Listen Up Bill Gates: Students Are Not Widgets
March 5, 2011 by twalker
Filed under Must Reads, Uncategorized
The Microsoft chairman thinks if we hire the best supervisors, our factories will produce superior widgets. But our children are not widgets and their total educational experience cannot be quantified using standardized tests. Source: The Oregonian
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Bill Gates believes that the “best teachers” should be given the most students – clearly, he has never been a classroom teacher. Otherwise, he would understand that excellent teaching involves hours of preparation and correction of student work. Useful feedback on student tests, writing assignments, and projects requires many hours beyond the school day. The more students a teacher has, either the more hours beyond the school day one must spend on school work, or the less feedback one is able to give each student, or – worst case – both. People who haven’t worked in the classroom for a meaningful length of time shouldn’t be telling us how to do our job.
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Here in WA State many of us teachers are sick and tired of Bill Gates’ pomposity when it comes to demeaning public education. He went to private school and dropped out of private college. Why is it that the American medida, from newspapers to TV and radio, give such credence to such wealthy corporation owners who are not and have never been part of public education? Do we in public education decry their business practices — strategies like outsourcing workers so that their companies do not have to pay into Social Securty? No, we buy their products. We play nice; they do not.
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Sorry about the typo in the word “media.”
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I, too, am tired of Bill Gates’ effort to determine what the “best teachers” do in the classroom. I believe we teach and we hold students accountable for their academics and for their behaviors. When we are supported by parents and by our school administrators, students learn.
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