
Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates - jackgavigan
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/25/africa/uganda-schools-zuckerberg-gates/index.html
======
jstewartmobile
Before getting too wrapped-up in the public-private argument, consider the
fact that CNN, as usual, did not interview a single student of the private
schools or the public schools. They had only one quote from a parent, and they
probably scraped it off of BIA's website. I would be shocked and amazed if
they bothered to track down a parent and ask questions.

As usual, CNN served as a mouthpiece to NGOs/bureaucrats/lobbyists/etc. who
have absolutely no skin in the game as far as educational outputs go. It's not
left-wing bias or right-wing bias so much as an aversion to the time and
expense involved in actual reporting.

~~~
Klathmon
All journalism is like this now, and I don't blame them.

When people block their ads (proudly I might ad), and refuse to pay, they
don't have the money to do any actual reporting. Add on to that the fact that
just repeating a tweet and speculating on it attracts the crowds who don't
block ads, and you get what we have now.

The masses only want a headline, and the rest won't pay for anything else
anyway.

~~~
frozenport
Counterpoint:

Time Warner, CNN'S parent, profits are on the rise.

[http://fortune.com/2016/08/03/time-warner-beats-profit-
estim...](http://fortune.com/2016/08/03/time-warner-beats-profit-estimates/)

~~~
Klathmon
But that doesn't change anything. If profits are on the rise, obviously what
they are currently doing is working.

------
mrob
>"It's very indecent because they are looking at poor people as a profitable
market." \--Camilla Croso

I don't understand this reasoning. When there is competition, which there is
here, profit means the customers are getting value from the service. They
aren't being coerced into buying anything. It's not like BIA has a monopoly
and the poor have no choice in the matter.

~~~
morgante
Yea, it's very interesting to see how dogmatic people are.

For example, "adding that privatization of education goes against human rights
principles" seems to be entirely unsubstantiated to me. If private schools can
offer a superior education at a lower cost than public schools, what human
rights have been violated? Arguably it's against human rights to _ban_ such
schools when they're educating students.

~~~
unescape
It's been pointed out that there's a world of difference between a private
school and a for-profit school.

A for-profit school has an obligation to its shareholders to maximize profits.
If it can make more profits by providing an inferior product at inflated
prices, and convince consumers it buy it - then it basically _has_ to do that,
or they are defrauding their shareholders. Otherwise the shareholders should
pull there money and invest it elsewhere.

Private schools, by contrast, have an obligation to remain solvent, but also a
broader mission to educate people, promote learning, make the world a better
place and so on.

The word "privatization" in this context implies BIA is pursuing the for-
profit model. By contrast a charter school in the US, or religious school, may
be either for-profit or private and not-for-profit.

~~~
dragonwriter
> A for-profit school has an obligation to its shareholders to maximize
> profits.

No, it doesn't. A for-profit corporation has an obligation to serve it's
shareholders interests faithfully, but that is not, generally, a narrow
obligation to profit maximization.

~~~
unescape
Tell that to Carl Icahn. Management that puts public good over return on
investment is likely to be replaced. The interest of shareholders are
generally construed as maximizing return.

~~~
dragonwriter
Carl Icahn's position, of course, matters if Icahn is a major shareholder of
the firm in question; less so otherwise.

~~~
unescape
My guess is that maximizing ROI is also popular among investors not named Carl
Icahn. I don't think I've ever worked for a company where the investors said
"we want you to make money, and also accomplish socially relevant goal XXXX"
where decided to sacrifice any part of "making money" for the sake of XXXX.

~~~
morgante
I've worked with plenty of investors who had goals which went beyond purely
making money. There's even a legal movement to formally tie corporations to
non-profit motivations (see benefit corporations).

Thinking about non-profit vs for-profit as a strict dichotomy is unhelpful.
There are plenty of investors who shy away from particular for-profit
investments and prefer other ones for entirely non-financial reasons.

~~~
unescape
Sounds like a good idea, provided it's more a more specific and verifiable
commitment than Google's vacuous "don't be evil".

------
cbanek
> "You can't call it an education that Bridge is offering," Croso said. > "You
> have technology -- like tablets -- often standing in place of teachers and
> you have very scripted classes that tell the teachers exactly what to do and
> when -- so you don't have any sort of autonomy and you can't improvise."

Sounds kind of like the American education system to me... and honestly I'm
not completely sure you could call the American system of education really an
education anymore. More just studying for the tests.

------
andrewclunn
Seems so familiar to the anti school choice movement in the states. Arguing
that poor kids must be forced to go to substandard public schools, under the
guise of protecting the kids, while really wanting to treat education as a
guaranteed money source for political actors and the teachers' union.

~~~
tehabe
School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and
losers. So you will get bad schools. The only way to avoid this is, to have
only good schools, nation wide. So that the best school is the one in your
district.

~~~
Mathnerd314
> School choice means competition among schools. Which leads to winner and
> losers.

This doesn't follow at all. Consider e.g. a company that sells different
flavors of spaghetti sauce
([https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauc...](https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce)).
The flavors are competing, but only on a per-person basis; overall the flavors
are optimized to satisfy everyone's (different) preferences.

It's quite easy to imagine a similar concept in education, where people learn
better from a particular teaching style or are better served by a particular
curriculum. There's no obvious reason to expect that one "good" school would
be sufficient for everyone's needs; the ideal situation would instead be that
one could choose from several schools, of which at least one is "good".

~~~
tehabe
But spaghetti sauce can be switched for your next meal if it taste bad. A
school not so much, if attended a bad school for a while you might not be able
to catch up on a good school, or you have to start over again, or they don't
even let you into the better school.

I remember the case of private school in Germany, which failed to prepare
their pupils for the final exam of the state and all students failed. After
that it turned out their curriculum was wrong. The pupils paid the price for
the failure of the school. The school closed and the pupils had to repeat the
year.

~~~
unescape
People switch schools all the time. It's a non-argument. This is like saying,
what if you eat bad spaghetti sauce once, and then your taste is ruined and
you can never enjoy good spaghetti sauce again? Guess we better end spaghetti
sauce choice, can't risk it.

------
codingdave
The rationale for shutting them down looks sound to me -- for-profit schools
that don't meet standards, and are run by unqualified teachers.

~~~
jasonlaramburu
Unfortunately there is massive, systemic corruption within the government of
Uganda, and many E. African governments. While they could be right about the
poor quality of BIA education, it's equally likely that BIA simply hasn't paid
the right people for freedom to operate.

~~~
Alex3917
Bill Gates' flagship HS in the U.S., which he wanted to model every other high
school after, was also shut down for largely they same reasons... By the time
it shut down, the graduation rate had dropped to less than 30%.

~~~
Tempest1981
Can you provide a link to the story on this? There must be more to this -- or
surely some learnings. Thanks.

~~~
Alex3917
Diane Ravitch writes about it here:

[https://www.amazon.com/Death-Great-American-School-
System/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Death-Great-American-School-
System/dp/0465025579)

The school was called Manual High School. If you just search for "Manual"
within the book on Amazon you can see at least parts of the story, around page
207.

~~~
Tempest1981
Thanks. I had assumed tech problems. Sounds like many management issues and
infighting, from reading this: [http://www.denverpost.com/2006/05/05/manuals-
slow-death/](http://www.denverpost.com/2006/05/05/manuals-slow-death/)

Excerpts:

\- “The Gates Foundation really screwed up by giving the grant to DPS before
finding an intermediary to hold anyone accountable,” said Van Schoales, who
administered the grant for the Children’s Campaign.

\- As more than $1 million in private funds was sunk into teacher and
principal training and technical support, three feuding principals hoarded
textbooks and called police on each other’s students.

\- The Gates Foundation now, after stories like Manual, rarely works with
individual schools – preferring to collaborate with entire districts on school
reform

~~~
Alex3917
It was actually mostly to do with school size. Once they got the high school
down to the much smaller size they thought would be ideal, students no longer
were able to participate in any of the classes or extracurriculars they
wanted. So most of the students quickly came to hate school, became completely
checked out, and eventually just dropped out entirely.

He still hasn't paid any sort of reparations to these students, despite
completely destroying their lifetime employment prospects by using them as a
science experiment to stroke his own ego.

------
Kenji
_Critics allege that BIA 's education methods are not transparent, and that
their approach is standardized and scripted._

Uh, make up your mind. Either it is not transparent, or it is standardized and
scripted (which means it should be very easy to obtain complete insight).

------
DailyHN
> Namusobya from ISER said she believes BIA causes segregation between the
> poor and rich. She said in government-run schools every child is treated
> equally, but BIA's model only targets the poor.

Not sure that I'm seeing the problem here... since when are the rich jealous
of the poors' education?

And here is the bit where Gates/Zuck benefit (possibly now, certainly in the
future):

> You have technology -- like tablets -- often standing in place of
> teachers...

Gates/Zuck [could] make more money selling tech to these schools (probably not
through tuition, though, because it's only $6/month).

[I see the benefits being long-term edu foothold, not short-term profiteering]

Edit: Added edits in [].

~~~
Veen
Doubtful. I'm not fan of Gates or Zuckerberg, but they can invest their money
with a much higher return than is likely to be achieved in the Ugandan private
education industry.

Even people who generally do the wrong thing can do the right thing sometimes
- and Gates in particular has demonstrated this. Sure, contributing to
reducing malaria deaths means more potential windows users, but it's a bit of
a tenuous link.

~~~
DailyHN
Are you saying that you do not see the massive opportunity that is
establishing a foothold in school systems in developing countries?

More specifically, Facebook owns Oculus which puts them in one of the best
positions to replace schools/teachers with technology/VR.

~~~
edblarney
"Are you saying that you do not see the massive opportunity that is
establishing a foothold in school systems in developing countries?"

This is conspiratorial.

These are not 'for profit' schools in any classical sense of the term.

It's basically just an education charity.

They get parents to pay a little bit to offset costs.

That's it.

There's no 'plan' other than to get the poorest kids a decent education.

The government is pissed because it exposes their failure.

Imagine if a Swedish NGO started providing 'basic education' for 'near free'
in New Orleans? It would be rather embarrassing to America, no?

This is not uncommon. Sometimes when nations have natural disasters they
refuse to accept aid because they don't want to admit they 'need it' or to
accept their developing nation status etc..

~~~
unescape
_Imagine if a Swedish NGO started providing 'basic education' for 'near free'
in New Orleans? It would be rather embarrassing to America, no?_

That's an interesting thought experiment. I think a lot of people would be
receptive because there's a perception that public schools are failing a large
segment of Americans (probably because they are). There would be curiosity
about whether "Swedish educational models" could help. And there would be
nativists protesting that this is an attempt to indoctrinate children with
socialism and the New World Order. Almost certainly the teacher's union would
be against it.

Probably not so different from the dynamic in Uganda.

~~~
edblarney
American public schools are not failing - the students are.

Americans spend more / capita, and more absolute $ than anywhere on earth. All
kids have access to decent schools. Teachers care a lot.

But when kids murder each other, don't show up, their parents don't care,
nobody pays attention or values work, kids are passed even though they are
illiterate ... well ... it's really not the schools.

Take decent students and put them in the same schools and you get good
results.

Not blaming the students directly, other than to say they are functions of
their families and communities.

Anyhow - this whole argument about this charity is missing the point - it's
basically just a charity doing very good work, and the local semi-corrupt
government officials are pissed off - that's it.

This is not an issue of reporting, or 'American Imperialism' or 'do-gooder
white people not understanding culture' etc. etc.

This is actually just crazy Africa.

~~~
unescape
_kids are passed even though they are illiterate ... well ... it 's really not
the schools._

Surely the school is to blame if they're passing kids who are illiterate.

 _it 's basically just a charity doing very good work_

Can you provide any references that BIA is in fact doing very good work?
Glowing reviews seem to be thin on the ground.

 _This is actually just crazy Africa._

It's also crazy Belgium and crazy Candada saying BIA is up to no good as I
posted earlier - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2016/06/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2016/06/09/the-weird-story-of-the-arrest-of-a-canadian-education-
researcher-in-uganda)

------
unescape
It's not just Uganda. Education International (Brussels) tried to investigate
the school and BIA had their representative arrested. Kenya has complained to
the World Bank about their funding of for-profit schools to the exclusion of
free public education.

[http://qz.com/760823/uganda-is-closing-a-for-profit-
school-c...](http://qz.com/760823/uganda-is-closing-a-for-profit-school-chain-
backed-by-zuckerburg-gates-and-the-world-bank/)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2016/06/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-
sheet/wp/2016/06/09/the-weird-story-of-the-arrest-of-a-canadian-education-
researcher-in-uganda)

------
vezycash
Before anyone judges Bill and Mark, you need to understand something about
African "courts."

This bizarre story happened in a fairly developed town called Ikorodu in
Lagos, Nigeria a few years ago.

A major busy road was filled with deep, large potholes. Every year, the local
government would award contracts to fix the road but nothing would get done.

The owner of a gas station decided to fix the road with his own money. He
bought the materials needed for the repair and stashed them by the road.

However, before he could start, he received a notice to stop work along with a
court summon. The court ruled that he had no right to repair the road. And
that he (could) should give the money to the local government so that they
would undertake the repair.

Lest you think this was a black swan, the same scenario happened later in the
industrial district of the area.

The road (a federal road) was awful. Residents insulted the companies (PZ,
UAC, Dangote...) for making money but not fixing the road. The companies
therefore banded together to fix the road but the exact same nonsense
happened.

In conclusion, take this news with a bag of salt.

(edited: fixed typos, changed white swan to black swan)

~~~
flaviojuvenal
While I completely believe this story, makes no sense to talk about "African
courts" in general. AFAIK Uganda and Nigeria are countries far from each
other, with different forms of government and even different ethnic groups.

~~~
tim333
There are certain similarities in culture across the sub Saharan countries
though. Dunno if you've been there?

~~~
sangnoir
> There are certain similarities in culture across the sub Saharan countries
> though. Dunno if you've been there?

Yes, I've been there and this your assertion is simply not true, unless by
"similarities in culture" you mean they are all human. Heck, there's
ridiculous variety of culture in the same country - South Africa has 11
official languages, if we are to take language as a proxy for culture.

~~~
vivekd
I've been there as well, and to deny that Sub-Saharian African governments are
rife with corruption is simply dishonest on your part.

~~~
sangnoir
I did not make that argument - I was talking debunking the "shared culture"
idea and rejecting the lack of nuance. Corruption is not cultural - east and
west Berlin had different levels of corruption due to something other than
culture.

If you think all sub-Saharan African governments have the same levels of
corruption, you're plain wrong. As an illustration: (in no particular order)
Nigeria, Botswana, Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe have corruption levels that range
from "it's expected in every official interaction" to "you (civilian) will
wind up in jail if you bring up the idea of a bribe". So there's nothing
that's inherently African or cultural about it.

~~~
sytelus
Here's corruption index map:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Transpar...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Transparency_international_2015.png)

------
vivekd
>While BIA has not yet evaluated the performance of their children in Uganda,
in Kenya BIA found that is students "outperform their peers in public schools
in basic literacy and reading."

I have a hard time believing that the quality of education and sanitation is
really worse in these schools than in the state run schools.

Looks to me like the story here is Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg try to start
up schools for Ugandan Children and other NGOs, wary of competition, lobby the
government to shut them down.

------
RubyPinch
[http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/wp-
content/uploa...](http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/11/Clarification-on-Bridge-Uganda-Press-
Release-16.11.16-1.pdf)

------
meshr
Why waste money on something that you can’t control? Better help smart people
to immigrate to the country which will care about them.

------
jijji
Uganda in particular and africa in general has always been a black hole for
investment. Any money not squandered will be stolen, make no mistake.

------
Mikeb85
So in other words, they didn't pay off the right people? Or maybe someone else
paid more?

Or who knows, maybe this goes beyond simple corruption, and Uganda has made
some other alliances, and wants US based NGOs out.

------
tmptmp
Sad for the poor Ugandan kids.

This sentence caught my attention:

>>Uganda's High Court ruled the 63 Bridge International Academies provided
unsanitary learning conditions, used unqualified teachers and were not
properly licensed. However, many parents have protested and rejected the
decision to close its doors.

The key point here is "lincensed": totalitarian (or banana republics) and
corrupt regimes have this convenient way of "licensing" to throw away anyone
they don't like. These schools must learn to properly "buy" the licenses and
sanitation certificates by appropriately pleasing the authorities.

Disclaimer: I don't have high opinion of both Mr. MZ and Mr. BG when it comes
to philanthropy given their (more so of MZ, through the internet.org) greedy
and overall dishonest behaviour regarding their users, but this effort of
theirs seems laudable.

~~~
trakout
Quick point to add for you, Zuck has far more control over vendor lockin and
hostility towards his users than Gates does at this point.

------
meira
Paying taxes would be a better social counter-part for their huge profit.
Uganda government is right, imo. Let them manage education, not foreign
corporations.

------
jarcane
_The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere,
settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere._

~~~
edblarney
Take your conspiracy theories elsewhere.

