Education Revolt!:
Bill Gates vs Education

At first glance, Bill Gates might seem the ideal children’s advocate. After all, he’s very much a child himself. Gates’ emotional immaturity and lack of physical development are legendary. When he sits slumped in a chair, wasted arms flailing wildly to the amusement of TV audiences, he could be the toddler next door. And when he suddenly grows sullen after his host makes a joke at his expense, Gates could be just about any four-year-old brat who just pooped his pants.

In fact, Bill Gates was a very privileged child. He was born into a wealthy family in Seattle, long before that city was degraded (largely by the corporation Bill Gates later founded), and attended the exclusive Lakesidse School for Boys. Gates very likely rubbed elbows (and possibly other body parts) with a teacher named Gary Little, a sleazy pedophile who later became the Seattle School District’s first general counsel, then a judge and one of Seattle’s most celebrated movers and shakers. Seattle’s elite made a heroic effort to protect their friend, Gary Little, from accountability.

Little certainly sounds like the type of person Bill Gates’ father would adore. Unfortunately, Bill Gates didn’t follow Little’s lead and commit suicide. Instead, he stuck around to screw children in his own fashion.

Aside from a few reporters who actually search for truth, the media insist that Bill Gates is a philanthropist. And much of his alleged philanthropy targets education. So how does Bill Gates rate as an education reformer?

That might seem a difficult question to answer, for a number of reasons. For starters, it’s a big topic; Bill Gates and his friends have experimented on literally hundreds of schools across the United States (and probably around the world). It would also be foolish to expect Bill Gates, Inc. to offer an honest assessment of their progress.

Moreover, public education in general has become extraordinarily corrupt. America’s public schools have effectively been privatized, and school officials are about as highly regarded as politicians these days. You know the saying—figures don’t lie, but liars do figure. And there are plenty of figures to lie with; one could probably write a book about the manipulation of high-stakes test scores alone.

Yet grading Bill Gates as an educator is actually amazingly easy. A simple sense of logic and a little research go a long way. And the best place to start is in Bill Gates’ back yard, Seattle.

Below is a list of thirteen reasons I think Bill Gates’ campaign to reform education is as big a sham as everything else about Bill Gates. Most of them focus on Seattle.

The Computer Virus

My critics will never believe this story, and I don’t have much in the way of hard evidence to back it up, but I’ll relate it anyway.

When I first ran for public office in 1999, I was relatively new to politics. Microsoft was not yet in my crosshairs, so I was dumbfounded when I was e-mailed a computer virus on the day of the general election from a local media whore who claimed he was relaying season’s greetings from Bill Gates, Senior. It came with a veiled warning—“It just goes to show, you can never be too careful.”

I couldn’t comprehend why someone as rich and powerful as Bill Gates’ father would target a person running for a seat on a local school board. It was my first clue that Bill Gates, Inc. regards the Seattle School District as their subsidiary. Anyone who wants to do something as simple as help children is therefore viewed as a threat. I was the enemy.

Again, I can’t prove that Bill Gates Sr. recruited a media thug to vandalize my computer, though I’d be happy to take a polygraph test if any reporters want to visit Seattle and foot the bill. But I believe William Gates, Sr. was indeed behind it.

I also received a tip that Bill Gates wanted to get rid of a bunch of teachers a few years before the Seattle School Board mysteriously lost $30 million, forcing them to lay off a bunch of teachers. That’s how they finally purged me from the district. Go figure.

M$ Blackmails Schools

A few years ago, Microsoft sparked a minor media frenzy (on the Internet, at least) as people reacted angrily to what they perceived as a blackmail campaign targeting schools. In particular, Microsoft was accused of using software audits as a scare tactic.

Unfortunately, many of the key articles I thought I had bookmarked are no longer on the Internet, and I haven’t yet found the materials I copied. Nevertheless, you can still find quite a bit of information by typing Microsoft blackmails schools into Google.

On a thread started in May 2002, a person who calls his or herself pongo000 posted the following on Slashdot.org:

Here’s another interesting excerpt from Microsoft: The new school bully (Motel California):

It appears that the sinister School Agreement 3.0 came into force about 2002. I don’t know if Microsoft is still using this particular tactic. It has probably found more effective ways of exploiting children under the guise of philanthropy.

No Personnel Issues

Have you ever heard Bill Gates speak out against personnel issues in public education? I certainly haven’t.

Yes, I know, Bill Gates can’t be expected to micro-manage school districts. (Nor would I want him to.) But the Seattle School District, in particular, has long been plagued with some truly frightening derelicts. It really isn’t much of an exaggeration to describe public education in the Emerald City as organized crime.

How someone who claims to care about kids can glibly hand millions of dollars over to such derelicts is nothing short of amazing. It suggests to me that Bill Gates wants the easy job: Giving money effectively stolen from consumers and taxpayers, while distancing himself from issues that might get messy. In other words, he’s more of a chickenshit than an education activist.

Of course, another possibility is that Bill Gates doesn’t want the Seattle School District reformed. Perhaps he and his corporate cronies want the district torn to pieces by sex predators masquerading as principals and teachers union whores.

Sound crazy? The idea crept into my mind after I had spent about ten years in Seattle’s public education wilderness. It began to sprout after I began witnessing the numerous social, political and economic disasters George Bush’s administration seemed to court.

I became a true believer after I discovered a researcher named Naomi Campbell published a book that discusses what she calls “disaster capitalism.”

No Fiscal Issues

OK, so Bill Gates doesn’t want to be bothered with messy personnel issues. Wouldn’t he at least want to instill a little fiscal discipline in a wayward school district?

What do I mean by wayward? Well, imagine a school board that simply loses $30 million and pays superintendents CEO salaries, while teacher salaries stagnate. Imagine a school district that spends tens of thousands of dollars on public relations while moaning about leaking roofs and a shortage of textbooks. Even if Bill Gates didn’t really care about reforming the district, wouldn’t he at least want to make sure HIS money was in good hands?

In fact, I think I recall reading that the money Bill Gates donates to the Seattle School District is given preferential treatment. (Anyone who can provide me with any details is invited to contact me.) It was a real slap in the face; why should Bill Gates’ money merit better treatment than the much larger sums extorted from taxpayers?

The idea of a philanthropist throwing mountains of money at a corrupt school district that can be likened to a sieve just doesn’t add up.

K-12 Leadership Institute

Several years ago Bill Gates established an institution named the K-12 Leadership Institute, located at the University of Washington. Though I can’t prove it, I suspect it was established partly in response to my first school board campaign, when I made derelict principals a campaign issue.

As I recall, Wells Fargo (bank) was funding a program designed to train principals through the K-12 Leadership Institute. When I tried to get some detailed information about their training program, I found them surprisingly tight-lipped. I eventually got the name of some educrat back East (Ohio, I believe), who was a real asshole.

Another amazing thing about the K-12 Leadership Institute is the derelicts Bill Gates recruited to staff it. The top dog was one Rudy Crew, who is one of the biggest carpetbagging bums in public education. Crew apparently has no roots, no community loyalties, bouncing back and forth from East Coast to West, earning enormous salaries while accomplishing virtually nothing.

Crew is so bad even Mayor Giuliani gave him the boot. He’s so bad Seattle media whore Rick Anderson (who, with Nina Shapiro, has done more than his share to shoot down school reform) took some potshots at Crew—now that he’s no longer in Seattle (see Advertisements for Rudy.)

Search the Internet for more news about Rudy Crew, and I think you’ll agree with me that he’s one spectacular asshole. And to think that this is the guy who was the head of Bill Gates’ over-hyped K-12 Leadership Institute.

For whatever it’s worth, I’m not even sure if the Leadership Institute still exists. It has apparently been forgotten, just one more of Bill Gates’ education experiments that never got off the ground.

Cleveland High School

Even a disgusting media whore like the Seattle Weekly’s Nina Shapiro concedes “There’s probably a book that could be written about what went wrong with the Gates-funded effort to transform Cleveland High School into four ‘small academies’” (Lessons from Cleveland High). Nina tells us that just two small academies remain.

Note to Bill Gates: When one of your experiments backfires, you really ought to step in and put things back together again.

School Closures, Inc.?

In the fall of 2005, the Gates Foundation announced it would not award Seattle Public Schools another $26 million. Yet it awarded the school district $850,000 the following spring. So what did the grant accomplish, besides allowing Gates to dictate what buses students ride and implementing six-period days in all high schools?

The multiple school closures that are to commence during the 2007-2008 school year (I believe) constitute one of the biggest and most disturbing issues in the school district’s history. Given all the hype about smaller schools and class sizes, the Gates Foundation should be fighting AGAINST these school closures, not acting as accomplices. Can you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y?

Let it be recorded in the history books that Bill Gates actually helped to institute the mass school closures that began during what will likely be Seattle’s last school board election, yet another issue Gates is ignoring.

Charter Schools

That’s right, Bill Gates supports charter schools. When I first ran for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2000, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was bankrolling the charter school initiative.

To be perfectly honest, I kinda sorta support charter schools myself—in theory. Unfortunately, they’re being promoted by the same corporate interests that have ruined public schools. If two assholes like Bill Gates and Paul Allen want charter schools, you know they have to be bad.

Washingtonians have been smart enough to shoot down charter school initiatives year after year (though they’re also dumb, or selfish, enough to do nothing to fix public schools). So Bill Gates is clearly out of touch with the public on this one. You’d think he’d be content with the charter schools he gets to exploit in other states. Indeed, Washington is one of a minority of states that do not yet have charters.

With friends like these...

Many of the people Bill Gates associates with can hardly be described as wholesome. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen may be an enigma to the rest of the world, but he has a reputation for shitting on kids here in the Northwest. In particular, Allen is known for pushing children out of parks and playgrounds to make room for his lavish homes and golf courses.

I’ve already mentioned Rudy Crew, America’s most famous carpetbagging schools superintendent. Bill Gates also recruited Trevor Neilson, spokesman for the legally challenged Washington Education Association before he joined the Seattle School District’s public relations division.

Bill Gates and his father are also known for their right-wing connections. They’ve been linked to Seattle’s bizarre Discovery Institute (headquarters for America’s creationism movement), Ralph Reed and even the world’s favorite asshole, George W. Bush. Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was actually employed by the law/lobbying firm Preston, Gates & Ellis.

Think about it: Would you want that sort of scum associating with your children or dictating school curricula and policies?

Cheap Laptops - NOT

When someone associated with MIT announced plans to give $100 laptops to poor children in other nations, philanthropists around the world should have sang Hallelujah. But Bill Gates threw one of his famous temper tantrums (Gates mocks cheap laptops for the children).

Could it be any more obvious that Bill Gates is interested in philanthropy only as long as it promotes his business or otherwise earns money? This man is clearly sick.

$$$

There’s big money to be made in education, trillions of dollars. Not to mention all the neat little spinoffs like mind control and manipulation. For example, some people have speculated that corporations want children to fail at education, giving them an excuse to either outsource jobs or import cheap labor from other nations.

This may sound like some wacko conspiracy theory, but take a wild guess as to the identity of this conspiracy theory’s poster boy. That’s right, our friend Bill Gates. Do some research on Bill Gates’ crusade to raise the cap on H1-B foreign worker visas, effectively screwing more Americans out of jobs. (See, for example, Bill Gates makes the (bogus) case for more (cheap) foreign labor)

Bill Gates argues that there just aren’t enough qualified college graduates in the U.S. to fill Microsoft’s needs. But there are plenty of college graduates calling Bill Gates a LIAR, and they have some statistics to support that claim.

Can Bill Relate to Children?

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Bill Gates was born into a very privileged existence. In fact, he was born with the world’s biggest silver spoon in his mouth and has been shamelessly spoiled ever since.

No, it isn’t impossible for wealthy people to discover empathy, but most of the very rich remain forever divorced from it. Bill Gates has certainly never shown any obvious signs of caring, beyond signing check after check after check. Throwing money at faceless bureaucrats is apparently the only form of compassion Bill Gates understands.

Ironically, the arrogant, self-obsessed little brat whose emotional maturity probably peaked before he entered high school probably can relate to children better than he relates to adults. But then, so did Gary Little.

There you have it, thirteen arguments for keeping Bill Gates away from children. It probably wouldn’t be terribly hard to think of a dozen more.