What Nicholas Kristof Left Out in Column Promoting Bridge International Academies
Over the weekend, the NY Times published Nicholas Kristof’s puff piece about Bridge International Academies (BIA), the private, for-profit education start-up trying to get a foothold in Africa and India. Kristof has definitely read the material provided by Bridge’s communications arm, and he was impressed when he visited some schools.
He also has such a dim view of children’s education in the developing world that any tech-savvy “solution” would be an improvement: “Imagine an elementary school where students show up, but teachers don’t. Where 100 students squeeze into a classroom but don’t get any books. Where teachers are sometimes illiterate and periodically abuse students. Where families pay under the table to get a ‘free’ education, yet students don’t learn to read.”
Fortunately, two in-depth pieces have been published recently to answer some questions about Bridge International Academies—who started it, what it is, where it operates, how its doing. Diane Ravitch references both articles in her recent response to Nicholas Kristof’s piece.
Ravitch, an education historian, also raises the most basic question about Bridge International Academies, so we’ll start there. Is it in the best interest of any society to turn over the education of its children to a for-profit company whose investors include the World Bank, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg? “I think Kristof is wrong because BIA is a short-term fix, not a solution. It cannot possibly educate the hundreds of millions of children whose parents can’t afford to pay. By providing this ‘fix,’ the governments are relieved of their obligation to establish a universal, free public school system with qualified teachers. If teachers are sleeping in their classrooms, who should take responsibility? Who should supervise them and What Nicholas Kristof Left Out in Column Promoting Bridge International Academies | janresseger:
