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

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?

[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?

[__aaltlg1547]

Because they're children. Children require guidance.

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?

[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: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 ][

she will be able to use her mom's smartphone

[Nutria]

Naturally not "he" and "dad".

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!

Re:Education....by computer

[ganjadude]

WOOOOOSHHHHHH

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.

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: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...