they should be advocating for the consumption of more diverse fruits and foods, such as sweet potatoes that are rich in Vitamin A and that are in abundance in Africa. Ironically, the promotion of a GM food staple high in Vitamin A, risks perpetuating monolithic diets, the very causes of Vitamin A deficiency in the first place.”
I read the link. This part about feeding students GMO bananas…
“These trials funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are being carried out under the leadership of Dr. Wendy White of the Iowa State University, on 12 young students…”
made me feel physically ill.
Rethought the above comment. Can it be removed? Thanks-A
Thank you for your information. What Dienne said –
Here are the five reasons the Gates edu-foundation are optimistic about public education in the US. Three of the five involve schools purchasing product from technology companies.
I mean, come on. Can’t this industry just sell product like everyone else? Is there some reason we all have to act like it’s wholly selfless and charitable? Maybe they genuinely believe more time in front of a screen will benefit lower and middle income children, but I just resent how we’re not allowed to mention it’s also a HUGE market that benefits a heck of a lot of adults too.
50% of public schools had to upgrade tech capacity to administer the Common Core tests. That happened. Yet all I hear about is how public school teachers and labor unions are self-interested. If you’re a believer in ‘self interest” as far as labor unions, don’t you have to apply that same standard to the giant marketing effort on ed-tech?
Or are these people just intrinsically better people because they’re wealthy?
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2015/01/5-Reasons-Were-Optimistic-about-US-Schools
“Upgrade tech capacity.” At the Ohio Council of Social Studies website, they tout their success in getting the Ohio legislature to reintroduce state student measurement, for social studies.
At Ohio’s site, the bragging about legislative success doesn’t identify a mandate for “electronic” testing. On the other hand, NCSS, at its site, (recipient of $500,000 Gates grant) praises the same Ohio legislative initiative, referring to a requirement that “electronic” testing be used.
My conclusion, the goal is data collection and use, by outside entities, purchase of curriculum and testing software, purchase of electronic hardware, and purchase of ongoing analytical reports. Otherwise, why spell out “electronic testing”, in the mandate? The opportunity for substantial profit-making by tech companies demands specific testing tools.
Our tech never works as intended. In order to, it would be ridiculously expensive. Some newer, younger admin are being brainwashed, or are prejudiced, that teachers who don’t wholeheartedly embrace tech and make it a big part of daily teaching are dinosaurs.
“Humble Pie”
Billy Gates is humble
As cherry pie is pumpkin
As killer bees are bumble
As Harvard don is bumpkin
Gates, who is 58, ….Without prompting, he recounted getting a bad grade in an eighth-grade geography course (“They paired me up with a moron, and I realized these people thought I was stupid, and it really pissed me off!”) and the only C-plus he ever received, in organic chemistry, at Harvard (“I’m pretty sure. I’d have to double-check my transcript. I think I never ever got a B ever at Harvard. I got a C-plus, and I got A’s!”).
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/magazine/so-bill-gates-has-this-idea-for-a-history-class.html?_r=1
The quote is from an article Diane posted a while back. I don’t think I want a person who, decades later, refers to a fellow student as a “moron” pushing educational policies. I always find it interesting that people feel the need to share their GPA/grades.
And Billy dropped out of Harvard.
I don’t understand why this “baffles” him:
“Many education experts, while generally supportive of the new goals for reading and math skills, have been critical of the seemingly unilateral way in which the policy appeared to be rolled out.”
He thought this giant program, rolled out in thousands of public schools all over the country with no real national debate or discussion prior to adoption would be, what? Immediately and universally embraced by millions of people in thousands of local schools?
Did he notice the health law debate? Did he see how contentious that was? He thought people were LESS interested in what their children do every day in school than they were on whether they could buy an insurance policy with a subsidy on an exchange?
Funny how he implies is bad grade in eighth grade was his partner’s fault. I wonder if those people had reason to think he was stupid; is it at all possible that the work he did was poor?
and take take a look at places where education works: http://blip.tv/hdnet-news-and-documentaries/dan-rather-reports-finnish-first-6518828
Thank you SomeDAM Poet
Takes a poet to bring some sanity to this discussion.
If the big push for tech doesn’t come with massive funding, you know where they’re going to try to cut expenses to pay for the tech.
I believe Gates has some sort of disorder. He cannot get enough money and power, and seems to think he deserves it because he is so brilliant and superior. (Brilliant and superior are clearly not how I see him, but many people do.)
So I cannot share this optimism. Gates is always about promoting Gates and making even more money. I think he may delude himself that he is doing good in the world, but that doesn’t mean he ever will. He will push tech, tech, tech in the schools. That is not going to end.
Ms. Desmond-Hellman could publicly explain why Gates sends his children to schools that reject high stakes testing. And, how she views the high-stakes testing at the schools that educate her children (unless they attend schools like the Gates children do).