Emily Talmage teaches fourth grade in Maine. She wasn’t supposed to be a career teacher. She went to Exeter, then Amherst, and became a teacher through the New York City Teaching Fellows Program. Unexpectedly, she discovered that she loved teaching.
As it happened, she was a sophomore at Exeter when Mark Zuckerberg was a senior. She may have shared a Latin class with him. She takes advantage of this slight proximity to write an open letter to him, warning him that he is hanging out with the wrong crowd. That is, Bill Gates and the other corporate reformers.
Here is an excerpt:
“Corporate reformers,” as we call them on the ground, are very good at preying on our best intentions. I, myself, was once taken in by a school that promised it was “closing the achievement gap,” but whose practices were so appalling and abusive that I left within a year. Of course, I have never been to a Summit Public School, so I cannot speak about their system. I must confess, however, that when I see who else is promoting this school, the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
“Let me assure you that “personalized learning,” as it is being pushed by the Gates Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Digital Learning Now Council, as well as countless educational technology companies, start-ups, and venture capitalists who have invested millions into personalized learning experiments (they call them “innovations”), is a far, far cry from the type of education we got at Exeter.
“At Exeter, we sat around shiny hardwood tables debating meaning buried within novels that were carefully selected by our teachers; we disagreed about interpretations of historical events, and were sometimes drowned out by the passion of Harkness Warriors (I was never one of those, were you?). Our teachers had ways of guiding us toward particular insights, but they never held us hostage to specific outcomes, or “competencies” as they are called now, before allowing us to move on. (If you aren’t sure what I mean by “competencies” and the role they play in personalized learning models, please read more here.) If an outside observer had come into one of our classrooms, as happens now in many public schools, to ask us “What is your learning target today, and how will you know if you have met it?” I’m quite sure not many of us would have been able to say. Our teachers probably would have been appalled at such a question.
“These are the constraints under which “personalized” learning models operate. Standards, competencies, learning targets and progressions, all of which must be tracked and monitored and controlled in order to work, are the ingredients of “personalized learning.” Students may be in control of their “learning trajectory,” in such a model, but not of their own minds, as we were at Exeter.
“In my humble opinion, this is a bastardization of true education.
“Of course, you can see why venture capitalists, educational technology companies and their related foundations (yes, I do mean Gates) would see a prime opportunity for profit through this type of model. Computers can, indeed, do this type of work.”
Will Mark Zuckerberg see Emily’s letter?
Post it on his Facebook page. He needs our help.
Thank you for having my back, Diane! 🙂
It may be a small and tangential point, but this sort of jumped out at me: “I was a lower (sophomore) when you were a senior.” It just seems to me indicative of the training that the elite get that it’s okay (kind of chummy, good ol’ boy sort of thing) to demean people who are not of one’s “station”. I get that everyone gets their turn at being both a “lower” and a “senior”, but what’s wrong with the good old fashioned, freshman, sophomore and junior labels? Why do some people have to be “lower” than others?
Because you and I are just peons, didn’t you know that!?!?!
I also went to Exeter, and sophomores are referred to as “lower middlers” and Juniors as “Upper Middlers”. It is not a demeaning designation. Freshmen are referred to as “juniors”. It is quaint, and dates back to 1781.
OFF TOPIC:
Funny cartoon from L.A. Progressive…
It sums up charter schools in a little over 2 minutes:
The government/private sector/ ed reform foundation marketing push for “personalized learning” really worries me, so I’m glad she mentioned it.
I can’t help it- I feel like there are neon, flashing warning lights going off all over the place on this. My only hope is local public school leaders rely on their own judgment and do some real analysis before they sink a ton of public school funding into what looks to like a really sophisticated marketing campaign conducted by all the usual suspects:
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2015/11/The-Promise-of-Personalized-Learning-Revealed-In-Two-New-Studies#.VkynYFWrTnB
I sincerely hope people who are responsible for public schools don’t follow the national ed reform “movement” off a cliff on this, because that’s where the herd seems to be heading right now. I know they all say it isn’t about replacing teachers with cheap commercial garbage for the lower and middle classes, but I hope we aren’t all relying on good intentions. Long after Arne Duncan is off to his private sector job and Bill Gates has moved on to his next project we’ll still be dealing with any “unintended consequences” of rushing into this.
Read this post I wrote a few weeks ago to see what is happening in my local town. It’s really sad. http://emilytalmage.com/2015/10/04/what-the-core-is-really-for/
Emily: Your link is concerning. Gates’ billionaire tentacles span from sea to shining sea. His deep pockets allow him to pitch and experiment with antiquated Skinnerian stimulus/response learning theory. His goal is not to improve education. His goal is to make education conform to his market goals by selling products under the aegis of “personalized learning,” a euphemism for stimulus/response training that true educators left in the dust fifty years ago. Teachers must continue to work for the rights of children to get a meaningful education full of human messiness. Teachers must resist Gates’ misguided, misinformed quest to distill teaching, learning and evaluation to models that conveniently become a Microsoft product.
I wish someone would talk Mark Zuckerberg into using his money to start another business and “create” some decent private sector jobs.
I think I liked the old school billionaires better, quite frankly. With all their many, many faults they knew the difference between “private sector” and “public sector” so they had that vital concept down.
Julius Rosenwald funded the construction and operation of thousands of public schools for black children in the south in the early 1900s. The “public sector” was going to get around to doing that in, well, never. Andrew Carnegie stepped up to build about 1,800 free and completely public libraries, something the “public sector” hadn’t felt was necessary for the poor, the working class, and minorities. Museums, fine and performing arts spaces, healthcare institutions, and numerous schools and universities may not be part of the “public sector,” per se, but were funded for the benefit of the public.
Exeter is as selective an institution as any in the world, with every student screened for very high academic ability–ELLs and SWDs need not apply. Its faculty isn’t unionized, employment is at-will. Teachers reside in dormitories for a minimum of ten years and during that time effectively serve as parents. The Exeter experience is made possible by parents who are willing to pay above and beyond a premium price for what is a luxury product–they aren’t just buying what Exeter offers, but exclusivity.
While Ms Talmadge waits for Mr Zuckerberg to respond, I hope she’ll consider that maybe he has already thought through the difficulties of bringing a luxury product to the masses and is trying a different approach.
Tim,
In the diversity of voices on this blog, we can always count on you to defend the 1%.
Tim,
For those of us that are self=diagnosed AI what is “SWD”?
Students with disabilities.
Duane, for those of us who are self-diagnosed SotD*, what is AI?
(*Slow on the Draw)
To Tim, below: I don’t remember Mark very well, but am operating under the (perhaps naive?) assumption that he really does want to do good for many kids. My point is that if this is indeed his intention, he is moving in a very dangerous direction, as “personalized learning” (as envisioned and advocated by those I mention above) is a highly restrictive and controlled form of “education” – if it can be called that at all. Freedom of thought, access to good (live!) teachers, and shared academic experiences like debates and literature studies should not be reserved only for those who can afford luxury education experiences like Exeter. If he gets in touch, I have some thoughts on how he could help! Do you?
Emily,
Let me start by buttering you up a bit: I am a huge fan of the NYC Teaching Fellows. My kids have had excellent experiences with teachers who went through the program. So that’s one idea for Zuckerberg right there: help to fund and expand NYCTF and other similar programs.
Beyond that? Well, Zuckerberg and Gates aren’t nearly as rich as a Rockefeller or Carnegie, and it costs a hell of a lot more to build libraries and schools and run school districts than it did back then. If they both donated every penny they own to the NYC DOE, it would cover only about four years’ worth of operating expenses, e.g. This is why philanthropists are eager to fund things that can scale.
If his private school is a success, he should certainly build more and more of them. I would like to see him fund research and public policy efforts to decouple school assignment and street address, and to encourage districts to operate schools with a variety of approaches and allow parents to choose among them. And it would be great to have some deep pockets address the issue of putting far more teachers of color, and in particular male teachers of color, into classrooms.
I’m generally skeptical of technology-based reform, not because of the “Skinner box” angle but because technology and giant institutions like big-city school districts make for a perversely bad combination. So you and I are in agreement on that front, albeit for different reasons.
Thanks for your response.
Tim,
No one has asked Bill Gates to fund the DOE. What most people are saying is that he should stop meddling in their children’s education, stop encouraging privately managed charters to take over public schools, stop tying test scores to teacher evaluations, and in general: BUTT OUT. He could surely use his billions to open health clinics in poor neighborhoods across the nation. At least he would not be hurting anyone. Carnegie (public libraries) and Rosenwald (schools for black kids in the south) did no harm. Gates does harm.
Please don’t encourage Gates to open health clinics in poor countries. The man has a reverse Midas touch – everything he touches turns to sh–. Gates has, in fact, addressed health issues in poor countries. Ask experienced health workers in poor countries how that’s going. The problem is that Gates can’t simply give his money to anyone. He has to control it all and he either doesn’t know what he’s doing or, worse (and I suspect, correctly), he does know and it’s all just fun with experimentation to him – hopefully such experiments will augment his bottom line and/or his power. Frankly, I think we’d all be better off if he just burned his money.
@Dienne –
AI is acronym impaired. One side effect of reformyism is the acronym virus.
“To Tim, below: I don’t remember Mark very well, but am operating under the (perhaps naive?) assumption that he really does want to do good for many kids.”
I truly believe that Bill Gates has some good intentions, and is just delusional about the effects of what he’s doing. I do not believe that about Zuckerberg. He’s out to help one person — himself.
I really don’t like accusing people of naivety, but this is as close as I’ve been in a while.
I guess it doesn’t hurt to try, but don’t get your hopes up on this one. Mark Zuckerberg is… not a good man…
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
‘Nuff said.
😎
Dienne,
AI = Acronym Impaired
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
…and the road to the computer technology on which folks like Gates and Zuckerberg made their billions was paved with US tax dollars.
But Microsoft and Facebook nonetheless keep large stashes (MS nearly nearly $100 billion) offshore to avoid paying billions in US taxes.
So this would be an example of a public official who is not using good judgment- overly influenced by marketing and/or wealthy ed reformers, perhaps- and is running off a cliff:
“And technology can almost say, “Forget the machine, forget the machine. You know how we’re going to do education now? Every kid gets a computer. That computer has a piece of software that adjusts to that child and how that child learns. And that technology is going to fundamentally change the dynamic of the classroom.”
It’s Governor Cuomo, who seems unable to resist anything these people sell him.
http://sullio.blogspot.com/2015/11/cuomo-wants-to-replace-machines-with.html?m=1#st_refDomain=t.co&st_refQuery=/WFH4PjbFVV
Not sure if you saw this, but check out the similarities between NY’s new testing company, Questar, and Skinner’s “teaching machine” concept from the 50’s. http://emilytalmage.com/2015/11/04/cbe-and-teaching-machines/
“Emily Talmage
November 18, 2015 at 12:25 pm
Read this post I wrote a few weeks ago to see what is happening in my local town. It’s really sad.”
Thanks so much, Emily. I question the “demand” side of this market. It feels trumped up to me, like they’re creating demand. We recently held a series of community meetings on our public schools and despite what was an obvious sales pitch by a consultant, very few people were buying “blended learning”. They were really wary. All I’m asking is that people in government treat this with the same critical eye that 100 nearly-random members of the community did. I know the first thing that would go here. It would be foreign language teachers, because we have trouble finding them and keeping them. If they replace those teachers with an online program (which would be cheaper and easier) we won’t ever get the funding for them back.
They are absolutely trying to generate demand. Here in Maine, the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Gates Foundation have funded local nonprofits to sponsor “will-building” campaigns. With money from the Nellie Mae Foundation, one organization actually hosted a retreat for our entire legislative education committee to promote what is called “proficiency-based education” here in Maine. PBE is CBE, which goes hand-in-hand with “personalized” and digital learning. Our ed committee was sold, and in 2012, Maine became the first state in the union to mandate a proficiency-based diploma. We now have two Gates-funded consultant groups that have contracted with most districts in our states “teaching” us how to convert to a PBE (CBE) system. Hence the link I attached above. The takeover is overwhelming… hence my blogging like a madman about it!
“She takes advantage of this slight proximity to write an open letter to him, warning him that he is hanging out with the wrong crowd. That is, Bill Gates and the other corporate reformers.”
I’m scratching my head here. Do we believe that Zuckerberg is any less corrupt than Gates? I have news for you. He cares even less about doing the right thing than Gates does.
I think we need a new “Rock em Sock em” pair: The Z bird as one and Billy the Goat as the other.
Zuckerberg gets more of a pass because he’s so young and boyish. Which really means he just has that much longer to get really good at this “philanthropy” thing.
I actually believe Z is more dangerous than billy goat. Maybe not to us in the education world, but in general.
Wonderful, Emily.
An excellent letter, but Ms. Talmadge is writing to the very same man who called his first customers at Harvard “dumb f- – – s” for supplying him with their personal information.
I seriously doubt if cares much more about other people’s children.
Zuckerberg — or at least his company (in conjunction with Cornell University researchers) — also manipulated news feeds to experiment on Facebook members without their consent or even their knowledge.
The idea that you can appeal to the ethics of a Zuckerberg or a Gates to convince them to do the right thing is just silly.
The way to get them to change their ways is to expose precisely what they are doing: experiments on human beings without informed consent.
Then there’s the most recent: apparently people’s Facebook avatars are being given a red, white and blue background in honor of the people murdered in Paris.
Funny, but Facebook/Zuckerberg didn’t feel the need to do the same for the bombing victims in Beirut last week, or for the victims of the Russian jet brought down by ISIS a few weeks ago.
Here, as we see everyday in education, some lives are more politically useful than others.
And, Emily, as I’m sure you’re aware the Obama Administration apparently feel some compulsion to act as salespeople for “personalized learning” also.
Here they are promoting a specific brand of “learning management systems”:
http://sites.ed.gov/progress/2015/11/delawares-brinc-districts-collaborate-to-personalize-learning-for-all-students/
It’s too bad “personalized learning” has been expropriated by the billionaires, who’ve also stolen the word “reform” and all of its variations. I also find it maddening that “mastery learning” is being conflated with behaviorism, because boiling that concept down to answering a series of multiple choice questions will corrode that phrase as well.
http://waynegersen.com/2015/11/19/in-defense-of-reform-personalized-learning-and-mastery/
Sent to him as a Facebook message and posted on one of his education posts.