A student first informed me of this story--which turns out to be true. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation financed a successful program to convert poop to drinkable water. Using a machine called the omniprocessor, high levels of heat are applied during a purification process, seemingly defying common sense, but apparently not science. The result: fresh water made from shit. I give Bill Gates credit. Not only did he finance this project, but, he, himself, drank some cups of it. Glug, glug!
The analogies to ed. "reform" are only natural. The Gates Foundation has had a battery of crappy ed.-"reform" ideas, including smaller schools, high-stakes tests aligned to the Core, linked strongly to teacher evaluations. It seems schools have been forced to drink crap for a decade or more now.
If Gates would personally "drink" some of this shit, perhaps serving as a teacher in a classroom for a few years with the guillotine of ed. "reform" hanging over his head, he might realize that much faster that these are just more failed ideas--to add to his long list.
So much for turning public education into Stanley-Kaplanesque test prep. So much for smashing student self-esteem at the earliest ages. So much for killing kids with tests politically engineered to let us know we are all failures. So much for disregarding the worthy aspects of a well-rounded education. So much for thinking you can end poverty and social ills by blaming teachers. Will "better" tests help Baltimore?
Too bad his seemingly limitless wealth allows him the luxury of experimenting on our children and potentially making the lives of some intensely crappy. Too bad he really believes this shit!
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