Why do we think that those who are successful in business will automatically be successful in all venues. We seem to implicitly trust that the Bill Gates and Annenbergs know how to “save “ education. How quickly we forget that businessmen make mistakes. Remember New Coke? Remember all those Windows OS bugs?
Thinking as any good businessman, Gates’ would like to retool schools to reduce the bottom line while increasing the productivity of the manufacturing process. He would like to standardize the product so it can be a plug and play device for the program of college or work. Let’s look at this goal.
Students as standardized outputs, able to be plugged into the USB port of any job with no further formatting required... what efficiency! Who cares that some students have flash memory and some are more like 5 inch floppy disks. It doesn’t matter that some students have a math coprocessor and some have a fantastic graphics card. We can increase productivity by measuring the product using the bubble sheet ruler. What about the students who have only serial port inputs? They are out of luck because the bubble sheet only accepts a USB connection. Of course that is the fault of the charter school receiving department. They were to only accept shipments of USB ready students. The serial port students were to be shipped to the public school factory, who, of course, still has to use the USB bubble sheet ruler
How about increasing the productivity of the manufacturing process? Gates’ has pontificated that a good teacher can teacher 40 or more students at a time and achieve the same results as with a classroom of 20. After all, with the advent of computer controlled assembly lines and just-in-time inventory, the productivity of the American worker has been increasing. Why can’t we just speed up the school assembly line where the physics teacher unscrews the kid’s cranium, dumps in the equations of Newtonian physics, and screws the lid back on before it all pops back out. Or maybe we should forget the screws and just use Velcro- that would shave precious seconds off the whole production process!! But wait…we are in the digital age. Those USB equipped children will just plug into the physics teacher port and download the knowledge. Since they are all the same, there will be no compatibility issues, just like when we switched to Office 2000. No problems there, right?
Obviously the business model breaks down when we talk about manufacturing people. Even Huxley’s Brave New World runs into problems when even the most tightly controlled process goes wrong with Bernard and the introduction of the immigrant John Savage. We all know that children are not products to be taken off the shelves to fulfill some predetermined role.
So what is the allure of allowing the business world to run our schools? Why are we are willing to hand over our school districts to these mega foundations because they will “save” us.
First of all, we wrongly believe that we are in a sinking boat on the ocean of a global economy and need to be saved by moving into a new chartered boat. Captain Bill Gates claims that our schools cost too much money and are not producing enough high quality product. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute has quite clearly debunked most of Gates’ economic claims by putting them in a 40 year perspective. For example, the costs of educating our youth has increased, but most of that increase has occurred because we no longer put our special education students in a windowless room in the basement to be babysat by a person not trained in working with children of various special needs. We now educate them to the best of their abilities, allowing many to enter the workforce and help to support themselves. We have increased the educational levels of the most fragile members of our society all while the poverty rate is increasing. This does not sound like a failing boat.
Second, we have been brought up to worship the power of big business We were brought up to on the fairytales of Rockefeller and Carnegie starting from humble beginnings and rising to the pinnacle power on the wings of their astute business sense. They used their self-earned money to fund libraries, universities and other public works. Of course, as educated adults, we know there is more to the story, but first impressions last. If these giants of industry could transform the industrial worlds of steel and rail, just think what their ilk could do for schools! We forget that the Gates’ of the modern mega foundations were born wealthy, went to private schools and have no experience in world of education.
Third, the feminist in me can’t help but attribute some of this “crisis” mentality to an awakening of the world’s powerbrokers to the importance of education which is dominated by…WOMEN. How can women be in charge of something so important? In Germany, where the teachers were traditionally men, teachers are given incredible autonomy and the students do not fill out bubble sheets.
With the budget of schools being cruelly slashed to the bone, the mega business foundations will find their funds greedily accepted by school boards. Before accepting money, the school should ask for a prospectus of the foundation’s previous projects. Ask Bill how that small school initiative turned out. Ask the Broads how well the teacher pay incentives increased student performance. I think we would find that most of these foundation’s business models would not make AYP.
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