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jcd writes:
"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the primary backer for the inBloom educational grading and service (which also acts as a platform for third-party applications), is catching flak for its role in encouraging the outsourcing of US Education. The article (cited by RMS today) argues that though the Common Core is a scary new concept that takes power away from state and local school governance, the real danger is allowing corporate enterprises to have so much control over our classrooms. The Washington Post also reports a case where Pearson included corporate logos and promotional materials inside its test booklets."
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Backlash for Gates Foundation's Education Plans
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:38PM
...the purpose of public education was to grow citizens. But, for as long as I can remember, it's been to prepare kids for the jobs of the future -- free job training programs for corporations, in other words, with only lip service paid to the needs of the citizenry who're paying for the education in the first place.
Of course, an under-educated populace is often much easier to control, so that might have something to do with it....
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by duvel on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:19PM
On the other hand, if we all were liberal arts students, we'd starve to death in a matter of weeks.
The Gates Foundation is aimed at increasing living conditions in third world countries. these countries have a strong need for a populace that can work in factories, or maybe even in the services industry. Third world countries do not have the luxury yet to stop focussing on basic economic productivity. Once the living standards in those countries are up to par, then they can start worrying about eduction that develops more than just economic skills.
This Sig is under surveilance by the NSA
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cwix on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:12PM
Then they really should stick to the third world countries. I am not sure I am real fond of this common core that is being put into place here in the US.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by m on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:15AM
This controversy has nothing to do with work in "third world countries," unless you consider the US to fall in that category. Along with work in other places in the world, the Gates Foundation does a lot of lobbying / activity in the US to shape educational policy --- specifically, to bring US public education under megacorporate control. They're big partners with the Walton foundations (of "we pay our full-time workers so little they need food stamps" Wal*Mart) to push for charter schools and getting private fingers in the public education funds pie. InBloom doesn't have anything to do with developing education in third-world countries; rather, it's the race-to-the-bottom to make the US just like a profitable, exploitable third-world country.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:19PM
Quote:
You speak as if neither the schools or the corporations are composed of people.
You speak as if you believe the UNEDUCATED Yokel can shovel manure out of his neighbors barn long enough to get a down payment on a horse and plow and file a claim for free land to start his own farm.
We educate for civilization, for society, and for individual well being.
And corporations are part of all that. As are farmers.
Can you really say the current methodology works so well that it needs no improvement?
Can you really suggest that this medium you are staring at right this instant has no applicability to the future of education?
Local control and state control has Texas teaching creationism. (And not merely mentioning it in passing, as one of a hundred false theories of the past).
Just you TRY to get anything into a curriculum at any public school. It is one landmine after another all guarded by gate keepers with their finger on the trigger.
Surely a wide availability of courseware with a rating system would serve just as well.
And surely on-screen interaction with other students can socialize children just as well as dodgeball and school lock downs. Surely you could come up with a course of study about the evils of corporations and how they should be shunned, and how working for any of them destroys the soul.
Those courses that work and serve a broad purpose would survive. Others would fail into oblivion.
Gates might not be on the perfect path, but at least he dares break lockstep once in a while.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Open4D on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:25AM
Interesting. Corporate influence worries me, but not nearly as much as religious influence.
Here's a blog post about "33 jaw-droppingly bad multiple-choice questions from Accelerated Christian Education [wordpress.com]" (Don't forget to read the "Think this doesn't affect you?" section.)
In the UK, the two biggest parties both seem intent on massively increasing the number of state-funded religious schools and giving them a great deal of independence. My education was in officially Christian schools but it was survivable. (I'm 33 years old.) The new places springing up are more like Islamic madrassas [blogspot.com], and the Christian equivalent, plus Sikh, Jewish, etc..
For more on the UK situation, further reading is here: 1 [educationengland.org.uk], 2 [humanism.org.uk], 3 [secularism.org.uk]
(Score: 1) by slartibartfastatp on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:31PM
THIS is the kind of comment I liked about slashdot, and that's why I came to soylentnews!
Thank you, sir!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:19PM
If the jobs are disappearing more rapidly than the education is declining its not so big of a deal.
As the economy continues its permanent decline, you need merely balance the rates.
For example we currently graduate far too many qualified STEM grads for the small and shrinking number of available jobs. As long as the number of grads shrinks more slowly than the number of jobs, no problemo.
The other issue is as anyone who's ever worked in a giant corporation knows, the noise from the top has basically zero impact on the ground dozens of levels away. Some ceremonial motions will be gone thru at most. So I've got family in public education and they've lived thru numerous low impact management fads, much as I have in the private sector. The article even alludes to it by mentioning no involvement by anyone other than corporations and PHD holders, certainly no one involved in education or teaching. Its highly likely it'll have no impact whatsoever on "boots on the ground". Here's today's math problem. Does the direction of a vector matter if the magnitude is almost zero?
Also don't confuse PR and politics. Anything bad that happens to a supporter will of course retroactively be defined as an inevitable result of what was supported by the enemies of the supporter and vice versa. The most likely "effect" will merely be politically polarizing regardless of whatever the true effect might be. Lets say superintendent XYZ is incompetent and supports side A (doesn't matter which). All this means is opponents will blame side A for his incompetence. What he chose doesn't actually matter, he could have been proposing druidism for all it matters.
So you've got folks worried about a situation that doesn't matter, that by definition will be ineffective WRT the "problem", but might be usable as a highly abstract political bludgeoning weapon. I'm not overly impressed with the whole psuedo-debate.
As a divide and conqueror strategy its been fairly effective.
(Score: 1) by Geezer on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:24AM
Very well-stated. However, Druidism may in some ways be a step in a better direction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid [wikipedia.org]
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:32PM
Would you care to enlighten us about when these Good Old Days were?
Bear in mind that throughout most of human history the majority of children have received no formal education whatsoever, and large swaths of the population were completely illiterate and innumerate (sometimes intentionally so, since smart people can be dangerous).
Even if you limit yourself to non-slaves in the US, the history remains atrocious: In the 1800's, kids regularly dropped out of school as soon as they could be useful on the farm. In the early 1900's, kids dropped out of school as soon as they could be put to work in factories. By the 1950's, schools had become propaganda outlets for the military, anti-Communists in government, and major corporations. And by the 1980's, they were seen as a marketing platform, culminating with Channel 1 News forcing kids to watch commercials.
Every task is easy if somebody else is doing it.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by eravnrekaree on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:56AM
Today there is concern that Communist propoganda is found in the curriculum, just not stated as such but worked in a subtle manner. Do not underestimate the evil of communism nor the influence of it in the US, which instead of being overt has moved into more of a covert program. They work in a gradual manner under the title Liberal, to advocate an ever expanding role of government in the lives of the people and how wonderful and great the government is and how we must have it control more and more of our lives to protect us and so on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:12PM
thanks for the laugh McCarthy
(Score: 5, Insightful) by biff on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:37PM
I think you're right, and that hiring practices are a huge factor in decreasing educational standards. High school and college educations have transitioned from luxuries into virtual requirements to land a desirable job. So high schools and colleges lower the bar to allow more of their students to get over it. "Well, hell, why shouldn't a college education be a minimum requirement for entry level positions at that rate?" businesses reason.
Suddenly, if you're an educational institution that actually wants to raise your standards, you're competing poorly against all the other institutions that won't. Voila, the big-boxing of education.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jelizondo on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:44PM
Let me tell you about desirable jobs just next door, i.e., in Mexico
For example. in order to be hired as a front desk clerk at a hotel in a resort city, you need to speak, at least passably English, and have a degree (in hotel management, business administration, etc.) in order to earn 8 to 10 thousand pesos a month. Consider that a small apartment (750 sq ft) will set you back 4 to 5 thousand pesos and you can imagine how great that salary is. But without the degree and the second language, you can't aspire to the job.
Want to be a teller in a supermarket? A High-school dimloma will get you hired and let you earn 5 to 6 thousand pesos a month; not enough to pay rent for a half-decent apartment.
On a higher order, with the recent law changes, in order to get a job as a judge, you are now required to have at least a masters' and preferably, a Ph.D. in law.
Is this progress? Next thing you know it will take a degree to get a job flipping burgers...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:48AM
1 peso = 0,05 euro
750 sq ft = 70 sq meter
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dry on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:42PM
At one time for much of the population school was the beginning of learning a trade, carpenter, plumber, electrician etc. This created productive independent citizens unlike the degree path of ending up in massive debt and slaving for a faceless corporation with people who don't even have time for being involved with society. Of course much of this is by design, the new American way is to have an apathetic population rather then an independent involved citizenry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitari
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KibiByte on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:31PM
" free job training programs for corporations, in other words"
Here in California, you pay your employees for training. If not, you get a fat lawsuit like what I'm pursuing against A&D electronics in Ontario/Riverside.
See, here, we have a progressive mentality. Sure we screw up on a lot of stuff, but the majority of which the country follows comes from or stems from us.
The One True Unit UID
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:34PM
(Score: 5, Interesting) by unitron on Tuesday February 18 2014, @07:42PM
Public education exists (and is financed by property taxes) to protect property values by keeping the place from filling up with illiterates and by making neighborhoods more attractive to buyers "because there are good schools nearby".
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Tuesday February 18 2014, @11:22PM
(Score: 1) by unitron on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:56AM
By public education, I mean grades 1-12.
And I don't know enough about either student body or university to answer your question, the relevance of which to what I said escapes me.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:01AM
Not everyone is capable of obtaining a meaningful high school diploma. The difference between a "good" school system and a "bad" school system largely boils down to how many of the students are there to learn, and how many are being warehoused against their will. Schools can allow people to reach their maximum potential, but what they are really bad at doing is figuring out when that maximum potential has been reached and then getting them out the door and into doing something productive.
(Score: 1) by unitron on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:52PM
Young families buy houses because they're near good elementary schools, not because they're near good universities.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:06AM
(Score: 1) by unitron on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:01AM
Are you seriously giving me grief for not being familiar enough with CSU-SB to know that most people have never heard of it?
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 5, Informative) by slash2phar on Tuesday February 18 2014, @08:03PM
None of the referenced articles actually contain examples of the claim that "Pearson included corporate logos and promotional materials inside its test booklets". I eventually found the source here [nypost.com].