Bill Gates On Educating the World

theodp writes During February, Bill Gates is playing Perry White at The Verge, expounding on the big bets the Gates Foundation is making to improve the world over the next 15 years. One of those bets is that online classrooms can help the world catch up. Gates' vision of universal online education extends to those who struggle with basic literacy and currently lack online access, far beyond the reach of MOOCs like Coursera, EdX, and Udacity, which have enjoyed their greatest success with higher-level courses aimed at the middle class. "Gates' vision — a wave of smartphones that can act as ubiquitous, cheap computers — is central to solving this problem," explains The Verge's Adi Robertson. "And unfortunately, we're not there yet." But eventually, Gates is betting that a world-class education will only be a few taps away for anyone in the world. And that's when things get really interesting. "Before a child even starts primary school," Bill and Melinda Gates wrote in their Foundation's 2015 letter, "she will be able to use her mom's smartphone to learn her numbers and letters, giving her a big head start. Software will be able to see when she's having trouble with the material and adjust for her pace. She will collaborate with teachers and other students in a much richer way. If she is learning a language, she'll be able to speak out loud and the software will give her feedback on her pronunciation."

Comments

Education....by computer

[Anonymous Coward]

But what will it be used to do? I can think of all the times I have used computers in school.

None of them taught me anything. A complete and utter waste of time. Even the Battlechess and Simcity games.

Re:Education....by computer

[ganjadude]

pfft. you didnt learn anything on a computer at school??? I learned that everyone in the 1800s died of dysentery in 2nd grade on an apple ][

Re:Education....by computer

[rossdee]

The Apple ][ was a long time ago, but not the 1800's - more like 1980.

Re:Education....by computer

[ganjadude]

WOOOOOSHHHHHH

Re:Education....by computer

[ArcadeMan]

In computer years, it may as well been the 1800's.

Re:Education....by computer

[Blaskowicz]

The diarrhea function was only introduced with the Apple III, not the Apple ][.

Re:Education....by computer

[JaredOfEuropa]

Computers did not teach you anyything, because you had a school with teachers and good learning materials (and probably well educated parents too) to learn from. Kids in underdeveloped countries often lack some of these, but they do (or will soon have) access to connected smart phones as that kind of tech is making its way into those markets. This will give kids access to teachers and books at the very least, and software can provide additional education. Software aimed at basic math and language is shown to be plenty effective.

Re:Education....by computer

[ShanghaiBill]

None of them taught me anything. A complete and utter waste of time.

Try Khan Academy. My daughter used it to learn JavaScript. My son learned fractions, and much more.

Wait, I'm low class and use MOOCs.

[blue trane]

The worst was an IMF edx MOOC that required Excel. Lucky I was able to do the assignments on a borrowed computer that had it.

Re:Wait, I'm low class and use MOOCs.

[blue trane]

Nah, I gave up trying to impress ppl long ago, friend. My grand project is a chatbot to replace you all.

Let me guess

[fred911]

Clippy is going mobile.

There are unused icons on your desktop

[rinoid]

The desktop cleanup wizard can help you clean up your desktop. ---- What does Bill Gates have to teach the world after this?

Re:There are unused icons on your desktop

[ihtoit]

not to trust needles?

What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

I don't think the people who come up with these schemes have ever sat a child in front of a computer, and watched while they tried to learn something from it.

The kind of information children can get that way is not much different than what you can get from reading a book. (Yes, I know the computer has sound and animation.) And for younger children, it's less than they can get by reading a book with their parents.

I would like to see published controlled studies that demonstrate that online classrooms can do as well as classrooms with a teacher.

Or that classrooms with a teacher plus Internet connections are better than classrooms with a teacher alone.

And they should be judged by the standard skills that good teachers are teaching students, not by their skills at answering computerized multiple-choice questions.

One good skill is learning how to tell whether a new innovation will work.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[blue trane]

Why not let the kids choose for themselves what they like?

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Mr D from 63]

I don't think the people who come up with these schemes have ever sat a child in front of a computer, and watched while they tried to learn something from it.

You meant we can't just give away a bunch of gadgets and underprivileged kids will all of a sudden start learning? There's got to be an easy way.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's particularly 'optimistic' given that we already have a fair amount of experience with what does (and doesn't) happen to children with access to books. With comparatively rare exceptions, mostly in slightly older children, not all that much.

It's pretty obvious that networked computers are, sooner or later, going to beat out printed textbooks(if only because it's getting cheaper to transmit a few megabytes to the ass end of nowhere than it is to ship tens of kilograms there, not necessarily because they are better, especially with the hardware in the cheap seats).

It is radically less obvious that our tiny monkey-spawn, with their few-hundred-million-years of experience in absorbing knowledge into their sponge-like brains by demanding interaction with nearby group members, are on the cusp of successfully being tutored by expert systems with some animated cartoon characters tossed on top.

If the trouble with teaching were a matter of text scarcity, Gutenberg would have mostly kicked its ass. That's not exactly what happened.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

On the plus side, early acclimatization to tapping symbol-coated touchscreens may be actively harmful; but it does prepare you to adeptly navigate the POS system of any fast food chain, giving you a leg up on one of the undesirable, economically tenuous, careers of the future!

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[__aaltlg1547]

Because they're children. Children require guidance.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[__aaltlg1547]

Somebody mod this insightful, please. We know that on-line learning has a very mixed history, all the way down to a complete waste of time and money.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Mr D from 63]

Maybe just load em up with Baby Einstein and Little Einstein videos! Then nobody even needs to watch over the kids.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[gtall]

In my opinion is it much worse. It encourages an ADHD attitude. A book requires imagination. The idea of spending a few days getting to the bottom of a math problem is lost on kids because they expect to push a button and find the answer, or push many until they stumble into it. Bill Gates and his ilk are a plague on education, he should just STFU and go back to spending his billions on health care for the poor.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Herkum01]

As a father of 2 young children they will chose to a) Just eat junk food b) play computer games all day

Now it sounds like all children are just born to be nerds.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[blue trane]

Oh, right, children are owned, so you get to force them to do what you want.

But why not guide them to guide themselves. Let each kid learn in his idiosyncratic way, with a wide variety of tools to choose from?

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[blue trane]

Online classes have interactions in the forums. In the Jazz improv MOOC, Gary Burton noted that in physical classes he teaches, students rarely talk to each other outside of class. In online classes, the interaction between students is greater. Probably because of the convenience, and lesser importance of visual cues such as clothing, smells, attractiveness, accents, loudness, etc.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[blue trane]

What if they could run around in the games and burn off the junk food?

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[blue trane]

I've taken probably dozens of online classes without spending anything. It's great not mixing knowledge up with financial risk. It empowers students.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Bill Gates and his ilk are a plague on education, he should just STFU and go back to spending his billions on health care for the poor.

This, this and this.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Joe_Dragon]

Well it's this of a life time of paying student loans (usa only)

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

Here's an example of what I consider science teaching:

A kindergarten teacher was also a science teacher. She had taught her kids about birds. It was a nice day out, so she decided to take her kids out for a walk in the woods.

A woodpecker flew in, and started pecking on a tree.

Woodpeckers were uncommon in this area. The kids had never seen a woodpecker before, and she had never mentioned it in class.

One of the kids said, oh, he's trying to get insects to eat in the tree!

This is the kind of moment that makes life worth living for a science teacher.

This 5-year-old girl had generalized from the feeding habits of the birds that she had learned about, to a bird she had never learned about. There was quite a bit of scientific insight that went into that observation. You wouldn't think that a 5-year-old was capable of that, but science teachers know that they are.

And it was completely unexpected. You couldn't plan for that in a computer program, and it wold be unlikely to happen again.

I would argue that this is real science teaching. And a computer could never replace that teacher. How could a computer decide that it's a nice day, and the kids have been cooped up in the classroom, so let's go out for a walk in the woods, and actually observe the science that we've been reading about?

Computers can do a lot in education. Of course, books and magazines can do a lot in education. Of course, a lot of what computers do well is simply replacing books and magazines. A children's library needs a librarian. It's not a dumpster full of books. Librarians (like teachers) know what children will like and understand at different ages. They can recommend books, and buy books that are popular, so you can look at the spines of books on a bookshelf, pull out a book, and find something interesting. Google is basically a dumpster full of books. It's helpful if you know what you want, but it only has one trick (counting links), and otherwise it offers you no guidance. You need to already have a pretty good education before you can use Google effectively. Otherwise, you're going to wind up like Jenny McCarthy.

Computers can supplement teachers, on the shelf along with the books. They can do calculations and manage data and create models. They're great for word processing.

Computers can't give you a woods full of birds. They can't give you the chemicals and equipment that you could find in a science stockroom. My science teacher threw a piece of sodium into a pan of water, but no educational computer program is going to tell you to throw a piece of sodium into a pan of water. Most of all, educational computer programs can't really answer questions, especially the unexpected questions, and the most insightful questions, like, "Why doesn't this work like the book said it does?"

A lot of these education "reforms" want to reduce teachers from unionized professionals with a lifetime commitment, to replaceable less-skilled contingent workers who follow standardized workbooks, and are basically computer tenders.

I fear Bill Gates, even when he is bearing gifts. Up to now, he and his lobbyists have been trying to "disrupt" education, by forcing schools to adopt standardized testing, written by Pearson educational publishers, that have never been validated by any of the standard validation methods that every science-based psychologist uses. Teachers are being fired based on tests that literally have no more validity than random numbers. He's taking the MBA methods used by employers to evaluate assembly line workers and marketing managers, and applying them to teachers, as if you could judge the value of teachers by their success in the free market of test results.

He's accepted the war on government, and he wants to replace public schools with private charter schools, even though private charter schools have repeatedly failed in their own terms -- their results on high-stakes standard tests, as evaluated by the NAEP

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[rtb61]

Wise person say, want to teach the students, then teach the teachers first. Thinking there is some magical mystical route to knowledge by giving children gadgets to play with is just plain silly. All the majority will do is learn to play with the gadgets, be endlessly distracted by those gadgets and basically never learn to do.

Creativity and crafting must be taught by skilled caring professionals with low ratios of students to teacher. Things that are useful, like the simple stuff, care and maintenance of a home, cooking and diet, self care, functions of society, a desire as well as of course the ability to research and learn. It is important that children learn how to do things manually and then latter learn how to apply the knowledge digitally. Social norms and cooperative team work also need to be taught.

Having a very narrow point of view computer nerd billionaire, totally disconnected from the realities of life, coming up with methods of education, all solely focused upon his personal preferences and extremely limited experiences is truly foolish.

Education is meant to fulfil a role from an IQ of 60 to one of 160. As such the role of education needs to be hugely varied from a more physical point of view as expressed in trades, to a more cerebral point of view as expressed in higher education (teaching rather than learning). Those of lower capability should not be actively punished and disadvantaged by those of higher capability post formal education (often as revenge for the exact opposite occurring whilst in school).

Not to forget, if we are not having fun and are just slaves to society and an exploitative abusive minority, then who is fooling who and what are we really trying to achieve. It is stupid for a few rich fools of extremely limited experience to decide to play games with billions of peoples lives because based upon their success with greed, somehow it makes them better than hundreds of thousands of skilled and qualified people whose focus was not greed and who instead had far higher motivations than grubbing about for the most money.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[robbo]

To the best of my knowledge "head starts" in letters and numbers make no difference in long-term outcomes. I'm disappointed to hear Gates pushing for this sort of thing. Solid educational resources at the right developmental stages are critical for long-term success, not some sort of fast-track to the ABCs.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Median student loan debt is $28k (http://projectonstudentdebt.org/state_by_state-data.php). 30% of students graduate debt free

The wage premium for having a college degree is at a record high (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/wage-premium-from-college-is-said-to-be-up/?_r=0&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Business%20Day&action=keypress&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=Blogs).

It takes fewer working hours to repay a student loan today than it did in 1970's.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

To the best of my knowledge "head starts" in letters and numbers make no difference in long-term outcomes. I'm disappointed to hear Gates pushing for this sort of thing. Solid educational resources at the right developmental stages are critical for long-term success, not some sort of fast-track to the ABCs.

That's my understanding too. Children are only ready to read and do arithmetic at an appropriate age, usually around 5. If you push them before they're ready, they won't be able to do it, and you'll just frustrate them. Preschool can teach them valuable things, like socializing with other children. Reading and arithmetic just crowds out other valuable things.

Even president GW Bush didn't understand that. He used to go to schools and read books, but the books were age-inappropriate. "A Hungry Caterpillar" is a preschool book, but he read it to older kids. It's shocking that somebody in charge of making important decisions about education (usually arbitrarily) could be so ignorant, and nobody told him (not even his wife, who was a librarian).

The TV show Sesame Street was very effective at teaching preschool kids the alphabet and counting. They had education consultants, and they knew it didn't make any difference in long-term outcomes, but they did it anyway. The parents loved it. Having their kids recite the alphabet was pretty dramatic. It made Sesame Street popular and guaranteed their funding. And it didn't hurt. They taught other things that were useful, like reading in the higher grades. Sometimes you have to compromise in a good cause.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[chthon]

You do not have kids or you are lucky with them. If I would not push my 10 year old daughter around a little bit, she would gladly sit all day in front of the TV or the computer doing nothing. She does have the brains, if she studies, she gets good grades. But she has a tendency of rather doing nothing and not to want to think about anything.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[ihtoit]

For learning by rote and wholesale destruction of the ability to think critically, nothing beats a darkened room with no visual access to anything outside the walls, a few poorly-configured screens (or configured to induce a hypnotic state) arranged in rows with the seating focussed on a larger screen at the back of the room while the workstations themselves are networked via wi-fi and keyboards are Bluetooth, or they're wireless tablets. This isn't about getting helpful technology into classrooms, this is about making it easier to produce DRUDGE WORKERS who will HAPPILY work for MINIMUM WAGE doing such makework activities as shelf stacking and sweeping leaves. I could run a lecture series on how the "Elite" are fucking the rest of us entirely for their own benefit. Notice I didn't call them "Illuminati" or any of that other distraction bullshit.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[ihtoit]

I homeschooled my kids. My eldest is now 21 and he now runs his own (very successful) tech company. He does everything from meeting clients to running the books.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[itzly]

You'd be solving the wrong problem. They shouldn't be eating junk food in the first place.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[khallow]

Rockwell was arguably a propagandist for a opiative fantasy that never really existed.

And the Moon arguably is made of green cheese.

While Rockwell's work is a mild, nostalgic exaggeration of the past, one could make similar art of today. It just requires a mildly optimistic viewpoint.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

I once saw an article in Scientific American that showed you how to train a pigeon to peck on a lever for food.

First you stop feeding the pigeon until he's lost 10% of his weight. That motivates him to get food.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[JaredOfEuropa]

There is plenty of evidence that computer programs can effectively teach basic math and language skills, and that they are good for rote learning of various subjects. Are they better than a teacher or parent? They are better than no teacher or parent. And in addition to special teaching programs (which have limited application), computers can bring traditional learning materials to student at a much lower cost. If there is a shortage of teachers or if there aren't any in some remote area, kids can be taught in a MOOC or virtual classroom. Not as effective as small local classes, but better than none at all.

The question is not whether computers can improve education in underdeveloped countries; they can. The real question is how to apply computers in this (varied) environment so that they actually are effective... or whether it would be more cost-effective to spend the money on teachers.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Brulath]

Having a very narrow point of view computer nerd billionaire, totally disconnected from the realities of life, coming up with methods of education, all solely focused upon his personal preferences and extremely limited experiences is truly foolish.

You're making the wild assumption that Bill and Melinda didn't consult widely and look for evidence before deciding they'd sink a significant amount of time and resources into this venture. You seem to dislike the man, but I see no reason to take that dislike and assume he's wildly negligent in his philanthropic endeavours. It's a foundation–there's more than two people in the decision making hierarchy. It's reasonable to assume that a number of them have actually spent time with the people they wish to educate and have carried out enough research to determine that a mobile phone-based software solution has the potential to do what they're aiming for.

They're predicting that software will get there in 15 years (or whatever); we're not there yet. If you look at how far we've come in the last 15 years, then predicting that putting significant resources into creating digital education will result in better experiences for the most needy isn't that far fetched.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[rtb61]

Problem with your theory is, when you are rich enough people soon learn to tell you what you want to hear, otherwise you stop paying them and the more they agree with you, the more you pay them. Just the way it happens, ego and the subconscious tearing apart anything socially constructive because it is not done for the community but to feed the ego, to be the very public philanthropist.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Chess_the_cat]

One problem: woodpeckers also peck in order to communicate and claim territory. The kid made a guess and got lucky on part of it. He did not make further observations or improve on his theory. He blurted something out which was half correct and his teacher did nothing to improve his answer. Where is the guidance? I would have asked the child why he thought that and how could we be sure and why else might the woodpecker be pecking at the wood? There's no critical thinking there; no learning.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Jason Levine]

I try to guide my children to make the right choices, but as a parent sometimes you need to force your child to do the right thing. This isn't a matter of me "owning" my children. It's a matter of me and my wife being the adults responsible for their well-being. Left to their own devices, my oldest would likely sit on the couch all day snacking, watching TV, and playing video games. He would save his homework for the last possible moment and would attempt to stay up all hours of the night.

My oldest is 11 and thinks he's all grown up. He complains when we force him to do his homework before watching TV because it's so hard. (He has to answer some math problems and write a few sentances about a book he's reading.) He has no clue about the work ahead of him in high school and college, but the good habits we enforce now will serve him well into the future.

It's called being a parent.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Jason Levine]

I've seen the results of Bill Gate's intrusion into education. His organizations are pushing high stakes standardized tests designed to show the students and teachers are failing so they can sell more resources to bring up the former's test scores and so they can replace the latter. Teachers are being forced to stick to a script and teach to the test because every second not spent on test preparation is a second that might cost them their jobs. (Standardized test scores are being tied to the teachers' jobs. If your kids don't score well enough, you can be let go. So you'd better devote all of your efforts to making sure your kids do well on the tests - whether or not they actually learn anything is irrelevant.)

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[Jason Levine]

A lot of these education "reforms" want to reduce teachers from unionized professionals with a lifetime commitment, to replaceable less-skilled contingent workers who follow standardized workbooks, and are basically computer tenders.

I fear Bill Gates, even when he is bearing gifts. Up to now, he and his lobbyists have been trying to "disrupt" education, by forcing schools to adopt standardized testing, written by Pearson educational publishers, that have never been validated by any of the standard validation methods that every science-based psychologist uses. Teachers are being fired based on tests that literally have no more validity than random numbers. He's taking the MBA methods used by employers to evaluate assembly line workers and marketing managers, and applying them to teachers, as if you could judge the value of teachers by their success in the free market of test results.

A thousand times this. My kids go to school in New York and our governor has basically declared war on public schools. He wants to open more private-business owned charter schools and close public schools who fail the tests. Tests, mind you, that are designed for kids to fail so that Pearson can sell more to the state to bring up test scores and so the politicians can point more fingers at teachers. My kids refuse the tests. Not without some push back, mind you, but it is a growing movement as parents and educators see that these tests have no point other than to funnel money to private businesses and hurt kids/teachers.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

I assume you are not a kindergarten teacher.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

There is plenty of evidence that computer programs can effectively teach basic math and language skills

It seems plausible, but I have been unable to find any evidence of this. I would appreciate a citation, preferably to a peer-reviewed journal.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

Oh yeah, I was going through my files and found this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10...
Inflating the Software Report Card
By TRIP GABRIEL and MATT RICHTEL
Published: October 8, 2011
United States Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse review of 10 major software products for teaching algebra and elementary and middle school math and reading found that 9 “did not have statistically significant effects on test scores.”

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

I live in New York, so I know that everything you say about Andrew Cuomo is true.

Here's somebody who can explain it better than I can.

http://www.politico.com/magazi...?
In The Arena
The Plot Against Public Education: How millionaires and billionaires are ruining our schools.
By BOB HERBERT
October 06, 2014

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Did they compare test scores between kids using only the software, and kids using nothing at all (no teachers / classrooms)? Or did they test how well kids from illiterate families did in their first few years in school, comparing those having used educational software against those without? Because that's what we're talking about here.

Besides, one of the tested products apparently did have a significant impact on test scores, showing that computers can be effective as a supplement to regular education as well. I agree that there's a lot of rubbish educational software out there, but not all of it is.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Here is an article with plenty of references, though this guy focuses more on computers as a teaching aid.

Re:What's the evidence this will work?

[nbauman]

If a doctor is evaluating a drug, and he sees 10 studies, and 9 of them have no effect, he concludes that the drug has no effect.

In that NYT story, I couldn't find the actual 2009 study. "Statistically significant results" is a low bar. It could be a small effect, or it could just be the random variation of 10 studies.

she will be able to use her mom's smartphone

[Nutria]

Naturally not "he" and "dad".

Re:she will be able to use her mom's smartphone

[Anonymous Coward]

"they" should be officially added to the English language as a suitable replacement for "he" and "she" so people can stop using these words to push stereotypes or agendas.

Re:she will be able to use her mom's smartphone

[Octorian]

And people who get nit-picky about all these gender terms in English, especially when their gender-of-choice appears favored, should be grateful that they speak a language that offers the luxury of gender-neutral words. Many other languages assign gender to everything and have no such luxury.

Re:she will be able to use her mom's smartphone

[nbauman]

"They" is plural.

"You" is plural too, but eventually it drove out "thee" and "thou" and became accepted as a singular.

Re:she will be able to use her mom's smartphone

[n6kuy]

If you want to be pedantic, "their" is also plural. So no that's not correct English. If you want to be pedantic.

He / his
She / her
They / their
I / my
You / your

Re:she will be able to use her mom's smartphone

[AthanasiusKircher]

"they" should be officially added to the English language as a suitable replacement for "he" and "she" so people can stop using these words to push stereotypes or agendas.

Instead of "added," how about restored, or perhaps simply "re-legitimized"?

More details at the link, but " singular they" has been in common English usage since the 14th century, and until the mid-1800s it was standard even among famous authors and educated folks.

Then, as with many supposed grammatical bugaboos, the Latin wackos got ahold of things and tried to claim that English should be more like some idealized version of Latin (which itself was largely a constructed artificially policed version of Latin espoused by Cicero et al.). So blame the grammar wackos of the late 1800s for imposing an artificial rule on English usage.

Usually when you find some arbitrary grammatical rule, it's not that we need to "officially allow" other uses into English... Often we just need to stop grammar wackos from trying to enforce supposed "rules" that were simply made up by some up-tight dude in the late 1800s who was bored and decided to write a grammar book to impose all of his (yes, almost always "his"!) artificial restrictions on the world.

Teach the evils of FOSS

[Billly Gates]

Why thank you Rob Limo for that advertisement.

The purpose of my program is to create FUD and demand for my products. You all can help me out with a story about SystemD. Make it real emotional with no facts at all and I will include it for my educational program to prevent these poor African children from using Raspery Pie. We have a competitor out anyway that will knock its socks out! For a mere $1249 more it will include a cell phone attached desktop too!

What does Bill know about education?

[arit]

Bill is a marketer, businessman, and, of late, a philanthropist ... but he knows blessed little about education. "Not all who excess in business are wise" - Ethics of the Fathers, 2:6.

Experience shows

[jmd]

Bill Gates and Microsoft have been around for a very long time. The only real metric we have about them is that Bill Gates is either the richest or second richest person in the world. Depending upon metrics used. That we know.

From that we can surmise that what Bill Gates and Microsft do excedingly well is take money from people and put it in their own pockets.

Since somewhere in the 90s Bill Gates has touted solving poverty with computers. All that has materialized is a transfer of wealth from many to one.

Just remember: poverty is the fruit of wealth.

Re:Experience shows

[penguinoid]

Just remember: poverty is the fruit of wealth.

Poverty is the fruit of other people having more money than you do (at least if you're doing psychological studies).

Banana Republics

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere around 20,000 children die every day from poverty. That's a 9/11 (3,000) every few hours and a holocaust (6 million) every year.

But poverty isn't an impossible problem. Some countries have very little poverty: in such countries it's relatively easy to find a decent job that pays enough to live simply but comfortably. But then other countries have most of their population trapped in desperate poverty. In such countries, there's typically a a relatively small group of (extremely rich) people lording it over everyone else as a (mostly hereditary) dictatorship that is focused on government policies that keep itself in power and exploit everyone else.

So what does this have to do with the USA? Well, these dictatorships that are exploiting their own people often have close ties to certain rich and influential families in the USA. And these families use their influence on the US government to have the US government support the dictatorships. Sometimes the support is fairly limited - allowing the dictatorship to purchase military equipment to oppress their population and stay in power. Other times the US government provides more direct financial and military assistance to keep the dictatorship in power. The general term for such situations in banana republics.

In the USA, it is often said that freedom and democracy are fundamental human rights. And rights are supposed to be universal and irrevocable - not just for Americans. When Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, talked about the USA being founded on the principle of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, he meant ordinary people - not members of a small hereditary ruling class. Often you hear American politicians talk about promoting American interests in other countries when what they really mean is promoting the interests of a small number of rich and powerful Americans at the expense of ordinary people in other countries. This is a betrayal of one of the most fundamental American values: democracy.

So, getting back on topic, yes, education is important and, yes, online education has tremendous potential. But what's also needed is for countries like the USA to stop doing the banana republic thing - stop helping hereditary dictatorships keep their populations trapped in desperate poverty.

Here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

Gates is becoming (has already become?) the new Ross Perot -- crazy rich guy who thinks, along with many other people who should know better, that because he made a lot of money He Has All The Answers.

If we're stupid enough to follow him down this absurd path, we deserve what we get.

first world education failure

[roman_mir]

The first world education has failed to produce enough people capable of discerning truth from fiction and in many cases even barely capable to detect bullshit. Sure, some people can still do it some of the time. But very few can do it consistently. A tiny minority of Americans understood that Saddam was never involved in 911 AND that he had no weapons of mass destruction in his disposal. Tiny minority of Russians understand that their president and government in general is destroying their economy with centralization of power. For that matter only a tiny minority of Americans understand that also. Tiny minority of people understand that without strong morality (protection against theft) in the area of private property rights the economy doesn't have a long lived and prosperous future. Tiny minority of people understand that governments as a general concept guarantee violence and immorality of theft and murder in the modern global society.

What can western style education do to create free thinking people truly capable of changing their own plight in the world? Education cannot be a government's job to create free people.

Re:first world education failure

[blue trane]

Why not have internet agoras where Socrateses teach for free?

Teach them to respect the law?

[Tough Love]

Teach them to respect the law, just like Bill Gates

hmm... "Details of which have been lost over time"... hmm...

The wonders of technology...

[Eggplant62]

And that child shall summon a Lyft ride, and the Lyft driver shall call the mother and discover, much to his chagrin, that the mother will cancel the ride he's already traveled 7 miles across town to pick up.

Seriously

[fred911]

We all have fun poking at Mr. Gates, warranted or not. And, we can all believe that the 31.6 billion dollars his foundation has GRANTED since inception internationally is not much of a personal sacrifice in relative terms. But a least he's taking a shot. Surely, figuring out how to grant money effectively is more than a full time job. Regardless of one's opinion of the effectiveness of his benevolent ventures, there's more than just a financial commitment here.

  I find it honourable and surely it has majorly affected recipients in a positive manner. Undoubtedly, he has made life changing or saving differences in this world. If you had the ability to do anything, anywhere, anytime, had the ability to make multiple errors, sans ANY change (personal, financial, etc), how long would it be before you would just disappear from any public exposure?

  If you plant seeds in every place in the world, some of them will produce fruit and some will fail. I see the motivation as benevolent and don't believe condemnation here is deserved or warranted.

   

Re:Seriously

[Tough Love]

...we can all believe that the 31.6 billion dollars his foundation has GRANTED since inception internationally is not much of a personal sacrifice in relative terms...

You're a bit confused. That is somewhat close to the amount the foundation was _endowed_ with, but actual grants are not remotely close to that. Skeptics point out that the foundation smells like a gigantic tax dodge... the money remains under Bill Gates' control with not a cent of tax paid on it.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a big propaganda campaign that also serves as a giant tax dodge, "philanthropic leverage" comes to mind:
http://newint.org/features/2012/04/01/bill-gates-charitable-giving-ethics/
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/31/bill-gates-corporate-profit-vs-humanity.aspx

This has been discussed before:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/07/05/0332218/a-critical-examination-of-bill-gates-philanthropic-record

controversial global health policies:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-08-31/news/53413161_1_hpv-vaccine-cervarix-human-papilloma-virus

this is also coupled with investments in GMO Monsanto
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/sep/29/gates-foundation-gm-monsanto

Many accuse Bill Gates foundation of destroying education:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Same dirty game playing old policies old Bill used to use at Microsoft but now in the public "philanthropy" arena.

Re:Seriously

[SuricouRaven]

My theory is that he finished up with Microsoft and realised most of the world saw him as a tyranical businessman who stopped at nothing to destroy all competition. He doesn't want to be remembered as a robber-baron, so he started the foundation in hope of achieving a more positive legacy.

Re:Seriously

[chispito]

Skeptics point out that the foundation smells like a gigantic tax dodge... the money remains under Bill Gates' control with not a cent of tax paid on it.

Yes... you dodge taxes so you can put that money toward the greater good of your own choosing, and not only what the government demands. That is precisely what tax breaks are for.

Re:Seriously

[fred911]

http://www.gatesfoundation.org...

Total grant payments since inception: $31.6 billion (1)

Re:And then

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL What? The last time I saw a blue screen was a good ten years ago.

How about clean drinking water while we are at it?

[plopez]

Some good sanitation might help. Otherwise all the newly educated will die of dysentary.

here's food for thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3041841/change-generation/4-things-you-probably-know-about-poverty-that-bill-and-melinda-gates-dont

This is a great article on how although what Bill and Melinda are doing is honorable, it is also ill-conceived and shows fundamental lack of understanding of the underlying issues of these regions.

Re:here's food for thought...

[khallow]

And it's not purely capitalism versus communism - there are plenty of examples all around the world and throughout history of populations being trapped in poverty by capitalist dictatorships of one form or another.

Not really. Capitalism is not just private parties owning capital, but also effective laws that protect private ownership of capital. That's a relatively new thing. Most dictatorships don't have the rule of law that protects private ownership of capital. IMHO capitalist dictatorships are quite rare even in today's world. Thus as a result, I don't think there are plenty of examples of capitalist dictatorships.

Re:here's food for thought...

[khallow]

Sure, no true Scottsman.

No, it's quite relevant that there are protections in place for private property. For example, some examples of recent capitalist dictatorships would be Chile under Pinochet, current day Singapore and China, Japan up to around the First World War, and Taiwan under the Kuomintang,

One could also ask how many communist dictatorships there are left in the world.

There aren't many left. Cuba, North Korea, and Burma come to mind.

And I'm not quite sure what you mean by private ownership of capital. In most dictatorships there's a small fraction of the population with close ties to the government who are very rich and who manage to hang on to their wealth/capital just fine.

The definition of capitalism is an economic or political system in which there is substantial ownership of capital by private, non government entities. If you have to be a crony in order to own capital, then you're not in a capitalist society.

Re:How about clean drinking water while we are at

[a.koepke]

They have already been doing work on that, just have a look at Bill's blog.

http://www.gatesnotes.com/Deve...

Microsoft Education ©

[lippydude]

"Gates' vision - a wave of smartphones that can act as ubiquitous, cheap computers"

The sterility of the 'vision' is quite staggering in its banality. I guess that's the reason Microsoft (and Intel) helping the OLPC project didn't turn out so well:

One Laptop Per Child - Production Delays Caused By Microsoft, Intel?

Intel: doing the dirty on OLPC

Education Government Incentive program

"We recognize the critical importance of helping emerging markets build healthy and legal PC ecosystems and clearly the answer is having Windows be a core component."

"Until all the details of the program have been developed, it is important that we have a way to address large PC purchases that involve low-cost/no-cost competitors in the education (and Government) sectors, especially in emerging markets."

Re:Microsoft Education ©

[coofercat]

This time around though, Microsoft has a warehouse or two full of Surface 1s to 'dump'. A quick firmware change, and poof! 'budget' Windows tablet for the masses.

I wonder...

[matbury]

...if Bill Gates actually believes any of what he's spouting about education. I can understand if he believes it because he's simply ignorant and high on his own billionaire hubris. So why's he spending millions on trying to disestablish public education in the US and Canada?

It doesn't work.

[SuricouRaven]

Read a few comment sections and you'll soon realise that giving people access to all human knowledge doesn't actually grant them the ability or desire to process it properly. The internet has proven a fertile ground for a new wave of urban legends, conspiracy theories, junk science and agressive political views.

Re:Sesame Street already does this

[ihtoit]

fact: Internet access is a Human Right.
fact: Access to clean, safe, FREE drinking water is not a Human right.

Fucked up, yes. Sounds wrong, yes. But that does not diminish that both statements are 100% absolutely true.

Re:Price gouge Microsoft products

[davester666]

Whatever you do, do NOT smell Bill Gate's "cloud".

Re:He wouldn't know where to start

[ihtoit]

Gates didn't get rich by writing checks.

Re:And then

[sydsavage]

Maybe you need to leave the comforting confines of mom's basement more often. Here's one from about six months ago. It affects Windows 7, 8.1 and Server 2008:

http://www.infoworld.com/artic...

Re:When the only tool you have is a hammer

[khallow]

OTOH, if you're a one trick pony, then the computer is probably as good a single trick as there is out there.

Re:Sesame Street already does this

[gbjbaanb]

and hopefully they will be able to teach English to these kids, and Bill and Melinda too.

As my (female) English teacher used to say "He embraces she", as in the masculine form refers to both sexes, similar to how we refer to ourselves as mankind, not womankind.

As yes, I know its some stupid politically correct bastardisation of he language to use feminine pronouns like this for some sort of awareness brainwashing similar to New Think, but that only serves to demonstrate a sense of exclusion of boys in such writing.

Um, advantage?

[holophrastic]

"Before a child even starts primary school," -- so, that's kindergarten.

"she will be able to use her mom's smartphone to learn her numbers and letters, giving her a big head start." -- we call that parents talking to their children.

"Software will be able to see when she's having trouble with the material and adjust for her pace." -- we call that parenting.

"She will collaborate with teachers and other students in a much richer way." -- richer than the human teacher being right there in the room? Explain that one to me, then you can replace hookers with software too.

"If she is learning a language, she'll be able to speak out loud and the software will give her feedback on her pronunciation." -- we call that conversing with humans.

So this whole concept is not to bring education to the world. Instead it's to bring childhood development problems due to lack of parenting to the world. Excellent.

Re:Sesame Street already does this

[BarbaraHudson]

I was referring more to the fact that we are seeing the negative effects of the digital revolution in pre-schoolers, who are already using moms' smartphone and tablet to play with alone, rather than interact with other kids. Sesame Street and shows like that work great with 10-20 kids in one room shouting out the answers. But of course, they don't drive selling more digital junk food.

As for the use of feminine pronouns, we've always referred to ships and cars as "she", so I guess it varies with context (and yes, I admit it, political correctness to the point of being patronizing). The sentence could be more inclusive as follows:

Before children even start primary school," Bill and Melinda Gates wrote in their Foundation's 2015 letter, "they will be able to use their parent's smartphone to learn numbers and letters, giving a big head start.

Notice that the last two "hers" were totally eliminated, not replaced with "their", as they are completely superfluous. The sentence is shorter, and better.

I guess the pendulum tends to overshoot in one direction, then the other. Same as TV commercials have been nauseating for decades making it look like men are total klutzes and the woman knows everything - if that's the case, the women must be pretty low-expectation low-self-esteem settle-for-any-old-dummies. Advertisers need to get it in their thick skulls that it might have been "cute" for 15 minutes in the '60s, but we should have moved on a long time ago.

Having experienced it from both sides of the gender divide, it's offensive either way.

Re:Sesame Street already does this

[gbjbaanb]

I agree, but I think the reason some people do it is to do with some politicized ideology (usually left-wing) where established norms are broken down for entirely unjustified and selfish reasons.

Here in the UK we see the effects of this kind of new-think in the horrendous sex scandal in Rotherham, where its more important to be 'on message' than it is to deal with things. I know we can rewrite such sentences to be gender-neutral but again, this is allowing 'them' to affect our behaviour and way of thinking.

So I don't think this is pendulum swinging, but "political correctness", or attempted mind-control by people who want us to be afraid of what we think - for fear of being attacked for not conforming to their new reality. Pendulum swinging is where we have all-women shortlists or special girls-only STEM education programmes, reasonable to some extent I suppose as such are well-intentioned.

I may have put all that in too-conspiracy-theorist terms though, shows how difficult it is to discuss these things.

Re:Sesame Street already does this

[BarbaraHudson]

Pendulum swinging is where we have all-women shortlists or special girls-only STEM education programmes, reasonable to some extent I suppose as such are well-intentioned.

"Well-intentioned " discrimination is still discrimination. It implies that girls and women are somehow "less capable", and is extremely paternalistic. That attitude is poison to both genders - it characterizes the problem that it's somehow supposed to solve.

There are other ways that are not so corrosive, but take more effort, but getting people to clean up their act won't make headlines.

Re:How about clean drinking water while we are at

[plopez]

They will need training; engineers for example; capital equipment, reliable energy, and other infrastructure costing probably hundreds of billons. Some of the training can be done on the web. But for Civil Engineering projects there is still no real substitute for 'boots on the ground' or hands on experience for a well trained cadre of engineers and technicians.

Re:How about clean drinking water while we are at

[plopez]

Yes I saw that. But it is not large enough. We will probably need hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 or more years.

This has already been done in fact, decentralized water purification, a number of times and failed. Centralized purification and delivery is the most reliable and efficient way to get drinking water to the masses.

Citaton:
http://www.emas-international....

Not everyone...

[Dareth]

Some of us were hung for shooting law enforcement trying to defend ourselves.

Re:And then

[AqD]

Not happening since Windows 7. Although it remains unresolvable if your Windows is somewhat fucked up - there is no way for manual repair or diagnosis.

Re:Sesame Street already does this

[AqD]

fact: Internet access is a Human Right.
fact: Access to clean, safe, FREE drinking water is not a Human right.

Fucked up, yes. Sounds wrong, yes. But that does not diminish that both statements are 100% absolutely true.

You cannot just go to a failed country, building a dam and treatment plants for them and expect them to keep everything running. But you can give them Internet access and they'd discover and learn how to fix everything on their own.

GCompris to the rescue

[xarma]

I am the creator of the educational software GCompris. While it would be hard to prove but it may really help children. At least many users reported us positive feedbacks over the years.

We the Taxpayers

[paul mafinga]

The Borg Foundation probably contributes a pittance compared to the taxpayers of western nations. It's more image reform to recover from their various legal shenanigans than anything else.

Some US states base their future prison needs on 3rd grade literacy rates. Just reading with a child twice a week, for 20 minutes or so, can make a dramatic difference in outcome. Once a person can read, their interests rapidly take control.

Unfortunately, most children will never see anything except a single book -- a religious text, a primitive human training manual, written 1400-3300 years ago. Widespread, low cost handheld computing devices might give them a chance to expand their library.