Bill Gates on US Education
- Posted: Nov 14, 2006 at 8:12 AM
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- 4 Comments
Having kids changes your life. I doubt that any parent would disagree with that statement. Apparently having children has gotten Bill Gates to think a lot more about education.Bill says that the US education system needs work. No kidding!
To no ones surprise Bill's kids are in private school. Security alone would be a good justification for that of course. But Bill cares about other people's kids as well and has put a lot of his own money (through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) into school/education reform. It's not an easy problem to solve because there are a lot of factors that are not under a single point of control.
For example, it is easy (sort of) to hold teachers responsible for how they teach. It is much harder to hold parents and students accountable for their part in the process. Students are not passive pots into which someone pours infomration. They have to do their part and as Yogi Berra once said "if people are going to stay away there is nothing you can do to stop them." Is it fair to blame schools and teachers for students who stay away or who are not mentally present? Sometimes yes but more often no.
And what about getting and keeping great teachers? Is a good math teacher twice as valuable to society working as an accountant as they are teaching young students to think? If not why does the accounting job pay twice as much? And think about special education. How many people do you know who would take that job even if they were qualified for it. At any price. Shouldn't we pay those people some sort of bonus? My son is a special education teacher but even if I wasn't his father I'd say he deserved something extra in his paycheck.
We need to get administrators and the general public to treat teachers better and with more respect. Perhaps we can fix the administrators with some additional training but how do we "fix" the public?
And dare we think about adjusting the priority of some schools away from sports or band and towards academics? The main reason high schools start so early even though all the research shows that students would perform better if the day started later is so that teams will have the most daylight for practice and games. Does that seem bassackwards to anyone else or is it just me?
So I wish Bill and the Gates Foundation a lot of luck. And if Bill wants my advice he has my email address.
To no ones surprise Bill's kids are in private school. Security alone would be a good justification for that of course. But Bill cares about other people's kids as well and has put a lot of his own money (through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) into school/education reform. It's not an easy problem to solve because there are a lot of factors that are not under a single point of control.
For example, it is easy (sort of) to hold teachers responsible for how they teach. It is much harder to hold parents and students accountable for their part in the process. Students are not passive pots into which someone pours infomration. They have to do their part and as Yogi Berra once said "if people are going to stay away there is nothing you can do to stop them." Is it fair to blame schools and teachers for students who stay away or who are not mentally present? Sometimes yes but more often no.
And what about getting and keeping great teachers? Is a good math teacher twice as valuable to society working as an accountant as they are teaching young students to think? If not why does the accounting job pay twice as much? And think about special education. How many people do you know who would take that job even if they were qualified for it. At any price. Shouldn't we pay those people some sort of bonus? My son is a special education teacher but even if I wasn't his father I'd say he deserved something extra in his paycheck.
We need to get administrators and the general public to treat teachers better and with more respect. Perhaps we can fix the administrators with some additional training but how do we "fix" the public?
And dare we think about adjusting the priority of some schools away from sports or band and towards academics? The main reason high schools start so early even though all the research shows that students would perform better if the day started later is so that teams will have the most daylight for practice and games. Does that seem bassackwards to anyone else or is it just me?
So I wish Bill and the Gates Foundation a lot of luck. And if Bill wants my advice he has my email address.
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The simple fact is that some parents and kids care about their education and some don't. The only solution I see is to allow parents to choose which school they send their kids to, which would provide economic incentives for some schools to provide a great education, while others might specialize in art, sports, or technology.
The simple fact is that some parents and kids care about their education and some don't. The only solution I see is to allow parents to choose which school they send their kids to, which would provide economic incentives for some schools to provide a great education, while others might specialize in art, sports, or technology.
I pretty much agree with you. The big problem is that many parents can not afford to pay for non-public schools. That is not likely to change anytime soon I'm afraid.
I pretty much agree with you. The big problem is that many parents can not afford to pay for non-public schools. That is not likely to change anytime soon I'm afraid.
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