Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
I saw the graph at right in a in a column by Bill Gates. I was inclined to link to it, but I find myself far more sympathetic with Gary Stager's response. " In his incredibly condescending TED Talk, Gates went on to suggest that we film excellent teaching and share it with others; another long-established practice he thinks he invented to rescue children from all of the awful teachers consciously suppressing standardized test scores. Gates doesn't offer to film the classrooms his children attend, but rather the obedience schools like KIPP he prescribes for poor children. In the world of Bill Gates his children deserve one quality of educational experience and other people's children should receive a joyless diet of remediation, testing, deprivation, compliance and shame.

But you know, if we're going to reduce education policy debates to simplistic graphs, perhaps Gates and his allies should consider my reworking of his graph, below, and ponder what really is the problem in the educational system.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2024 06:20 a.m.

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