philanthropirates & education—déjà vu all over again

Venture Philanthropy...it's an epidemic. Reactions have been sprouting up all over as  I noted in Wednesday's post. Read on for more about why. Higher ed has the Koch Bros and is not exactly Gates-free either. ALEC plagues us all as Adjunked Professor explains in "Is ACCJC’s Bumbling a Set Up?" This slides right in with the reading I've been doing to catch up at the Education Bloggers Network since joining. 

As just one (or two) of many examples — more keep coming but I have to stop somewhere or I'll be up all night — here's Educating the Gates Foundation's two part series Prisons & Slavery: How Bill Gates, Gates Foundation and Microsoft Profit from Racism and Human Suffering: 

• Part 1 The Prison Connection

• Part 2 The Prison—School Connection

I read these and commented "philanthropiracy" ~ ed bloggers applauded. The expression is from Danny Weil. Then, related to this topic, I remembered sharing a guest post from an Education Week blog on adj-l a few years back and went looking for them, not for the first time. This time I bookmarked them. Turns out the blog was Anthony Cody's Living in Dialogue. I caught some flak for posting a a link that did not have anything to do with "our" adjunct problems. Sigh. It does now.

• Part 1: The Gates Foundation's Leveraged Philanthropy: Corporate Profit Versus Humanity on Three Fronts 

• Part 2: The Gates Foundation's Education Philanthropy: Are Profit Seeking and Market Domination a Public Service? 

• By the same author, a 2010 post on the development of Common Core standards for Chemistry, 

It's unnerving and frustrating to see a disaster coming at you, writing about it and how little difference knowing or writing has made. What's to be done but keep pushing? Keep on blogging and connecting to make our collective voices harder to ignore. Oh yes, and register for the #BlackFriday #boycottMicrosoft Thunderclap (courtesy of the WA BATs)