I finally read the famous article in the New Yorker about a Facebook- facilitated billion-dollar attempt to improve Newark’s schools whose only tangible result was angering everybody to the degree that a riot almost happened.
This is one of two very good articles in the mainstream media that appeared this week (I blogged about the other one yesterday). Short on insights, it is at least well-researched and well- written.
Insights, however, are there for any one who cares to read the piece. The school-reforming philanthropists threw away insane amounts of money on consultants, trying out new hiring practices, metrics to test student success (in the absence of success, it totally matters to improve ways to measure it), conferences, superintendents, charters, merit pay, motivational posters, and God only knows what else. The students and their families were treated like circus animals without the slightest degree of humanity. Of course, the objects of these improvement techniques responded in kind, throwing pouty tantrums of the, “But how am I supposed to get my kid to this new good school when nobody offers any transportation?” variety.
The whole debacle was permeated with such a childish belief in the power of social engineering that it’s scary. Were you aware that Zuckerberg, who was one of the creators of this plan was such an idiot? I wasn’t.
The underlying problem here is that, among all of the narratives floating around the issue, the most crucial one is absent. The attempts to throw money at the problem disregard how unimportant money is here. Yesterday we were all shocked by a story of a mass murderer who slaughtered seven people and wounded seven others. He was from a very wealthy family and neither he nor the schools he attended could have lacked for money.
Money doesn’t raise human beings. Parents do. Tragically, the American culture resists this idea with desperation. Whenever a kid shoots up a school, everybody pities his parents instead of demanding that they take responsibility for inflicting a messed-up product of their faulty upbringing on society.
The most notorious evil-doers known to humanity did not come from schools where teachers were not too bright and there was a lack of motivational posters on the walls. Extremely wealthy families almost never produce brilliant scholars, talented artists, stubborn over-achievers, famous scientists. The majority of biographies of people who made an especially great contribution to human civilization start with, “He was born in dire poverty / she never had a dime to call her own.”
There are things money can’t buy and it’s time we all accepted it.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Were you aware that Zuckerberg, who was one of the creators of this plan was such an idiot? I wasn’t”
I couldn’t decide whether he was stupid or evil but was leaning toward evil……. I still am.
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Really? You think he’s smart enough to be evil? Interesting. . .
Why do you think he got into this whole sorry mess?
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Facebook was not the product of anyone benign.
And I’ll say right out (as crazy as it sounds). Without reading the article (because access) I bet the project did just what it was supposed to do.
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The project allowed crowds of useless consultants, administrators, and motivationalists make tons of money. Was that the goal all along? In Russia this practice is called “otkat.” You let people suck money out of a budget assigned to a certain project under false pretenses.
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// I bet the project did just what it was supposed to do.
And what is the benefit of the project failing to Zuckerberg? To say “those people are beyond help, it’s all their fault, lets ignore them from now on”? What benefits would such bring to him?
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I’m starting to think it’s otkaty. I don’t know the equivalent in English. He liberates a huge amount of money from the tax burden and spreads it among his cronies as gifts or bribes. Happens in Ukraine every day, for instance. Why not in America?
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“The project allowed crowds of useless consultants, administrators, and motivationalists make tons of money”
“And what is the benefit of the project failing to Zuckerberg?”
I’m assuming the goals included employing members of the Consultatura* for a time, to make Zberg look good for being a philanthropist (failed projects bring their charitable sponsors at least as much cred as successful ones) while not actually changing anything on the ground which would cause uncertainty and disturb a lot of people.
I’m sure many people involved sincerely wanted to help and didn’t see the whole process/system. They don’t count.
*my own neologism, use it if you like
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I love the neologism. Brilliant! I hate consultants of all stripes. When a university hires consultants, it’s a sign the school is in its death throes.
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How much of the funding for this project was tax-deductible as a form of charity or similar, anyway? Lots of money that could’ve gone to Zuckerberg’s friends.
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“How much of the funding for this project was tax-deductible as a form of charity or similar, anyway?”
– I think all of it. So yeah. . . Somehow, I still want to believe Zuckerberg was well-intentioned if not extremely smart.
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How would you go about it?
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Regarding the school shooting, I don’t know enough to know how much blame to put on the parents in this particular case. It sounds like they were trying to intervene, so I will withhold judgment (in either direction) until I have more facts. But in general, I agree with your basic point that people want to blame society rather than parents.
Eminem’s most controversial album, the one that got him in trouble with people across the ideological spectrum, had this great line:
“When some dude’s getting bullied and shoots up his school and they blame it on Marilyn [Manson] and the heroin; where were the parents at?”
I think that line might have offended far more people than anything else he said on there.
Regarding Zuckerberg, everybody wants to believe that social engineering can work magic. I like this line from the TV show Once Upon A Time:
“That’s the problem with this world. Everybody wants a magic solution but nobody wants to believe in magic.”
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It isn’t for nothing that I was always a huge fan of Eminem. 🙂
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You know, I was saying the other day that it seems to me that the most successful people are those who either grew up with nothing and worked for every penny they made, or people who grew up so rich and privileged that they had everything handed to them and never really worked at all. They were simply living off the labor of others. There seems to be no inbetween.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2014/05/30/mark-zuckerberg-announces-new-120-m-gift-to-san-francisco-bay-area-schools/
He obviously thinks his experiment in Newark was a resounding success. Here he is, doing the same with Bay area schools.
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This has got to be some tax-evasion scam. Talking about taxes, all of these exemptions for charitable donations should go. They only sponsor rich people eating caviar to battle hunger and the Zuckerbergs of the world creating some stupid charters.
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