Philadelphia’s Microsoft High
p2pnet.net News:- My wife, Liz, and I have been horrified by increasing incursions by vested corporate interests, particularly the music and movie cartels and companies such as Apple computer, into school classrooms around the world.
Phony ‘education’ programs are nothing more than barely disguised schemes to force-feed students of all ages with hard-core corporate propaganda, and ‘gifts’ of hardware meant to do one thing only – brainwash kids into becoming good little consumers, pre-disposed towards given products and companies.
What’s even more horrifying is the fact school staffs and administrations, not to speak of governments, more often than not support these farcical programs.
Thank God we long ago decided to home-school our daughter, Emma, who’s now 10 and who thinks copyright is what happens when you’ve successfully replicated something —- a drawing, for example.
By the time she enters the school system at university level, say, she’ll know enough to be able to see these corporate brainwashing efforts for what they are, but other kids won’t be as lucky and now Chairman Bill [Gates] has achieved the ultimate triumph.
He’s already “famously called high schools ‘obsolete’ and warned about their effect on U.S. competitiveness,” and now he and his company have, “a chance to prove that it can help fix the woes of public education,” says CNN.
They’re not infiltrating pseudo-educational programs into a school – they’re building the school!
“After three years of planning, the Microsoft Corp.-designed ‘School of the Future’ opened its doors Thursday, a gleaming white modern facility looking out of place amid rows of ramshackle homes in a working-class West Philadelphia neighborhood,” says the story.
Scheming would be a better word than planning, but anyway, “The school is being touted as unlike any in the world, with not only a high-tech building – students have digital lockers and teachers use interactive ’smart boards’ – but also a learning process modeled on Microsoft’s management techniques,” it says.
“Philadelphia came to us … and asked us to design a school,” the story has Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, saying. “We’re going to take our best shot.”
And Microsoft isn’t even paying for it. The Philadelphia School District, read parents and tax-payers, will foot the $63 million bill.
“About 170 teens, nearly all black and mainly low-income, were chosen by lottery to make up the freshman class,” says CNN. “The school eventually plans to enroll up to 750 students.”
Tramelle Hicks, whose 15-year-old daughter, Kierra, is going to Microsoft High, she says she believes her daughter, “would benefit from learning strategic and organizational skills from Microsoft,” says CNN.
However, according to CNN, Doug Lynch, vice dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania says while trying new methods may be valuable “we have to be careful because you’re messing with kids’ lives.”
But of course, leading edge technology and learning corporate strategies and skills won’t save children.
Our own experience, and the experience of other home schooling families, leads us to believe children who are allowed to follow their own interests and inclinations, and go in directions they’re drawn to, will retain what they learn because they’re genuinely interested.
These are kids who become independent thinkers, strong, confident and self-motivating, capable of adapting to situations as they arise and able to innovate and improvise, as well as follow pre-set directions and instructions.
This kind of learning, we believe, can be helped immeasurably by technology. But behind the technology, and guiding its use, must be parents and mentors, not captains of industry.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
Also See:
CNN – Microsoft designs a school system, September 7, 2006
hard-core corporate propaganda – Canada’s Captain Copyright, June 1, 2006
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September 8th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
This is a stupid article. I hate annoying opinion shorts like this, especially by people who suffer corporate paranoia. Believe it or not, the whole world isn’t dumber than you. Everybody sees the advertisements and it doesn’t make us brainwashed.
PS Homeschooled children end up alienated and alone when they because they don’t learn any social skills through school. Spending every day with mom and dad makes it difficult to survive in the real world.
September 9th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I’ll pass on your first sentence and on your second, our daughter’s best friend is at traditional school, as are some of her other friends. They hang out every day.
She also spends plenty of time with other home schooled children who, not at all incidentally, aren’t confined to specific age groups. This means they’re able to interact comfortably with kids ranging from toddlers to teens. And of course, they’re with responsive adults 24/7. Altogether, this gives them outstanding social and communication skills.
Apart from that, I’d lay money on the fact that you haven’t had much, if any, exposure to home school families.
Cheers!
Jon
September 9th, 2006 at 2:16 am
This is what happens in america. people are selfish and take gifts for granted. They beleive that everything from the corporations is good from the heart, but in truth they are evil. People don’t find anycorporations evil. Most even believe the MPAA and RIAA are government organizations. Its scary that they will allow themselves to be governed by corporations. The fears that have been during the filiming of “Dr. Stangelove” have come true and people are not realizing that, its disturbing. They beleived at that period that corporatoins such as “Coca Cola Company” where going to control america, yet its the media industry.
September 9th, 2006 at 3:30 am
Fuck you asshole, everything on p2pnet is worth reading.
September 9th, 2006 at 3:34 am
“Sorry kids, the interactive smartboards have BSOD’ed again, you might as well go home for the rest of the day.”
September 9th, 2006 at 3:39 am
I meant to say….”Jerk, everything on p2pnet is worth reading!”
September 9th, 2006 at 11:13 am
But the facts are:
Microsoft is successful to the extent it is because it is protected by a copyright law that locks up software ideas for about 100 years.
It has nthing to do with Micrsoft being a well run company. It’s all about monopoly.
Eventually, anyway, schools will Linux or other open source software. After all, why pay for what you can get for the acual cost to produce, nothing.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas
September 9th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
Going into stereotyping doesn’t really fit. I post here regularly. I believe one of the greatest threats today facing both freedom and government is the corporation. Worse that those lines are blurring and both corporation and government are beginning to get the same mindset. Guess what? I’m American.
*Third attempt at verification
September 10th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Max Barry’s dystopian novel _Jennifer_Government_ placed schoolchildren in corporate-sponsored schools. If I recall correctly, the kids even took the sponsor’s name as temporary surnames. (As adults, they would use their employer as their permanent surname, of course.)
September 10th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
The cartoon says it all. Like they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words.