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I’ve long suspected this is the case, but now we have proof. Bill Gates is using his billions to give rise to The Matrix.
As viewers of the movie know, in the world of the Matrix, most human beings exist as a kind of biological battery, trapped in sacks of goo, fueling the sentient computers. Only a handful have escaped and are able to plug into and manipulate the life simulation that the Matrix pumps into our goo-sacked heads.
Howard Fineman has reported on a recent visit by Bill Gates to Washington D.C. to reassure everyone that they don’t need to worry about governmental dysfunction, because when it comes to innovation and progress, he’s got this.
This is Fineman describing why Gates backs the Common Core: “Gates compared such national education standards to the establishment of global Internet software conventions and the standardized gauge of American railroads and configuration of electrical plugs. Once you set the plug size, he said, people can go about the business of creating appliances to connect to the grid.”
Don’t you see it?
Plug meet grid. This is Bill Gates’ vision for the future of education.
As Fineman comments: It's a logical, if mechanistic and quantified, view of education that gives many dedicated teachers and educational philosophers the willies. But it is the world Gates believes in."
The willies? The second I post this I'm smashing my electronics to bits and stocking up on canned goods and bottled water and heading to Laurence Fishburn's place.
Gates has the money to make it happen. He’s spent $280 million on the development and implementation of Common Core.
Meanwhile, Gates sends his own kids to a private college preparatory school that reads like some kind of educational dream space so idealized that not even the Matrix could conjure it. (Note to journalists who get close enough to Gates to ask him questions, please ask him this: Mr. Gates, will you be recommending that Lakeside School adopt Common Core Standards and the resulting standardized testing?)
I’m not one for hyperbole in this space. Even when I suspect the sky might be falling, I do my best to find signs to the contrary. And I still think that Bill Gates likely means well, but anyone who doesn’t see him as deeply, dangerously misguided when it comes to education isn’t thinking clearly. Nobody elected this guy, and yet he's almost solely responsible for arguably the most sweeping change in the history of primary and secondary education.
He has purchased our educational system.
He must be resisted.
Where’s Neo when you need him?
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Twitter likely will exist in the Matrix. It's the ideal distraction from our goo-soaked existences.
