The hypocrisy of Edu-Philanthropists (rough draft)

Do you know what I have noticed about Edu-Philanthropists like Gates, the Waltons, and locally in my hometown the Chartrands? First the obvious thing is they are wealthy. Which means it is hard for them to understand things like poverty, which is why they vacillate between ignoring it and calling it an excuse. They have the mistaken belief that a great teacher should be able to show up and that alone can cancel out the effects of hunger, violence and apathy. They believe that alone should be able to make up the deficits that the children arrive with.

Then none of them were educators. None of them taught a day in their lives. They all had teachers though and they turned out rich so they look at the gig and think anybody should be able to do it. They don’t respect the craft and that’s at least partly why so many of their ideas kneecap the teaching profession. They don’t mind an ever-revolving door of teachers because they think anybody should be able to show up and do it.

Then they are hypocrites, they have joined the President, Jeb Bush and so many others in sending their kids to the types of schools that we all wish we could send our kids to or work at, ones that valued smaller classes, the arts, and ones that don’t double down on high stakes testing or experimental curriculums. The schools that they send their kids to are vastly different from the ones we send our kids to.  Take Gates for instance, he has spent hundreds of millions on common core but sends his children to a school that wouldn’t let it through their gates.  

Finally they think they are the smartest kids in the room and teachers are some of the dumbest. You see to them wealth equals intelligence and maybe that’s whey they disrespect teachers so much. They can’t understand that many of us get our wealth from seeing kids grow and learn because the only thing to them that matters are zeroes after ones. They look at teacher’s bank accounts and seven year old cars and it causes them to loath them.

They don’t understand where many of our kids are coming from and they don’t understand what teachers do. They think wealth equals intelligence, which automatically means they are right, and teachers, the professionals actually in the classroom are wrong. Then at the end of the day they would rather invest millions if not billions to create the types of schools for our kids that they would never let their kids near. 

I guess what I have really noticed is they are despite their vast fortunes, they are doing a lot more harm that good.

To read more about Gates and the hundreds of millions he spent on Common Core, click the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/