Where Does Billionaire Monopolist Bill Gates Get Off Saying Bigger Class Size and Fewer Teachers Is the Education Solution?

From June Hughes, December 17, 2010

"But if you follow the money, it leads to very rich people who have two sets of educational standards: One for their kids, and another for ours."

"They want to fire experienced teachers because they cost more, increase class size, and commit our kids to online learning -- none of which they would consider for their own children," said Haimson. "It is the height of hypocrisy."

Where Does Billionaire Monopolist Bill Gates Get Off Saying Bigger Class Size and Fewer Teachers Is the Education Solution?

By Scott Thill
Posted on December 17, 2010

http://www.alternet.org/news/149232/where_does_billionaire_monopolist_bill_gates_get_off_saying_bigger_class
_size_and_fewer_teachers_is_the_education_solution?page=entire

Once dominant, now America is just average when it comes to education. Its public solution, recently communicated by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates? Increased class sizes, decreased teacher counts, fewer advanced degrees, and probably more mediocrity.

It's the type of technocratic cure-all one would expect Gates to champion, and it will doubtless perform as lamely as Microsoft, which currently hobbles at $30 a share while its more intuitive tech rivals like Apple and Google respectively hover around $200 to $600. But Gates' short-changing of the nation's education system is just another strain of neoconservative austerity going viral in our global village. And it's just as short-sighted as the disaster capitalism that destroyed America's economic integrity: Increasing America's class sizes and downsizing its teachers could cost us more than it could save us.

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