Think it Up: Has the Gates Foundation Turned a Corner?
By Anthony Cody.
Last night I watched the hour-long telethon called Think it Up! sponsored by the Gates Foundation. I have to say, it was a far better program than their last television extravaganza, Education Nation. The emphasis was on building support for schools and teachers to do exciting, engaging projects, and that is a good thing. While we had to endure a bit of Justin Bieber hopping around in his pajamas, eventually we got some messages about what our schools need.
One of the celebrities said this:
Every student in America deserves the chance to learn and become the person they aspire to be. And that means every classroom should have what it needs to encourage great learning. Every science class should have equipment if students and teachers want to create projects in biology or chemistry or physics. Every history class should have the most up-to-date materials so that students can learn about and from the past. There should be paint brushes and oil paints and art classes so students can try to blow more minds than Banksy. And music classes should always have keyboards playing, guitars strumming, and someone banging on the drums. Please, please let’s empower our students and teachers to do these amazing things. Go to Thinkitup.org and donate…
She is absolutely correct, that every student should have this. And it is a great starting point for a campaign. My only question is why it is necessary to put out a begging bowl to fund these things? Don’t we have a more effective “crowd-sourced” funding system in place to provide for the funding of public schools? Why can’t we simply have corporations and wealthy individuals who have cornered the vast increase in wealth over the past decade pay their fair share of taxes, and then fund our schools from that revenue?
But perhaps I should be grateful. The message this time is so very different from what we heard in 2009 from Waiting for Superman, and from Gates himself on Education Nation and Oprah. Then the emphasis was on getting rid of “bad teachers” who were dragging down our schools. The public schools were declared to be so broken, in fact, that they should be abandoned and replaced with charter schools. Charter schools featured strongly in last night’s show, to be sure, in many of the examples of innovation. But we did not have a sledgehammer taken to the public schools.
Students were encouraged to propose ideas for projects that would interest them to their teachers, and teachers were invited to submit their proposals to be funded. I think projects are a great way to engage students and it is wonderful for teachers and students to work together to develop ideas that will serve their communities, as was suggested here.
Comedian Jessica Williams announced a campaign asking students to “reimagine high school” in new ways. This could generate some interesting ideas. The odd thing was that she cited US performance on international tests to justify the need for this innovation. And this brings me to my biggest problem with the whole program. To be clear, I support project based learning. I think it is wonderful to engage students in extended inquiry into real-world issues and challenges. However, I do not think this is entirely compatible with instruction focused on raising test scores.
The best projects do not focus narrowly on a set of testable outcomes. They focus on real world issues and Think it Up: Has the Gates Foundation Turned a Corner? - Living in Dialogue:
