Bad Move, Bill Gates

On May 5, 2015, a coalition of civil rights groups released a statement decrying the opt out movement which threatens to strike at the heart of the global testing companies (you can read their original statement here: http://www.civilrights.org/press/2015/anti-testing-efforts.html). In a terse, abstruse document which makes Einstein's twin paradox seem easy to understand, the coalition simultaneously speaks out against standardized tests, while criticizing those who have decided that the impact of the current quantity and quality of standardized tests in American schools is harmful to their children, and have therefore decided to opt their children out.

Huh?

Dr. Wayne Au does a great job following the money trail, and it leads back to...you guessed it, Mr William Gates. As Dr. Au explains with penetrating precision, 6 of the 12 groups who signed off on this statement accept substantial donations from the Gates Foundation. An additional 2 receive money from the Walton Foundation, another key mover in the corporate reform agenda (you can read Dr. Au's article here: https://www.facebook.com/SaveOurSchoolsNJ/posts/961331480566679).

There is a distinct, tragic irony in the fact that the world's richest, white man thinks that he knows how to help some of our nation's poorest, many of whom are children of color, to succeed. This smacks of at least a classist, if not a racist mentality. This makes the coalition's statement against the opt out movement even more confounding: why would these important, influential groups choose to defend a wealthy, white oligarch, rather than the children and people upon whom their very mission and founding is based? Well, Dr. Au seems to have answered that question for us already.

This situation is only made more piteous and predictable by the fact that the world's archetypal capitalist has chosen -what else- capitalistic modes and methods to reform the American educational system.

Silly Billy! Capitalism is what created this situation in the first place!!

Perhaps if you had stayed in college, you would have learned about dramatic irony, for you my friend, personify it as well as Oedipus!

But this is not meant to be an ad hominem attack. However, I do hope that it highlights the fact that there probably couldn't be a worse qualified person for the job of reforming our educational system than Bill Gates. He is an enormously privileged, white man who is quite literally the richest man in the world. To drive that point home, Bill Gates' current net worth is approximately 79 billion dollars. Even if a person were to make $1,000,000 a year (which in itself would classify them as superiorly wealthy), it would take 79,000 years to earn the same amount of money as Mr. Gates! To put that in perspective, looking back in time, it would have taken from about the time humans first left Africa until today!

As Mr. Gates seems to demonstrate only too well, that kind of wealth is dangerous. With it comes a kind of social arrogance that seems to place a person above their peers. A person with that kind of wealth can quite literally have anything material that he or she would want.

However, just to remind you, Mr. Gates, there are some things that money can't buy.

It can't buy respect.
It can't buy experience.
It can't buy knowledge.
It can't buy success.

You, my friend, have placed yourself in opposition to parents acting in defense of their children.

Bad move, sir, bad move.