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Microsoft to Build High School in Philadelphia, PA
LynchMan writes "According to the The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia is too be the home of a Microsoft funded High School. While having an inner city public school with a large tech fund ($46 Million) will be a great asset to those young students interested in technology, is the Philadelphia School District selling out to Microsoft really the only way to achieve this? Especially with all of the negative press that Microsoft has had recently, is this an attempt to do some good and help out those who cannot afford private school? Or is Microsoft just making sure that they secure themselves another generation of coders/admins/users? This being the first school of it's kind, will a Microsoft high school be coming to a town near you?" This looks very much like the Microsoft buses that toured from school to school a couple years back, but much larger and much more stationary.
"Why do you people always assume the worst?"
I think it's called "experience."
KFG
The biggest barrier with a school like this is the incredible cost of keeping it state-of-the-art. The budget will have to be very high and have a swap-out plan to bring in faster systems and the latest software. If the money and/or support for such and upgrade plan is there, it can survive. However, some politician will probably see this as a pork barrel for some other politician and leave the school in some sort of "Beta version."
Now, if they were plunking a school in a suburb that was doing just fine without them, I'd question their motives. But, in this case, I'd have to think this is at best, altruism on Microsoft's part, or at worst, advertising money well spent.
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
Slashdot Double Standard #1431:
When Apple did this, it was praised and lauded as good move to provide computers, and help kids, and maybe also build potential customers.
When Microsoft does this, it's pure evil, the administrators have been duped, sold out, stupid. Suspicions of some nefarious larger purpose are raised immediately.
At least in my experience, the more one uses Microsoft products, the more one does not want to ever use any again. If we force kids to use nothing but Windows for 4 years, surely they will look for an alternative the moment the opportunity arises.
Like every other corporation on the face of the planet, they don't blink unless (they think) it's in their best interests.
I hate it when people "support"(buy from) a corporation because they get warm fuzzies from that company "supporting"(tossing a measly hundredth or thousandth of a percent of their profits to) a cause. Does BMW give a crap about breast cancer? No. Like all the other corporations that support "breast cancer research", they're basically just looking to get women to buy stuff from them.
"Buy ________, we support ______ by donating* to the __________ foundation of America!"
(*1/10th of a percent of the net profit of this product, minus taxes, executive bonuses, kickbacks, and of course some good old fashioned book cooking)
Please help metamoderate.
Bill Gates can build all the schools he wants to and Linux can't for one reason and one reason only: Windows makes an offer. Bill and Melinda have built a foundation with grants galore for the implementation of the Windows system. Whether you see it as gifting technology to the masses or corrupting the youth to the product, the point remains that public schools would gladly take the technology no matter who offers it. And these days, it's not as though anyone in the non-Windows world is giving the schools a whole lot of alternatives.
The solution: quit complaining about the philathropic efforts of Windows and start an Open Source Foundation. Have an endowed fund and accept grant applications. Built it. They will come.
While its certainly a good idea to have kids exposed and trained to use Linux and other oses at a young age, people must consider the rebellion factor. A lot of kids will hate whatever the school endorses. Considering this is an inner city school, I would just be happy that they are getting the money.
Being in education, I think it's wonderful that Microsoft is handing out some technology...but it is the "catches" that worry me. You can be guaranteed that no computer in the district will be allowed to run ANYTHING but Microsoft software...anything else will be a breach of the Terms&Conditions that everyone will be forced into signing. This is just a ploy to draw mindless Technical Directors and Coordinators into the false sense of security that Microsoft offers...since these people, with the backing of hundreds of Microsoft Engineers, made it work, then certainly it would work for our district too! I've seen that mentality in action, and this will only further it.
I grew up in Philly and left about four months ago. Here's what I know.
The Philly public school system is shite. They're in their fourth year of budget problems and the state actually stepped in and bailed them out on one of them. Packed classrooms, lack of textbooks and teaching materials, etc. It's nasty. I spent a year at Southern before my mother pulled me out and put me in Catholic school.
I would only think that this could be a good thing, especially considering that the city likes building football and baseball stadiums instead of improving things like public education. Outside interests can only help. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that it's the greatest thing in the world and it skeeves me out just a bit, but it's more of a 'better than nothing' situation. Kids can only benefit. Let them find open source the way I did-- I like to think of it as being chosen:)
Microsoft is not enabling this. ...Philadelphia is still footing the bill.
Yup, and MS gets to look like a hero for donating their consulting services, which will amount to "Buy Microsoft products". Favorite line from the article:
The company's reward is the opportunity to design a school using technology in every way possible from the ground up - a prototype it could then market.
Yippie. So they want to use a school as a facility to assemble a new product. Glad that they have the kids' best interest in mind!
the no
Not blinded at all. And in fact, I would say that I feel it's the other way around.
This donation of M$ dollars (not the school itself) is bad for 3 reasons:
1. Regardless of the kindness, M$ is an unethical company. Period! A free lunch today will not be one tomorrow. You need no more evidence of this than to scan the various news source headlines for the last few years. Corporations don't give anything out unless there is a business or tax reason. And while some in the opulent halls of M$ may see this as a worthy cause, more see it as a business opportunity. Ugh, open your eyes. There is obviously some tax write off or future opportunity to hook more people on their products - or both. This is the nature of big business/capitalism, plain and simple. Get 'em while they're young.
2. A public school should not be financed in any way by a corporation. However, these things can happen because so many people in this country do not put as much emphasis on quality public education as they should.
I'm horrified by the stories my sister tells me of the parents having to contribute money and supplies to her kids school because the school can't afford it! Personally, when I have kids, they're going to public schools and I'm going to PTA meetings, etc., and I'm gonna put my time in and at least if things still continue to go down hill, at least I'll say I did something. My parents never did that. There is a complete lack of caring and responsibility of the majority of voting public and our esteemed leaders on this subject. It needs to change and that change would benefit everyone. Why this doesn't horrify anyone else is beyond me. If you don't have an educated public, then you have close to nothing.
While I'm sure most kids will have to work at some point in their life using M$ tools, I see no reason, being the company M$ is, to promote their usage before their professional career. Why muddy up their most impressionable years with the horrors and inflexibilities of an M$ world? They'll have plenty of time to see that on their own when they can make their own choice on what OS and tools they want to use. I'd rather my kids and my sister's kids learn about history, math, etc.., instead of service packs.
3. All this 'neat' stuff, being an expirement and all, will go right back to benefit M$ and no one else. It would be such a better idea to use free software and open standards because the creation (the mind of someone young is a wonderful thing!) and fixing of said technology would go back into the common good - royalty and patent free (one would hope). This is a no brainer; using public funds not just for educating our kids properly, but also improving technology - that anyone can have - will in turn, give us more control over how and when we access information.
You know, the general public/govt./us did this before when we paid for the copper for phones to be laid down in the early/middle part of the 20th century. The govt. laid all the wire and let AT&T use it for next to nothing. Over the years, AT&T got 0wnership of it. Then, in the latter part of the 20th century, the baby bells used that free (as in beer) resource to stop local competition in their local markets. They cited the argument "why should we be made to lease our lines for little money to local competition?"
So I say the opposite, why should public funds go to helping figure out technical issues for the richest software company in the world? Because kids will be bug testing (and possibly fixing) on publicly funded time which is not what I or anyone else pay tax dollars for!
Nah, this is a sham and public relations magic hand waving. It's a $46mil bug test and fixit it school. Like the reality of the M$ office in which you're not amazed by all the marvels of the modern world and how much time and money they save you, but rather how you're locked into a buggy platform with escalating costs, little or no choice, and no c
Russian proverb: Free cheese is only in a mouse trap.
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What happens to the kids that won't get access just because someone makes some sort of arbitray ethical decision? The world is full of huge contradictions and paradoxes. If this gives these kids the chance to use computers and be comfortable with technology, why don't we trust the rest of the school system to teach them to think and make their own choices as they grow. The experience is more important then the who or what.
This is one of those rare occasions when I find myself quoting the bible:
Matthew
Chapter 6
1 Take heed not to do your alms before men to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward with your Father who is in the heavens. 2 When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may have glory from men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 3 But thou, when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand does; 4 so that thine alms may be in secret, and thy Father who sees in secret will render [it] to thee.
In other words "charity is charity when you do it quietly". Boasting about it on the other hand, is self publicising and earns you no brownie points or to put it another way:
Let not thy marketing department send out press releases in order to make thy people think thou art a generous individual when instead thou art trying to maximise thine user base and profits for such actions render thee no better than the rulers of Sco who long ago wedged thine heads up thine arses and tried to rob the righteous penguinistas and thine own shareholders.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
Good link; thank you.
Two characteristics seem to govern all of Gates's "philanthropy":
1. Charitable exercises always follow bad press for Microsoft and/or Gates (his first penny was given away immediately following the release of his abysmal videotaped testimony for the antitrust hearings)
2. Charitable exercises always contain significant strings that benefit Microsoft, Gates, or the ideological institutions that made him a rich and powerful man (granted that this is true of the work of nearly all "philanthropists".
It's actually the last point that worries me the most. There is *always* ideological pressure from corporate funding to education. With what sort of balanced worldview do people come out of the Microsoft school?
Philanthropy in general is a weird, weird thing. It's essentially like saying "well, I'm sure rich - I must have taken a whole lot more money than I deserved from the rest of you folks, so here's 10% of it back - just out of the goodness of my heart! Get it? I'm rich *and* I'm a sweet guy!". Wouldn't it be better simply not to overpay these individuals to such an amazing degree? Are we that married to our Horatio Alger lottery mentality?