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When Does School Life Begin? Zuckerberg's New School To Admit Fetuses
theodp writes: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan's latest initiative to tackle educational inequity is The Primary School, a "private, non-profit school" which will eventually provide both free education and free healthcare for 700 low-income students from the Palo Alto area. "In addition to early childhood and K-12 education," Zuckerberg explained in a Facebook post, "The Primary School will also provide prenatal support for families and on-site healthcare for children. By bringing healthcare and education together in one place, the goal is to support families and help children from underserved communities reach their full potential." A job listing for Assistant Teachers notes that "the school will admit students at or before birth." Zuckerberg joins other Silicon Valley luminaries like Elon Musk and Sal Khan in what Wired calls The Tech Elite's Quest to Reinvent School in Its Own Image.
Only in a Brave New World would children be conditioned so early on in their life.
Feel pretty bad for the kids that have to put up with these tech companies fucking with their curriculums. Guess they should look forward to their wage slavery future.
College dropouts championing schools.
Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates, Dell, Ellison, Branson, etc.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
They can give the fetus a new facebook account with the child's REAL NAME.
Psst, kid. Want a Facebook?
"Prenatal support" means that the program serves pregnant women, not that we're educating the fetuses.
My kids are 5 and 3, my oldest spent a lot of time in daycare as an infant since both my wife and I were working. Here's a couple honest suggestions if anyone is listening
Our best experience with a daycare was one with a stable solid staff. The lady that ran the place was a no nonsense hardass. A stickler for procedure and didn't take shit from anyone. This really helped us feel like someone was in charge and on top of things. The lady who took care of our infant was there the whole time we were enrolled and had been there for quite some time before. It really helps the child when there are no staff changes, the child has to get adjusted and use to the adult and feel comfortable and secure. If there's high rollover then it can really make things awful for the child and therefore the parents.
One final suggestion, it would be useful to have some sort of program that reaches out to parents and helps them emotionally as much as possible during enrollment and especially the first day. It's pretty gut wrenching to drop off your child who hasn't left your arms in months to a stranger, you can always tell the new kids because their parents are the ones crying their eyes out in the parking lot. It's hard on fathers (i cried) but especially mothers. My wife couldn't do it, I had drop off duty every day.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
They're covering all the bases: prenatal care through kindergarten is widely considered the first and most critical time to influence a child's development. The family environment itself after that is held as the reason "underserved" (what a delightfully bland euphemism for "poor people and minorities") children attend school and stay involved until graduation.
tl;dr: They're coming as close to genetic engineering of humans as it's possible to get, and this will probably settle the nature vs. nurture question beyond a shadow of a doubt.
FTFA:
The school will admit students at or before birth, and will provide family-based supports, ensuring that students are school-ready by the time they enter the elementary school grades. Full time school begins at age 3.
It simply means that parents can reserve admission for their future children, and the mothers can receive aids. The listing further says they'll work with health care organizations for maternal support. Now you can spin it as you like, but it still doesn't make it a question about "When Does School Life Begin?"
Palo Alto public schools spend around $14,700 per student when the average cost per student in the nation is around $8500. Someone needs to tell Zuckerberg he is opening the school in the wrong place if he truly wants to help the "underserved".
Silicon Valley Luminaries like Salman Khan, who lives in Boston and got his three degrees from MIT?
I am not sure how theodp gets all of his rants on the front page. The school doesn't "admit fetuses". The school provides prenatal health support for LOW INCOME PEOPLE where no support exists. Theodp needs to JUST STOP with his anti-education diatribes. Disgusting.
Make your snide comments, but as a parent, this approach makes a pile of sense. Especially for poor/low income. I'm fortunate enough to have a decent income, education and a spouse with similar background and income. Even with what advantages we have, having kids and supporting kids is a fucking mess of administrivia, not to mention a pile of money.
So getting into a program like this when you are pregnant can literally be a life-changer for a low income person. Not because of the educational content per se, but because you cut the administrative bullshit down tremendously. You know your kid is going to have day care, so you don't have to rush around in panic and get on waiting lists, hoping your kid can get in somewhere. You know what it's going to cost so you can plan your expenses. You can have stable work hours, allowing you to work with an employer on regular hours. Just that right there can make the difference from you being the employee who is on time and dependable versus being the flake who is always late, leaving early and swapping shifts.
Same thing on up into preschool and grade school. There's a plan, there's a structure. That can help tremendously when you don't have a decent salary and pile of money to fall back on. In the case of our kids, there was always a "rolling the dice" moment when it came to child care, preschool, full day vs. half-day kindergarten, etc. Then it's a patchwork of after school programs that you don't know if you got into or not, and if you don't get in, you need to scramble, then somehow get your kid from school to the after school thing, etc. It's a damned mess, and for single parent households or people who work hourly, stupid stuff like not having the after school program in the same physical location as school just makes it impossible.
Then try and get your kid to the doctor's office, which is only open 9-5, and you have to work ... and if you aren't working, you aren't getting paid ...
I wonder what they plan to implant them to make them slaves of "social" for life. I guess this is the reaction to hordes of kids running away from the Network because they hate the parental control that comes with it. Zuckerberg still has a firm grasp on the baby-crazy moms, they're his most active clientele, now he wants to use them to get to the next generation.
SJWs to the rescue!
What with FB's new "premie-book" social media accounts, where you share your InstaSonoGram posts, and enjoy in-the-womb targeted ads for Pampers.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
This reminds me of the episode of the Sopranos where Paully donated to the church fair. He thought donating money would partly make up for all the bad things he'd done and was planning to do in the future.
This is a new trend, not educating fetuses, but allowing parents to register their kids for the school as soon as the parents know the kid is coming. This has been happening in several "private" schools for years. It's to reserve a spot in a competitive school. This is the same nonsense that Manhattan pre schools use now in advertisements where they say XX% of our students go on to Ivy League or something similarly silly. More fuel for the hype train. 700 kids? drop in the bucket, want to do real good? Put the schools like this is one of the states where education is a complete failure and give the parents an honest opportunity to get a good education for their kids. Palo Alto spends over 14K per student per year.... put this somewhere where they spend 2K per student per year
~corporate tool, but employed~
I'm having a hard time seeing the negatives. This is a prototype to try new educational ideas, but really what they are doing is helping the local community. Odds are good it's East Palo Alto (EPA) that will be most served, Palo Alto schools are quite good. The EPA schools are rated low, and any family brought into it will be getting more than they could get from public schools.
And if underprivileged children should have project-based learning that adapts to their learning capabilities, is that really so dystopian? They are trying something new, and offering it to those who wouldn't normally have the opportunity.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Education and health care is the obligation of your state (tax payer money). Not of any private entities.
If you put this in private (profit oriented) hands you inadvertly create a two-class society: one that can afford healthcare and education, and one that can't.
Low income; Palo Alto Area
Pick one
Sadly this guy knows nothing about schools/pedagogy/testing/etc. He will continue to make ill-advised decisions like this until he sits down and actually speaks to educators. In the process, he will continue to waste crazy amounts of money. He's right in the fact that poverty is the greatest issue facing school-aged teachers, not curriculum, or (gasp) unions. He just doesn't respect schools or teachers enough to listen to their informed opinions.
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/23/where-zuckerbergs-100-million-gift-went-wrong-pros.html
A few people have essentially called me a slave, but they never come up with convincing reasons for me to escape my "slavery".
This is Zukerberg's Asperger's coming through, loud and clear. I do not mean this in a mean way.
He simply does not understand why most people would not embrace this. It seems perfectly logical to him. It is efficient. It is through. It saves time and energy. It puts a "team" on raising your kids.
And it is not what most parents would want. It is creepy as hell. It is corporate parenthood.
For kids who have medical issues - and their parents - they can be unavoidably public, or intensely private. I think we have to be very careful about "integrating" medical care with education. It already is, to some necessary degree (immunizations, screening), although I think some of that has changed in my lifetime for the better. When I was a kid, we got some immunizations AT SCHOOL. We had TB screening AT SCHOOL. I had to suffer some bullying because I had a large TB test reaction. (All my family had to be tested, and I had to get regular X-rays until I was 18. Nothing ever showed up, thankfully.)
You can have strict privacy rules, but let's be honest - it's a school. Stuff gets spread around. And not just by the kids.
Mark probably would not understand this. At all. He probably has to remind himself to shake hands, and look people in the eyes when he talks to them. Here's one more thing for Mark to remind himself of. Other people are more sensitive about this stuff, and their feelings are hurt about it. Make logical sense? No. But it's the way most people's brains work.
It's creepy corporate paternalism. And Mark goes "sounds great to me!"
Arrrrggggghhhhh!
Imagine Beowulf clusters of coding fetuses in jars
Table-ized A.I.
I guess that means making under $250k a year?
Google, now FB think they're being innovative; what's old is apparently new again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Historic Pullman was built in the 1880s by George Pullman as workers' housing for employees of his eponymous railroad car company, the Pullman Palace Car Company. He established behavioral standards that workers had to meet to live in the area and charged them rent. Pullman's architect, Solon Spencer Beman, was said to be extremely proud that he had met all the workers' needs within the neighborhood he designed. The distinctive rowhouses were comfortable by standards of the day, and contained such amenities as indoor plumbing, gas, and sewers."
Look how well THAT turned out. It's good on the ups, not so great on the downs.
I believe Hershey, PA is another.
-Styopa
Many years ago(previous millenium) I lived and worked on the Peninsula, not too far from PA.
It was a wonderland of opulence, beauty, charm, character, and the weather could not be beat.
During my work routine I had to occasionally make a deliveries to East Palo Alto, which was, at the time, a very different place from PA and the rest of the Peninsula. East Palo Alto was a low income "working class" neighborhood/town that was 180 degress different than PA.
Crossing over into EPA, aka "Hubbaville"(a reference locals made to people who would go to EPA to buy crack cocaine) was an abrupt change. The two communities were so close to each other physically, yet so far apart in many other ways. It really was sad to see, with all the obvious cultural/social/economic stereotypes one would expect to see playing out right before my eyes.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I'm sure they'll be sucked into what ever the latest SJW approved teaching methods and subjects. Of course they must code! They will likely be so fucked up that they'll _have_ to work at Facebook as no one else would likely employ such damaged individuals. Yay! Enjoy blowing your money Zuckerburg.
A big deal is being made about starting with the fetus.
To have really good results, you should start pre-conception.
Choose a mate that has good education skills. This is the largest predictor of success in school.
Low income in Palo Alto area? What's that? $200k annual household income? :P
Hurray!!!! U.S. discovering Europe's reality through Zuckerberg....
Congratulations! All of your personal, private data, intimate thoughts, shopping lists, and friends - even those without accounts - is being harvested, categorized, mined and cross referenced for sale to marketeers who will spam you, inundate you with click bait, and harass you will illegal robocalls so 1 man can live like a king while he builds a socialist institution.
An I didn't even get flowers.
Ignatius Loyola is purported to have said "Give me a child until he is seven, and he will be mine forever". Sounds like The Zuck believes that too.
The sad thing is that a large percentage of the population-at-large will probably think this initiative is a good thing, instead of seeing the dangers inherent in it. What better way to extend and entrench the hold that corporations have on the lives of 'free' citizens?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Palo Alto public schools spend around $14,700 per student when the average cost per student in the nation is around $8500. Someone needs to tell Zuckerberg he is opening the school in the wrong place if he truly wants to help the "underserved".
East Palo Alto != Palo Alto. This school is actually intended to tap from the Ravenswood City School District in Palo Alto
Although East Palo Alto spends nearly $13,000/student, about 2/3 of the students are English language learners. The district many full-time Spanish translators for school office, classroom support, and attending parent-teacher meetings as well as to comply with special education requirements (the law requires reports to be translated for non-english speaking parents).
A few years ago, they had to cut down the school year to the bare minimum required by law to fund these fixed offsets and pretty much leaves no money for the "extras" that you see in the Palo Alto School district across highway 101. Then there's the additional parcel tax in Palo Alto and the funding from the non-profit Palo-Alto Partner's in Education (formed by parents to help fund extra curriculars for Palo Alto, not East Palo Alto/Ravenswood City). So yes, Ravenswood City area (EPO) is certainly deserving of the label of underserved.
This has been happening in several "private" schools for years.
It's been happening at least as far back as the late '40s:
For instance: The University of Michigan education department ran a laboratory school until a couple decades ago. Each class year initially admitted 30 boys and 30 girls. The students were subject to longitudinal tests for research as they progressed - so when someone had to leave (for instance, as a foreign exchange student) another was admitted to fill the place - and the student also readmitted upon return (to help make the longitudinal data retain accuracy). Thus a typical graduating class had maybe 33 or 34 of each sex.
They also served as the testbed for the actual teaching-a-class internship for School of Education students. So each one-year subject class was taught by a two-person team: A full professor of education and, for a half-year each, two college Education majors.
The education was superb, and slots for students were highly sought after. Children of high-ranking faculty (such as tenured professors) and officials were preferred - not just as an employment perk, but because they'd be less likely to move away, taking the kid, and thus corrupt the research data. (It also meant the school had access to a lot of data about the parents and perhaps other family members, who would typically be well disposed to its use in research.)
Given the quality of the education (and the financing of it by the school), there was a very long waiting list for openings. Many employees of the University would submit their kids' application as soon as they knew they were pregnant - which STILL wasn't any guarantee. (I only got into the school for my junior and senior high school years, when an opening for another boy finally occurred.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Inhale that funky Zuckersnatch
This is an excellent plan, soon we will be able to raise children completely in a sterile homogeneous government/corporate environment and won't need parents at all!!!
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
So after dropping $100 million on a 5 year project to transform Newark, New Jersey schools and failing miserably, Zuckerburg wants to spend millions to satisfy his wife's vanity by partnering with a federally funded healthcare center and a federally funded school building.
These van der Snoot Academies do far greater harm than good.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Boycott sexist code.org
School life begins at conception
Because you're free. As in beer.
I wonder how many of those 'low income students' parents work for Facebook?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial