Bill Gates as an education visionary….
Talk about riling me up! Bob Herbert wrote an op-ed piece Peering into the future, in today’s New York Times that made my blood boil. Normally, I have a great deal of respect for Bob Herbert, but his editorial about Bill Gates was just over the top.
Bill and Melinda Gates made a surprise appearance in an algebra class at West Charlotte High School, Charlotte, NC. Apparently the Gate’s have been traveling around the country going to public schools in order to see what has “gone wrong” and what is working in the public schools. As to the former, they could easily have looked closer to home for the answers.
To his credit, Mr. Gates recognizes the problem, “Our performance at every level — primary and secondary school achievement, high school graduation, college entry, college completion — is dropping against the rest of the world.” However, Mr. Gates is an ironic figure to be promoting the benefits of completing college and the value of a formal education.
Bill Gates himself dropped out of college in order to start Microsoft. He is not a scientist, engineer, nor is he a computer programmer. He is a business man - plain and simple. Granted he had a great deal of vision and drive, but his very success sans college degree makes this a very hard sell to the would-be millionaires hoping for a slice of the American dream. The message of his life story and the employment practices of his company are “quit school, make money. Stay in school, be a sucker.”
For the past 30 years college and graduate students have been spurning careers in science, engineering, math and computer programming in favor of business and banking. Many pundits lapse into the lazy logic that these subjects are “hard” and therefore less desirable. If it is reasonably easy to create wealth on Wall Street - why undergo the years of effort and education to become a Ph.D. or engineer. This has always been true to one extent or another. But why has the trend accelerated at such an alarming rate? How did we get ourselves into such a sorry state?
The irony of the Gates’ visit to public schools is that Microsoft has been part of the problem. Gates has appeared before Congress insisting that they up the number of H1-B visas granted because these fine minds were “needed” to keep the US economy strong. Nonesense. H1-B’s ulimately drain the American braintrust by squashing salaries and consigning entire swaths of academia to foreign nationals. That might boost the bottom line for the likes of Microsoft and Imclone. It is quick fix, and it works! The trouble is that cuts Americans out of the action and also does not account for the consequences that only come due when these foreign nationals decide to go home. Microsoft has also been involved in significant amounts of outsourcing high-tech jobs to India . This has led to job losses for people with just the skill set that Bill Gates is promoting in the schools.
What’s wrong with this picture?
