By Kristen Gwynne
The Gates just keep pumping money into educational research teachers don’t want or need.
Bill and Melinda Gates’ grantmaking non-profit the Gates Foundation is taking another swing at America’s flawed education system. Their focus is predictably not on lack of resources for teachers and schools, but how to make sure teachers are keeping their kids ‘engaged.’ The Microsoft founder has pumped $1.4 million in grants into researching student-worn wrist bracelets that would monitor a kid’s “excitement, stress, fear, engagement, boredom and relaxation through the skin,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported last month.
Stuff Magazine says that the purpose of their funding is not to monitor teacher performance, but to procure “data collection and analysis techniques to predict which teachers and teaching styles will be most effective.” Regardless, the notion that these bracelets could benefit American students in any meaningful way is drawing plenty of ire. First off, say critics, it is difficult or impossible to isolate a student’s reactions to the teacher from everything else happening in their clasroom or lives.
“In high school biology I didn’t learn a thing all year, but boy was I stimulated. The girl who sat next to me was gorgeous. Just gorgeous,” Arthur Goldstein, a veteran English teacher in New York City told Reuters.
More>>
