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from the learning-how-not-to-run-a-business? dept.
Bridge International Academies — a chain of inexpensive private schools — has ambitious plans to revolutionize education for poor children. But can its for-profit model work in some of the most impoverished places on Earth?
[...] Bridge operates 405 schools in Kenya, educating children from preschool through eighth grade, for a fee of between $54 and $126 per year, depending on the location of the school. It was founded in 2007 by May and her husband, Jay Kimmelman, along with a friend, Phil Frei. From early on, the founders’ plans for the world’s poor were audacious. ‘‘An aggressive start-up company that could figure out how to profitably deliver education at a high quality for less than $5 a month could radically disrupt the status quo in education for these 700 million children and ultimately create what could be a billion-dollar new global education company,’’ Kimmelman said in 2014. Just as titans in Silicon Valley were remaking communication and commerce, Bridge founders promised to revolutionize primary-school education. ‘‘It’s the Tesla of education companies,’’ says Whitney Tilson, a Bridge investor and hedge-fund manager in New York who helped found Teach for America and is a vocal supporter of charter schools.
[...] Bill Gates, the Omidyar Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the World Bank have all invested in the company; Pearson, the multinational textbook-and-assessment company, has done so through a venture-capital fund. Tilson talked about the company to Bill Ackman, the hedge-fund manager of Pershing Square, which ultimately invested $5.8 million through its foundation.
[...] Rather than approaching profitability, the company was operating at a loss of $1 million a month. In March of this year, May went to London to provide testimony to Parliament as part of a series of hearings about the British government’s international-development efforts in education, including $4.4 million of British government funding for Bridge that had allowed them to expand to Nigeria. In April, the committee chairman issued an open letter to Britain’s secretary of state for international development saying no further investments should be made until there has been ‘‘clear, independent evidence that the schools produce positive learning outcomes for pupils’’ and that there were ‘‘serious questions about Bridge’s relationships with governments, transparency and sustainability.’’ Those questions were echoes, perhaps, of the same question that Bridge skeptics had asked from the beginning: Even if its big dream made sense in theory, could it actually work amid the complicated political forces and brutal poverty of the nations whose children were most in need?
Source: The New York Times
When Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and the World Bank are involved, what could go wrong with the "Tesla of education companies"? I guess there's no need to worry about sustainability and transparency when there's Microsoft Office and Facebook profiles on the table.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @04:26PM (4 children)
There aren't any jobs for educated people. Don't these fools know education is a scam to trick people into pricing themselves out of the job market? It's a trap!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday July 03 2017, @04:30PM (3 children)
Eh, at its most basic it's a money-grab from Western government to profit from shithole countries -- kinda like Iraq and Afghanistan, except without the gunfire and killing.
Of course, that money would be better spent repatriating the savage Islamist economic migrants back to their respective shitholes, but what do I know? I'm so privileged I can walk down the street at night unarmed without being beheaded or subject to the "sexual emergency" of some base savage monkey.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Lagg on Monday July 03 2017, @05:00PM
If the western governments were capable of the mindset and logistical knowledge required to teach an 8th grade black kid lit, pre-algebra and arithmetic for $54-100 without subsidy or conditions most issues in the world probably wouldn't be an issue.
Also you made me visualize an EF walking down a dark chicago street, hearing an ominous sound, only to turn around and see a hungry eyed arab rushing him. Gets tackled and fucked so hard his head pops off. Arab gets up and walks to a hot dog cart since the sexual emergency is over now.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 03 2017, @05:53PM
This:
Colombian drug lords (and others who profit from their activities) have bought out most of the real-estate on Key Biscayne (Miami), they'll pay $1M+ for a tiny old house so they can knock it down and build a mini-mansion in the little enclave that they are formed there in the early 2000s. Friends of ours (who ultimately sold out for $1.3M because they had a larger than average lot), used to talk with them in the evenings - they were just so happy that they could let their kids play in the street without fear of kidnappers, etc.
Income inequality has its downsides, even for those on the "winning end" of the game.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 03 2017, @07:18PM
Y'ever been in a Turkish prison...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Monday July 03 2017, @05:08PM
> Bill Gates, the Omidyar Network, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the World Bank have all invested in the company;
Embrace Extend Extinguish on the way.
"Yo kids, learn how to Excel! What do you mean, "in what field"? Oh right, try cell A1 first!"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @05:38PM (6 children)
Pay for clean water, mosquito-bite prevention, clean toilets, and the internalization of clean living.
That's what people need.
Those people need to internalize the principles that allow them to look around and say to themselves "You know what? We shouldn't be walking barefoot through a dump heap." All other good things come from this; after all, cleanliness is next to godliness.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday July 03 2017, @05:56PM (5 children)
In some cases, what the children need are paper, pencils and other school supplies. There are schools available to them, but only if their family can provide the materials needed for the classroom.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @06:45PM (4 children)
Believe it or not, there are plenty of ways to transfer ideas to people without requiring them to sit in chairs of a particular shape, using tools of the industrialization.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @07:36PM (3 children)
Wow, if only every child living in poverty could afford an apple ithing and fiber to their home!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @07:43PM (2 children)
It's very easy to teach kids just about anything that they'll need in life without requiring special tools.
(Score: 2) by BK on Monday July 03 2017, @07:47PM (1 child)
That's right. All formal education is a waste. </sarcasm>
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @07:54PM
Schooling often gets in the way of education, especially when your schools have many things in common with prisons, like they do in the US. Our rote memorization prisons do a poor job of educating people about anything more advanced than basic math and English.
Not all formal schooling is a waste, but 99% of it is. That 1% makes it better than nothing, however.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @08:16PM (3 children)
The goal is to keep children in schools longer, without teaching them anything useful. Instead of teaching them real mathematics, economics, ... , teach them stuff that is completely useless. When they will eventually make an escape from such a "school", they will find themselves inadequate to meet the challenges of daily life, thus making them poorer and more slave-like.
From "Silent weapons for quiet wars"
Link:
Silent weapons for quiet wars [conspiracyarchive.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @10:04PM (2 children)
I found this in a copier too. Is this yours?
Everything found in a copier is true occult knowledge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @11:04PM (1 child)
Who would do such a thing? Why write some fiction and then dump it in a photo copier?
Well, I gotta tell ya. The person(s) who wrote that is dangerous. If all that is untrue and pure fiction, then you have nothing to worry about and we can all give a sigh of relief, but look closely, it has been implemented. They don't fear a few "conspiracy theorists" (a term invented to discredit those who question the official story), the masses will be given enough 6th-grade level entertainment that they cannot won't pay attention.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 04 2017, @04:38AM
Well, after writing about a page and a half chasing my thoughts, I might see why you linked it.
I have absolutely no idea how to get the average person to see the things I've seen and realized, and you're absolutely right about the education offered to the masses being a sham.
It doesn't matter whether the document is authentic or not.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @11:02PM
I *want* to believe that they genuinely believed in what they were doing, but I find it hard to do so in the light of unbridled greed and irresponsibility of most startups. Like others mentioned previously in the comments, these people need education -- but only when other problems have been solved. What good is a boutique private school if you lack the roads to get to it or run a real risk of having your kids kidnapped on the way and sold to sex traffickers?