Article Image

IPFS News Link • Education: Government Schools

Why Steve Jobs, not Bill Gates, Was the True Education Visionary

• https://fee.org, Kerry McDonald

When it comes to education reform, there are generally two camps: those who want to improve the existing mass compulsory schooling system through tweaking and tuning and those who want to build something entirely new and different. Not surprisingly, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was in the "think different" camp, advocating for school choice and vouchers, while Microsoft's Bill Gates backed the Common Core State Standards and other incremental reforms within the conventional mass schooling model.

The Efforts of the Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into K-12 education over the past 20 years, including $280 million toward Common Core, which people of all political persuasions came to despisefor its standardization and government overreach. Earlier this week, the Gates Foundation announced an additional $10 million to train teachers on "high quality" curriculum. The charity is on track to reach its goal of dedicating nearly $2 billion dollars to K-12 education by 2022.

These huge philanthropic efforts, combined with the nearly $700 billion a year that US taxpayers spend on K-12 mass schooling, means Americans spend more on education than any other country but with far more dismal results. Chipping away slowly at standard schooling may not be doing much good.


ContentSafe