the edukator

diane ravitch is over thur, pounding away on bill gates' sniffing and facetious "questions" about her opposition to his and other edu-privateers plans t' do nuthin' but test test test.  the questions are remarkable for what they show about gates, that he is basically an intellectual adolescent.  does he think these are serious questions?  if he does, and i see no reason not to believe he does (i can freaking hear that nasally whinge in my head), then bill gates ought to be kept out of the public sphere by his handlers.   at least when he's writing anything.  he comes off as a petulant buffoon.

in a huff to the first in a series of unserious jabs, ravitch makes these observations:

"I don't hear any of [the corporate reformers] worried that a generation will grow up ignorant of history and the workings of government."

no.  no, diane, dear. they don't worry about that. in fact, they'll be more than happy with that putative "side effect."

she keeps railing: where's the "$100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument"? ibid.

face it, diane. the "corporate reformers," are in this for two things: more public money shunted to private corporations, and, most importantly,  corporate control over education pretty much ensures a certainly even less uncomfortable future for america's corporate titans and all their attendant lamprey.

this is but probably beyond the ken of bill gates, a man who became the richest person in the world by buying, stealing, and acquiring, by means both lawful and unlawful, other peoples' stuff, jamming it together with some ungodly glue, also, by the way, other people's stuff, and selling it to lots of people as his own.  good at, apparently.  but as an education reformer, probably not someone from whom you would want take advice.  all a guy like gates sees is automatons, toiling without complaint, chips building chips.  that's what gates sees.  he's said it.  it's basically the message behind the glowing a good education leads to good jobs! malarky.

without knowing it at all, in his last "question" to ravitch, gates drops the bomb on his privateering test-mania education reform buddies

"If there’s some other magic way to reduce the dropout rate, we’re all ears."

so, gates thinks he and corpoChums are "all ears" for "some other magic way" to fix the schools. are they not entirely convinced by their magic way? perhaps there are several magic ways to defraud, deceive, and further de-educate the dyspeptic american public.

actually, there is a way to dramatically improve education outcomes.

Mr. Gates, why don't you address the root causes of low academic achievement, which is not 'bad teachers,' but poverty."[?]

Dear Diane,


Hate to break this to you, but the fixing poverty thing is pretty much a no go.  No magic there.

Nope.


We'll stick to our plan.


Thanks Diane.


Love, Bill.