Posted on 02/05/2016 10:22:34 AM PST by BruceDeitrickPrice
Bill Gates is one of Americas greatest business geniuses. But when he turned to education, his magic touch vanished.
He is now known as the man who squandered several billion dollars trying to foist Common Core on a combattive public. Indeed, Common Core is so unpopular that its very mention quickly doomed Jeb Bushs presidential campaign. Today, Donald Trump casually promises that he will get rid of it forever; and audiences cheer.
Why Bill Gates felt he should promote this thing is a major mystery. Here is a possible theory. When a tycoon decides he wants to help public schools, a typical first step is to consult with the official experts, i.e., professors of education. This first step is often fatal, something like a male spider courting a female spider. Bill Gates is smarter than any twenty-five education professors put together; he should have seen through their counterproductive thinking. But they have a PhD and a tweed jacket. Perhaps these impress a business tycoon.
Trouble is, this countrys professors of education are chiefly skilled at devising and promoting ideas that do not work. The dirty little secret is that these people must be hopelessly incompetent or intentionally subversive. That Common Core turned out to be a disaster would not surprise anyone familiar with the history of American education. (For example, a lot of bad ideas were recycled from New Math, the big flop 50 years earlier.)
Bill Gates should never have talked to these pretenders, given their long history of quackery and failure. This country has many hundreds of outstanding private schools. Gates could have financed a survey of the most esteemed, and asked how various aspects are handled at each school. Catalogue the answers. Create a database to guide principals and superintendents. Learning from the best is the fastest way to excellence.
Bill Gates should now put together a group of the best phonics experts and create the ultimate reading instruction. This could be called Gates Reading. He could make another fortune. He should assemble the best math teachers at the secondary level; they would create the ultimate ways to teach arithmetic i.e., Gates Math. Or just streamline the wonderful John Saxon, math teacher extraordinaire. The key thing is that the materials must perform in real classrooms with flying colors. The trouble with our professors is they start with a bogus theory and build a sand castle on it. We do not need more bogus theories. We need proven winners.
Here finally is how Bill Gates can get back on top of the education situation and save the country. Put a few million dollars into a project we might call the Gates Prizes. Each year, in the major subjects, there would be an award of $50,000 first prize and $25,000 second prize for the most efficient educational tools. (A large panel of students could judge; or a panel of 1000 parents, or a panel of ordinary citizens. Education professors should never be involved.)
There are thousands of brilliant young people studying digital art, programming, graphic design, learning theory, moviemaking, dramatic production, advertising design, communications, copywriting, website design, and such. We want dynamic, stimulating, engrossing educational materials. We want stuff that the average adult would stop and say: 'Wow, I wish we had that when I was in school.'
Salman Khan has done great work with his Khan Academy. But he does not understand the importance of production values, the importance of entertainment. That's what the Gates Prizes would look for and reward: material that knocks down the door and takes possession of a students brain.
Bill Gates, with his extraordinary wealth and influence, can usher in a new age of educational effectiveness. The way is obvious. One, ignore whatever the Education Establishment wants to do. Two, create a structure and a system of rewards that will encourage the cleverest people to create bold new solutions. Three, rigorously test these new ideas to guarantee that the best ones move quickly to the top.
If Bill Gates cannot rise to this occasion, others should get involved. The Koch brothers and similar are welcome.
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top 10 worst ideas in education: http://www.improve-education.org/id83.html
Better yet, quit supporting democraps and support conservatives who believe in local control and actual teaching and not social engineering.
Needless to say, I taught my children using phonics and they became superior readers. My best guess is that the people who Gates relied on to help him set up the educational part of his foundation were of the same bent as my friend who thought she was an expert in teaching reading to children. You don't need phonics Mr. Gates.
Gates is a cornucopia of crap. Add his global warming agenda and vaccine agenda. I would bet $5 he is a eugenicist too. He’s the type.
He can start by not importing thousands of H1-B workers from the third world that discourages native workers from ever seeking jobs in the technology sector.
Though I could name a list of tech billionares who are worse than Bill, he is not that smart.
He is a flaming liberal.
At least unlike Sergy and Larry, he is not trying to censor conservative thought all together.
“Needless to say, I taught my children using phonics and they became superior readers.”
I’d wager that they have good problem solving skills too.
Phonics is a method that promotes ‘self-teaching’ as a useful side effect. When a child runs into a word they haven’t seen, they break the word down into smaller components, make the sound, then reassemble the components to pronounce the word.
The same methodology can be applied to anything really. If you get one of the ‘dreaded’ word problems in math, you apply the same thought process.
Of course, independence is something that schools don’t want these days. They want a one-size fits all approach to teaching. That is the main reason why our schools are failing.
Every time I bring this up, I am reminded that I don’t have a teaching degree and I’m not qualified to make such statements. I do have an MSEE, but I suppose that’s worthless when it comes to teaching a 2nd grader fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. There must be some kind of magic involved with those 18 credits teachers are required to earn here in Pennsylvania to get a teaching degree.
Cornucrapia?
Computers are OK if children are learning to program, do graphic arts, etc.
But if they are using it as a crutch to avoid memorizing their times tables or not having to go to the library to read books to research their term papers, then good riddance to them!
Gates is smart?
Not based on the quality of his operating systems and software for the past 30 years.
He marketed cheap software and the bean counters at companies bought it, without understanding how much it sucks, and its inferiority to the competition.
Bottom line? If we don't solve that problem -- and the others we face -- the least of our concerns will be the political philosophy of the guy in the White House!
The ABSOLUTE MESS in government schools is a HUGE COMPONENT of our overall problem!!!
This is a crisis we'd better get a handle on before it's too late -- if it isn't already! http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/trump-a-pragmatist-not-a-conservative/
Others who have unsuccessfully attempted to tackle education problems include leaders with experience in the military, religion, and business fields.
Perhaps you have the proper model - teaching your children at home in the most effective way they can learn.
So, he retires from working full-time and has the effort to work his foundation. He sets his sights on health and education, two areas where he knows next to nothing. He has to rely on experts. Well, guess who stepped up as experts to marshall him through the entire labyrinth? Ex-Clinton people with advanced degrees in health and education.
That is why he glommed onto Common Core.
re: “She went into a tirade about how inferior phonics was.”
This is fascinating to me. People in ed schools learn almost nothing, but what they do learn is destructive.
The reason I had to homeschool was that my second son had been taught no phonics and could not read any word that had more than six letters.
I found out later that the new principle had brought in his own friends who were schooled in sight-reading. He was fired after two years. It appeared that even the school board did not know what he was doing until parents began to complain loudly. One of his friends turned out to be a pedophile. He called me twice to find out if he could take my son fishing. Talk about my cackles being raised.
But the non-reading damage was done. It took me four years after my discovery to fix the problem which included homeschooling and two separate specialized tutors I hired to fix specific aspects to his reading problem. $25,000 that should have went into a college fund.
Thank God I had homeschooling to fall back on.
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