The October issue of Ebony magazine features a sit-down interview with Bill Gates and his efforts to improve America’s educational system. The multi-billionaire (and head of the Gates Foundation) has infused billions into U.S. schools and is startled by the lack of urgency surrounding the “dropout factories” we call schools.
So 10 years after starting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation””and deciding to put billions into improving education in America””he knows that access to technology is no longer the issue. How we use that technology in the classroom, and whom we hire to teach are.
America’s public school system, particularly in the inner city where dropout rates top 50 percent in some cases, is failing at both.
“That’s when you say, “˜Oh, my goodness!”...This is a stark situation,'” says Gates of learning that some schools were little more than dropout factories, even though low-cost technology was supposed to be the great equalizer.
In fact, once Gates got over the shock at the continued disparity in the education system, he says he got angry. Now, he struggles to figure out why Blacks, particularly in inner cities, aren’t also mad as hell and ready to pound the pavement for change. “Why isn’t there outrage, absolute outrage over this issue? Why aren’t there protests every day? I don’t understand,” he says. “Why wouldn’t this activate people the way that it did during the Civil Rights Movement?”
He goes on to say that America’s failing educational system should be the top civil rights issue of our time. Do you agree? Disagree?