CURMUDGUCATION: Dammit, Chan-Zuckerberg! Not Elmo, Too! (And Not Philanthropy, Either.)

CURMUDGUCATION: Dammit, Chan-Zuckerberg! Not Elmo, Too! (And Not Philanthropy, Either.)

Dammit, Chan-Zuckerberg! Not Elmo, Too! (And Not Philanthropy, Either.)

If you haven't been paying particularly close attention, you may have missed the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative slowly inserting its hyper-wealthy proboscis into a hundred different corners of modern life, using its not-quite-philanthropy LLC model to follow in the Gatesian footprints of wealthy technocrats who want to appoint themselves the unelected heads of oh-so-many sectors.

One of those sectors is, of course, education. Their latest bold new initiative is being trumpeted in People, where it is getting exactly the fluffy uncritical reception one might expect, which is too bad, because there's plenty to be critical of.

The tech mogul, 35, and pediatrician’s philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is working in conjunction with The Primary School and Sesame Workshop to help fund a “new curriculum” that aims to “integrate social emotional learning into early childhood literacy lessons,” according to a press release.

The Primary School is out in Palo Alto, "expanding the boundaries of traditional education." It is the elementary school that Chan co-founded in 2016 to bring together issues in education and pediatrics. They have all sorts of business style leadership positions like "director of talent" and "director of strategic initiatives" and the teaching staff seems to be made of a few "lead teachers" and a whole lot of "associate teachers." Their CEO comes from the NewSchool Venture Fund and Aspire. Their "director of innovation and learning" spent two whole years in Teach for America. The school's principal once founded a charter school and stayed with it CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Dammit, Chan-Zuckerberg! Not Elmo, Too! (And Not Philanthropy, Either.)