Bill Gates rewrites history for Seattle students: Testimony on the Ida B. Wells School for Social Justice
This public testimony was given at the The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Education, not Criminalization! Town Hall. If you spoke at this event or have video you would like to share, please contact the blog at seattled@icloud.com.
Thank you organizers, panel and everyone here who is working to find an end to the school to prison pipeline.
I’ve been asked to speak of my experience in putting together Ida B. Wells School for Social Justice@UW. This is hard to do in a couple of minutes so I will try to say a few things about this project. One way to approach this is to see it in contrast to the official Seattle Schools’ policy and action. What we have to keep in mind is that Middle College’s authentic mission no longer exists. It’s gone.
Now what functions as Middle College is what the Seattle District administrators (Asst. Supt. Michael Tolley, with directions from a Supt. and a Asst. Supt. who are products of the Gates and Broad Foundations) has wanted for sometime. Middle College will now be based on a corporate ed reform curriculum where students arrive at a site (Northgate or Seattle U.) and spend their time working on for-profit canned curriculum. Students will be isolated from one another, being trained to take on so-called careers as precarious, low-paid workers- passive and objectified- in the capitalist marketplace.
So it should surprise no one that what was Middle College Humanities, founded on critical examination of the globalized neoliberal world in which we struggle, is being replaced by a Bill Gates funded internet show called “Big History.” This ‘’history’ celebrates technology and some science as the driving force of history. However the history of those who in defense of social justice changed society is erased. Human agency in Gates’ video series is erased. The past and present record of people’s achievement to overcome barricades of conquest, exploitation, racism, sexism, class struggle is wiped out. Learning and teaching using methods of dialectic, critical analysis …gone. Learning to come to literature, writing, expression through the knowing of past and present voices of opposition in defense of authentic democracy is gone.
Middle College was, especially for students underserved and marginalized by class, race, gender, and ethnicity, a respect and value of them as individuals and of their lived Bill Gates rewrites history for Seattle students: Testimony on the Ida B. Wells School for Social Justice | Seattle Education:
