Beware the Bill Gates Paradox

Dr. William Spady

It's not that we all need to fall into predictable stereotypes in order to be understood, but Bill Gates provides America with a particular dilemma.  The inconsistencies that he embodies would go unnoticed in most people, but he's . . . well . . . Bill Gates!  

He's profoundly rich, extremely smart, exceptionally well-meaning, highly visible, and very influential.  Most of us even think of him as an icon – an exemplar of American ingenuity, personal industry, business acumen, and out-of-the-box thinking.  He's played a huge role in shaping how we live and work, and he now wants to play a similar role in how we educate our children.  That's where Bill's good intentions but also his inconsistencies - the paradox - shows.

For someone who directly shaped what we know as the Information Age and whose business outlook is focused on the evolving future, Gates' educational thinking seems bogged down in the Industrial Age concepts and practices of the past century – or maybe, like most of us, his good old high school days.  But now that he and Eli Broad are pouring $60 million into a PR effort to get the nation's 2008 Presidential candidates to make educational reform a major issue in the upcoming elections, it's time for Americans to scrutinize Gates' qualifications to shape educational reform as thoroughly as they would the features of his latest Microsoft software.  

If they look closely they will see that the Gates-Broad initiative is a call for three main things: stronger, more consistent curriculum standards nationwide; lengthening the school day and year; and improving teacher quality through merit pay and other measures.  What’s not clear is whether this is Gates’ agenda, whether he wants it to be the Presidential candidates’ agenda, or whether these three items are simply supposed to be dialogue starters in the campaign.  What is clear, however, even though Gates may have missed it, is that all three represent a "more of the same, harder and better" approach to change, leaving our present Industrial Age educational paradigm in place, with serious consequences for our nation and its students.  And while the initiative can be applauded for attempting to make education a priority issue in the 2008 elections, it’s bound to reveal the immense chasm in educational thinking and priorities that exists in our country – not that different from the Iraq debate in many respects – with interest groups, appeals, research findings, and rhetoric lined up on each side.  

On one side sits the enormously influential lobby for national educational "reform" backed by the strong voices of Gates' counterparts in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Business Roundtable.  Their one-word rallying cry for public education is "accountability" – which is embodied in President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) initiative now up for Congressional reauthorization.  The tool they're using to achieve NCLB's heavy-handed version of accountability is standardized test scores, and they strongly want Bush to "stay the NCLB course" and expand the federal government's "big brother knows best" role in standardizing school curriculum and overriding local decision making.

While Gates and Broad do not claim to directly support NCLB, what they do support – high standards in all the traditional curriculum areas with accompanying standardized tests – might as well be NCLB's twin sister because it reinforces centralized educational control and the same in-the-box assembly-line structures, curriculum, and content-driven operations that have undermined real educational change for the past several decades.

On the other side of the educational debate sits a large, loosely knit coalition of parent groups, educators, researchers, and educational innovators who may be unknown to Gates but are systematically ignored by the pro-NCLB forces.  For this diverse "re-form education" group, NCLB and standardization are backward-facing, regressive, and counter-productive strategies, and its documented list of NCLB negatives is both huge and alarming.  These "re-formers" would urge Gates, the Presidential candidates, and Americans in general to re-think education in two fundamental ways. First, it should be far better connected to the challenging and dynamic global future that our children will face than it now is, particularly the complex performance roles that adults carry out in their career, family, and civic lives.  Second, it should also be far more focused on the unique abilities, interests, qualities, and motivations of our highly diverse population of learners, utilizing – rather than ignoring and suppressing as NCLB does – the remarkable advances that have been made in understanding how the brain works, learning occurs, and motivation to learn arises in people of all ages.

Moreover, Gates would be well advised to study the "re-form" character of one major 2006 business-sponsored national report called Tough Choices or Tough Times.  This paradigm-breaking document directly challenges the entire assembly-line/factory-model character of the country's educational system and, by implication, NCLB's in-the-box thinking and rigid, fear-based requirements.  Paradoxically, the Tough Choices report advocates a framework of 21st Century outcomes that would warm Gates' entrepreneurial heart because they define the exceptional abilities that have made him what he is today, namely:  synthesis and creativity; design and innovation; understanding, communicating with, and relating to other cultures; leadership and interpersonal skills; teamwork and group management; organizational design; and an openness to and love of learning and experimenting with new ideas.  Note that none of these qualities are addressed in the “stronger” content-centered curriculum standards advocated in the Gates-Broad initiative.  In addition, Tough Choices asserts that a totally different kind of school structure, culture, and methodology will be required to achieve these expansive person-centered outcomes, which is not what we're hearing from Gates or the people coordinating his new initiative. 

So before launching his new campaign in earnest, Gates would be well advised to "go back to school" on his educational thinking and study the "re-form" research and models that represent an enlightened educational future, focused on developing students' unique talents, creativity, collaborative abilities, and lifelong learning skills for a global, rapidly changing, technology-driven world.  This is the kind of “re-form” thinking and new education model that millions of American parents seek for their children, and Gates should take it to both heart and mind.  Otherwise, the paradox that his views create could easily degenerate into a "more of the same, harder and better" and "stay the course" dialogue about education in 2008 that will keep the country bogged down in Industrial Age schooling for decades to come.  

William G. Spady, ChangeLeaders, P.O. Box 4388, Dillon, CO  80435
Email:  billspady@earthlink.net     Phone:  970/262-1935