Edushyster interviewed Joanne Barkan, one of our most perceptive writers about the farce/hoax called “education reform.”
Barkan has written a series of important articles about the reformers, they of high stature, who want to run the nation’s public schools that they do not patronize. “Got Dough?” is a classic. She quickly understood that the billionaires don’t trust democracy. And that is a theme of her work on education.
In response to one of EduShyster’s questions, Barkan replies:
Some of the wealthiest people in the United States have had an easy go of it. They started with wealth, likely went to private schools, and have no sense of what public education is and why it’s necessary. And, of course, there are also those who started with nothing and made their own fortunes. It seems that by the time they’ve made a lot of money, they’ve lost touch with the role of public education. The vast majority of the super wealthy send their own kids to private schools, which they do for a variety of reasons, including prestige. What’s interesting to me is that there are some states that have written into their constitutions that the primary obligation of state government is public education. When those constitutions were being written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, government was much more limited. We have a situation today where so many states are under tremendous financial pressure, and the first place they go when they have to cut is public education, as if public education were somehow an extra, as opposed to being a fundamental responsibility.
EduShyster: I was smitten by the subtitle of your article: *Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy.* What is it about democracy that plutocrats find so irksome?
Barkan: The plutocrats—people like Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Bloomberg, John Arnold, or Eli Broad—have very set ideas about what they want to do. It doesn’t matter to them, or perhaps they just don’t understand, that their ideas may not be based on sound research or principles. They know what they want, and they come out of professional experiences where they’ve had complete authority. When they get to public education, they expect to be in control and to make things happen as quickly as if they were still running their companies. But as everyone should know, democracy is slow, and it’s messy, and that turns out to be a great nuisance for plutocrats.
The rest of the interview is fascinating and enlightening.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gates already has a vaccine against the resistance to education reform.
It’s called money and he has already inoculated the heads of the NEA and AFT and heads of national and state education departments with multi-million dollar doses and gives them booster shots every year.
Of course, some have refused the vaccine, which is his primary problem.
I guess they would be anti-vaxers, right?
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Not just the teacher unions, also many civil rights groups and groups that pretend to care about civil rights.
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LOL SomeDam Poet Gates has was been extremely ‘hands off’ when it was determined that there was no empirical evidence that ‘Common Core’ even works. All that time and money wasted. The collateral damage of course is the poor students who had to endure his quackery.
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It actually wasn’t wasted’ from Gates’ standpoint
1) it had the desired effect of disillusioning teachers, driving them out and discouraging others from pursuing teaching as a career.
This has created prime conditions for “pearsonalized learning” and other computer based “leaning” schemes, which have been Gates’ goal all along.
What better situation could a tech mogul hope for than to have schools with teacher shortages with no potential teachers in the pipeline?
in the nick of time, Gates and other tech moguls arrive on their white horses to save the day with their computerized learning which works with large classes and is cheaper than human teachers to boot (no strikes, no tenure, no pensions, no health care, no problems!)
2) much of the money donated by Gates Foundation would have been lost to taxes otherwise and by “donating” it, Gates had a chance to influence policy in a very big way which he would not have had if it had simply been paid in taxes.
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Poet: Lets not forget the Gates push MOOCs and certificate programs instead of University degrees. Where is Orwell when you need him .
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There should be a bottom up revolt inside the Teachers Unions . Unfortunately the problem does not only reside with the leadership . The problem is with a membership that does not care until it is hitting them in the face as in Chicago or Detroit. The problem resides with the structure in the AFT allows retirees to vote . There is nothing worse than a Union member with a good pension . Why is that ? Many have forgotten how fortunate they have been and today few have made the sacrifices that got them what they have.
This battle against the plutocracy will only be won by a mass movement that unites all progressive forces.
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I, too, am chagrined by the lack of interest shown by public sector pension retirees. The unions should make more of an effort to contact retires, explain the risks of the oligarch agenda, and compel them to action.
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Bill Gates, Mark Z-berg, Pearson,…(not their foundations), own the retailer of schools-in-a-box, brand name, Bridge International Academies. (BIA’s co-founder predicted that the model’s 20% return, would attract investors.) IMO, enrichment of oligarchs is the goal. The Gates Foundation’s design of “human capital pipeline” products, sold at something like 30% of a family’s income, is the long-term objective. In the U.S. market, acceptance of privatization, required an intermediate step, the semi-public, hybrid product, charter schools. They destroy public education. and make the market ripe for the World Bank’s promotion of BIA, to the exclusion of public education.
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