Arthur Goldstein is a New York City high school teacher. He is currently teaching by distance learning. He noted that Governor Cuomo wants to work with Bill Gates to make distance learning a major feature in the public schools, and Goldstein is outraged.
He writes:
It doesn’t take a genius to know that remote learning is a pale echo of the real thing. I’ve been trying to reach my kids for six weeks online. I’m getting better at it, but I’d be delusional if I were to tell you that it’s a substitute for face to face in the same room. Andrew Cuomo says otherwise, and his snake oil salesmanship is right up there with Donald Trump’s.
Cuomo is the man who, a few years back, mustered the audacity to label himself a student lobbyist. This, of course, was when he was pushing the evaluation system that’s become the bane of teacher existence. He specifically emphasized it would be used to fire teachers, both buying and selling the stereotype of teachers sitting around doing nothing while students failed the almighty state tests.
Cuomo’s evaluation system is a tremendous nuisance for both teachers and supervisors. While NYC finally has fewer observations than before, the checklists we receive, not to mention the intrusive interruptions of our practice, are not helpful to working teachers. I’d guess 25-40% of city supervisors are out of their frigging minds, failed teachers who couldn’t wait to escape the classrooms. (How frequently have supervisors who couldn’t teach told us whatever they heard at their last DOE meeting? You must do it like this, like that, and there’s no other possible way to do it.)
Nonetheless, we’re stuck with it. Of course Cuomo didn’t love it, having called it “baloney” when not enough teachers were fired for his discerning taste.With Cuomo, it’s all about appearances or money. In fact, the first time he ran for governor, he made a big deal of taking on the unions. This made him the very first Democrat for whom I declined to vote. Of course, when the imperative became looking like he opposed Trump, Cuomo became our BFF.
I wasn’t persuaded. I remember him standing with Eva Moskowitz in Albany, and I remember all the suitcases full of cash they pushed his way. Of course I understand what quid pro Cuomo is, and this was a simple transaction for him. When the geniuses in Albany unanimously named Bill Gates acolyte MaryEllen Elia Commissioner of Education, I saw Cuomos fingerprints all over it.
Working teachers know Bill Gates. Having appointed himself an education expert by virtue of having all that money. Gates has foisted failure after failure upon the United States of America. Common Core? That’s Gates. Junk science evaluation? That’s Gates too. School closings? Gates again. Gates opens his mouth, and inanities spew in every direction. Nonetheless, he has all that money, so like Michael Bloomberg, he’s an education expert. Never mind that none of his programs have worked.
Money is quite important to Andrew Cuomo, so he wants to partner with both Bloomberg and Gates.
Here’s what this teacher knows about online learning–it’s better than nothing, but a cheap imitation of the real thing. When I’m in a real classroom, I can see what every student is doing. I can offer assistance to every kid based on his or her work. I don’t have students hiding behind icons, where they could be asleep, playing with video games, watching a movie, or having their smart girlfriend do the work so they can pursue more important priorities.
Please open the link and read the rest of this powerful article.
Cuomo must be looking for donors for his next campaign.
An aside…
One of dump’s personal valets has contracted Covid-19.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/07/politics/trump-valet-tests-positive-covid-19/index.html
The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates
Author Wendy Goldman Rohm releases the source notes for her controversial book on Microsoft. Part 1: Chapters 1-8.
October 27, 1998
“During interviews I conducted with CEOs and senior executives of several companies in the computer and software industries, they spoke of Gates’ apparent disingenuousness and his dishonest deal-making. They used the metaphor of being ‘raped’ by Gates.”
PR flack Pam Edstrom was known inside Microsoft Corp. as the “Gates Keeper,” a nod to more than 30 years spent shaping, protecting and — many said — creating the image of the company’s founder as a bemused, bespectacled genius, a sort of high-tech cross between Harry Potter and Gandhi…
https://www.startribune.com/pam-edstrom-u-of-m-grad-who-created-the-legend-of-bill-gates/419509373/
Thank you, Richard. Appreciate this information. Gates cheats and lies with a straight face …. and all the while doing damage and getting rich off other people’s backs and their children.
Gates is no innovator or a brain. He’s just another RICH BRAT.
One good way to put the lie of Gates et al out in the open in a most obvious way would be to challenge Cuomo to find a bunch of elite, expensive private schools who would be willing to transition to this “new and better” system that values tech and screens above actual teachers. Let’s see what those schools and the parents who pay for them have to say about it. Why target just public schools for this? Let’s also include religious schools for this conversion. I’m sure Gates could program some AI for Bible and theological studies, what could possibly go wrong? Let
the elites of the private sector go first since this is such a good, market driven idea, right?
Not only do Gates and other techies send their kids to private schools with high teacher to student ratios where their children get individual attention and education in the arts and other “unnecessary” subjects that can’t be taught online, the Silicon Valley elites severely restrict their kids’ online time in general.
It’s the height of hypocrisy.
Mr Goldstein has given us a lot to think about. If you go to his website, a commentator also said some really pertinent things regarding cheating and student contact. Thanks for this posting.
On-line learning is better than nothing, but the fact is that personality is the only way students are really motivated. Are you going to threaten them to work on-line by the threat of failure? They will just cheat. Not knowing their teacher personally will lead to a much higher rate of cheating.
Let Bill Gates re-invent all he wants. Reality will not change.
Gates is reinventing reality?
Ha ha ha.
Billy Gates Christ
Reality Reinvented
Billy Christ descended
Sent by God the Father
To move the online farther
While not exactly the same problem that is facing public education, it relates to Gates and Cuomo faux reinvention of education. Many university students are suing their schools for reimbursement for part of the spring semester’s tuition. The basis of the lawsuit is that online classes are a poor substitute for actual learning in a classroom. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/students-25-universities-sue-refunds-after-campuses-close-due-coronavirus-n1200746
What has been the AFT’s response to Cuomo & Gates partnership? AFT has shown minimal antagonism towards Cuomo’s destructive education policies. Now that he’s made this naked attempt to hand NYCIty public schools to Silicon Valley, what is their position on Gates’ out sized influence over public ed policies?
Here’s a quote from Michael Mulgrew of UFT: ““Anyone who wants to ‘re-imagine’ schools should go first to the people who have made the education of children their calling and their profession. Our teachers are the real experts, and they have lots of ideas about how schools could be improved.” I know Pallotta from NYSUT said nothing would replace face to face, and as someone who’s been Zooming for six week, I absolutely agree.
Let’s not forget Cuomo’s tax cap which has been slowly strangling school budgets while at the same time owing school districts millions in back state aid.
Over the last couple of years Google and crappy Chromebooks has been slowly creeping into districts ( like another virus) with their Google classroom platform. Districts have cutback on textbooks and other resources because of this.
I retired last year partly because I could no longer stomach the destruction of decent curriculum. ( I will leave that for another rant).
Yes, teachers have stepped up in this time of crisis, but let’s not fool ourselves. This is not teaching, the kids are sliding backwards. It may look great to the uninformed but it is really just smoke and mirrors.
Just wait til the kids are back in the classroom and the teacher says, “take out your chromebooks.” I wouldn’t fault the kids from hurling them on the floor and saying, F$%k no!
“crappy Chromebooks”
Well, that’s what many students can afford. And in fact, a Chromebook is much better than it appears. For example, you can install Windows or Linux on it, and suddenly you have a fully functional laptop for $200 (plus the price of windows, but Linux is free).
The Fall will be indeed “interesting”. Some teachers will say “I don’t want to risk my health, so I’d like to teach online for this semester.” And you cannot blame them.
On the other hand, this could be the time to push for smaller class sizes. No greater than 15.
What’s missing most to me in online is the interaction between students. There is no classroom noise. As soon you allow all students to unmute their microphones, and they start talking to each other, chaos erupts. In normal classes, student remarks are necessary for a lively classroom, and they can be controlled to stay at the appropriate level.
Interesting points.
Since my computer’s camera hasn’t been working since Covid Day 1, I guess I missed the muting and unmuting thing. It’s just been writing to students…and calling them by phone. Reading their work
I didn’t have the heart to commandeer by own kids’ computers here at home since those machines seem like lifelines to them. A few times I had to go to “Zoom” meetings… so my kids helped me out with that.
“Zoom” reminds me of looking through a drainage pipe under my road. It’s like I’m squeezing my brain into a paper towel tube.
I never liked Skype when my wife and I tried to use it with my son who was away at school.
But the whole world seems to have become video-based.
Which is odd, since the newly revised NYS social studies exams are so heavily into dense tomes of turgid non-fiction. Thick, long, complicated readings, cut out of the reality where they originally dwelled… A vestige of the Common Core still haunting us…
What a crazy thing. We throw reading at our students on these standardized exams…reading that most of us either don’t ever read or wouldn’t want to read… unless it’s a subject we’d like to learn about.
But then the rest of the time it’s now video, video, video…..
Yet another symbol of the Age of Hypocrisy.
My replacement camera for this computer arrived yesterday from the other side of the planet.
Very mixed feelings about that.
Kids deserve to be in school to learn one on one. We pay school taxes thousands of dollars a year my daughter is special ed and isn’t getting the education she deserves and needs on a computer Cuomo is a lisr and a sneak who the hell voted him in !!!!!! To close the schools and country down down was a big joke we all need to get germs to become immune to diseases this covid was used to get at trump ALL POLITICAL the Democrats had nothing else to use against him but now they’re trying to use fraud MAIL IN BALLOTS SO THEY CAN THROW OUT ALL TRUMP VITERS AND ILLEGAL VOTES TRUMP NNEDS TO DRSIN THE SWAMP