Dev.SN

Backlash for Gates Foundation's Education Plans

posted by mattie_p on Tuesday February 18 2014, @05:27PM   
from the corporate-sponsorship dept.

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."

• Re:Once upon a time... Re:Once upon a time... (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:19PM

  by VLM (445) on Tuesday February 18 2014, @06:19PM (#1976)

  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.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Interesting=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Interesting' Modifier		0
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		3

• Re:Once upon a time... (Score: 1) by Geezer on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:24AM

  by Geezer (511) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:24AM (#2334)

  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.

  Parent