Cuomo Announces Partnership with Bill Gates to "Revolutionize" NY Schools in
Wake of Coronavirus
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he will use the COVID-19 virus as an
opportunity to "revolutionize" the state's school system, inviting Bill
Gates to implement his controversial ideas about education.
by Alan Macleod
May 06th, 2020
By Alan Macleod
Taking time off from mismanaging a pandemic and turning lifesaving masks
sent from all over the country into an art installation, New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo declared yesterday that he would use the deadly COVID-19 virus
as an opportunity to "revolutionize" the state's school system, inviting
Microsoft founder Bill Gates to implement his controversial ideas about
education statewide. Cuomo did not divulge many details of what his imagined
education revolution would look like but did mention virtual education and
remote learning. However, Gates is best known for one thing in education:
charter schools.
"Bill Gates is a visionary in many ways and his ideas and thoughts on
technology and education he's spoken about for years but I now think we have
a moment in history where we can incorporate and advance those ideas," Cuomo
said. "When does change come to a society?.[when] we get moments in history"
he added, "I think this is one of those moments."
One of only two centibillionaires in history, Gates is the world's most
popular businessman according to polling company YouGov, enjoying a 54
percent positive and only nine percent negative opinion rating.
Nevertheless, Cuomo's announcement was met with consternation by many.
"Right-wing Wall Street puppet Cuomo is going to work with billionaire
capitalist Bill Gates, one of the richest human beings in history, to
privatize public education. "Philanthropy" is a scam. The Gates Foundation's
goal is to privatize everything so billionaires can profit," wrote
journalist Ben Norton.
Gates is one of the most important driving forces leading the assault on the
American public education system through the promotion of charter schools.
Charter schools effectively privatize the public school system, where the
public continues to foot the bill for the school, but has no influence or
say in how it is run. While very popular with both the private sector and
the religious right, the large majority of unionized public school teachers
oppose them.
Thus, Cuomo's attempt to push through what he promises to be a massive
overhaul of the state's entire education network is a perfect example of
what writer Naomi Klein called "disaster capitalism." In her seminal book,
"The Shock Doctrine", Klein describes how regressive forces wait until the
collective panic of a disaster to force through legislation that the
population would never accept and would fight back against in normal times.
During Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans school system was privatized in an
instant. Before the disaster, the school board ran 123 public schools,
afterward, it ran only four. Meanwhile, the number of charter schools
quickly rose from seven to 31. Unionized school teachers were all
immediately fired, with some rehired at reduced salaries and virtually no
benefits. As a result, the racially diverse city has effectively been
privatized and remodeled to exclude much of its poor black population. As
Klein wrote:
The auctioning off of New Orleans' school system took place with military
speed and precision. Within nineteen months, with most of the city's poor
residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost
completely replaced by privately run charter schools.
While maintaining an affable public facade, behind the scenes Gates appears
obsessed with the discredited pseudoscience of eugenics and has made it a
priority to reduce the population of Africa especially. He also has funded
programs to circumcise millions of men and boys across the developing world.
Another of his more questionable ideas is that of tattooing the entire human
race with a so-called "microdot" once they have been vaccinated. And, as
Whitney Webb cataloged for MintPress, Gates is a close associate of infamous
sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, finding a 2001 article noting that Epstein
had made his fortune out of his close ties to the Microsoft co-founder. "His
lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing" Gates said of Epstein in
a leaked 2011 email, three years after he was convicted of sex crimes with
children.
Therefore, while Governor Cuomo sees the pandemic as a wonderful opportunity
to reorganize New York's flagging school system, it is far from clear
whether the public should embrace his ideas and the supposed generosity of
the world's second-richest man.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York surpassed 330,000
today. The state has more confirmed cases than any foreign country in the
world. At least 25,436 New Yorkers have died from COVID-19, although local
officials accept this is certainly an undercount.