Watch Bill Gates Confirm Everybody’s Worst Fears About Common Core
Rather than defend Common Core from accusations of creeping nationalization, Bill Gates finally confirmed that yes, this is exactly what Core proponents are trying to accomplish—less local autonomy is a good thing.
Robby Soave|Sep. 30, 2014 10:42 am
Common Core critics contend that national education standards will erode local decision-making on school issues while promoting a national curriculum of sorts. Most Core proponents generally dismiss these concerns as unfounded.
But Bill Gates, a major financial backer of the standards, was atypically direct about what peddlers of standardization are trying to accomplish during aPolitico event on Monday. Rather than defend Common Core from accusations of creeping nationalization, he finally confirmed that yes, this is exactly what Core proponents are trying to accomplish—less local autonomy is a good thing, as he says in the video:
“Common Core I would have thought of as more of a technocratic issue. The basic idea of, ‘should we share an electrical plug across the country?’ Well, you can get partisan about that I suppose. Should Georgia have a different railroad width than everybody else? Should they teach multiplication in a different way? Oh that’s brilliant [sarcasm], who came up with that idea? Common Core, the idea that what you should know at various grades, that that should be well-structured and you should really insist on kids knowing something so you can build on it, I did not really expect that to become a big political issue.”
There you have it. Gates views the education system—the many myriad ways Americans could pass on knowledge to their children—as akin to choosing the correct railroad track size. The implication is obvious: after all, there is only one right railroad track size! Similarly, there is only one correct way to teach children, and all children must be taught that way, according to Gates.
https://reason.com/blog/2014/09/30/watch-bill-gates-confirm-everybodys-wor
