Bill Gates wants to help the 99% by improving school life for them. This article argues that instead of slightly raising the average among the 99%, we should instead help the top 1% and given that we now focus our budget on a lot less people, each of them will see bigger improvements.
Among other things, the article says "healthy childhood of few concerns without the relegation to daycare is the root of greatness". Unless they are independently wealthy before having kids, most normal parents will need daycare because they still need to work for money.
My personal opinion is that recent years have clearly shown us that we live in a winner takes all system and that wealth doesn't usually dribble down. Large companies keep billions in profit offshore, where they don't pay taxes (that could help education) and where the money surely won't help the middle class find jobs with livable wages.
You're not alone with that opinion, in fact I thought it was established by now the trickle-down effect in economics is a myth (or at least I read so)?
Well trickle-down was always a matter of how much, not if. And yes, it seems pretty much established that it is a lot less than what we usually plan for when using it as argument in an economic plan.
wealth doesn't dribble down but a cure to cancer does -- I'm not advocating for overinvesting in the top of the distribution but governments can have legitimate, prosocial goals that involve cultivating specific talents
heard a throwaway comment in a podcast that poor countries have to invest in the top of the distribution because they have limited resources and need to max out highly-educated people so they can develop their tech economy. (I wish I had a real footnote for that claim or understood it better).
If you model the US as a poor nation that's falling behind its peers, or more plausibly, if you modify half of US states this way, there's an argument we should have the same education strategy as india or 1990s china.
> Unless they are independently wealthy before having kids, most normal parents will need daycare because they still need to work for money.
This is not so simple. Half a century ago, it'd have been common place for either the Mother or the Grandparents to be looking after the children around the house.
In the name of modernity we've replaced family with the nation-state. Yay progress! I say 'modernity', because some of the policies that have led us here were distinctly marketed with the very same adjective.
If the winner takes it all, what good is it to help the 99%?
Parents don't need daycare if they only work half of the time. (Of course, this means owning less.)
Offshore money doesn't matter for the economy. Actually it improves the life of the 99% because the value of their money would decrease if the offshore money would join the onshore money circulation.
> Parents don't need daycare if they only work half of the time. (Of course, this means owning less.)
Many parents are not wealthy enough to have the choice you're implying any more.
First, if they earn half the time, that means part-time work which generally means earning less than half the wages because companies tend to use a full time employee for higher value work.
Second, if they are renters, they don't "own less" by earning less than half. Instead, they might (for example) go from being able to afford the rent on a place to raise a family, to being able to afford the rent on a room in a shared house which is unsuitable.
If they own a place (with a mortgage), they'd go from buying a place which is big enough to not being able to afford to buy a place, because they won't even be granted a mortgage for a family-size home on a single typical income.
> Offshore money doesn't matter for the economy. Actually it improves the life of the 99% because the value of their money would decrease if the offshore money would join the onshore money circulation.
The parent comment is referring to the lost taxes due to trading profits being creatively accounted to hide them in offshore reservoirs. If paid those taxes would improve the life of the 99%.
As for the value of onshore money decreasing if offshore money were to join it, it's not that simple because much of that additional circulation would end up inside the pockets of the 99%.
You honestly think that parents working half the normal hours on minimum wage would make enough to raise a family without daycare? Minimum wage working 40 hours a week would net you ~$15k. How do you expect to raise a family of four on less that $300 a week?
What do you think will happen if the wealth gap grows further and more and more people become angry and unhappy? Riots and revolution are only a matter of time if the gap keeps growing. Having billions of dollars in an offshore bank will mean nothing if we continue on the same path. Even if you have no empathy for the 99%, at least look at it for self preservation. Our country is still extremely young and recorded history doesn't stretch back very far; chaos and revolution are normal and it would not be hard to pass the point of no return.
There is a reason most tech aristocracy believe that minimum basic income is a good idea.
How do you expect to rise a family of four on less than $600 a week with no time for healthy shopping, cooking, or taking care of problems?
I am pretty sure plenty of women do rise their children alone on $300 a week because they are working a full-time minimum wage job and rise their children. As a couple, doing it together, why should the same not be possible? Why is it preferable for both parents to work full time instead of actually having time to rise their children?
That money is labor taken out of economic activity and left rotting away in a vault.
Surplus needs to reinvested in the cycle, otherwise the overall economy will shrink.
What’s being quarreled about in the last generational policy struggle, is who gets to dictate how to spend it. The Jeff Bezos-es, the neoliberal technocrats, or the political establishment. Or something else
That’s only true if the holder of that money decides to spend it on creating jobs, which are almost invariably the largest single expense in any business.
Trickle-down economics depends on progressively better paid work and more of it, while the incentives for businesses are to have as few people on payroll for as little compensation as possible.
That’s why you need to force reinvestment with corporate taxation, and subsidizing innovation with de-risking, either via direct state investment or via reduction of labor cost (UBI, unemployment benefits to compensate for looser contracts.)
> Last but not least, could Gates's approach be an afterglow of his dropping out from Harvard. I see that over and over again, dropouts seem to suffer from this life-long hangover about what could have been? They tend to over-appreciate the power of schooling or the power of college. In the same way, I might be under-appreciating my own degrees. Gates is the opposite of Peter Thiel who studiously climbed the educational ladder until he stumbled to see the light. Thiel is now one of the staunchest critics of college.
I have wondered the same, and often felt this longing for "what could have been" myself. (I'm a college dropout who pursued a rather unconventional startup path.) Even though I've found myself surprisingly well-equipped to tackle most challenges, even when working with researchers, I have a very strong sense of impostor syndrome. I feel that I don't know enough about what I don't know.
Sometimes, I think that if I'd spent more time learning, I would know where to look to learn the next thing. Perhaps this is just imagination.
I'm sure I would feel the same kind of longing had I spent more time in college. A funny predicament.
EDIT: If the page doesn't load at first, reload the page. It should load right away.
I've worked with people in tech who dropped out, and people with bachelors, masters, and phD, and those with degrees in the arts. I personally have a bachelors in computer engineering.
I'm sure there's surviorship bias, but the people who dropped out are probably some of the best. There's certainly some value in a CS/CE bachelor's curriculum, and occasionally, something would come up where knowledge from a course was useful; but mostly a 4 year degree in CS/CE is a certificate of sticking to hard things that are computer related. You've probably got some project under your belt that shows you can stick to hard things that are computer related, even if it's not as formalized.
If it really bothers you, work through The Art of Computer Programming by Knuth. If it bothers you a little, but not that much, maybe borrow it from a library and look through the table of contents and read a few sections that look interesting.
I bet you're right about the survivorship bias, but it's nonetheless reassuring (comforting?) to hear that. That's also been my impression, though it's hard to actually believe schooling doesn't accomplish more.
On that note:
Had I stayed in college, I would've been a senior this year. I recently brought over a college friend to discuss a paid internship at my company with him, and was very underwhelmed with what he had accomplished during his university tenure (this being a quite prestigious institution). From the stories he told of professors assigning grindingly futile projects to his lack of knowledge about relatively widespread concepts like distributed hash tables, it was a rather disappointing conversation.
I still think the institution of the university is hard to replicate elsewhere, but the content (and maybe the people) certainly need an update!
Thank you for the note about Knuth's book. I'll check it out in more depth — I have the PDF version sitting in my downloads folder. My startup is currently being acquired, but once that's settled I'll have time for some holiday reading :).
I’m also a college dropout (granted, I’m orders of magnitude less wealthy compared to Gates) but I don’t have any beliefs in the “power of college”. As a matter of fact, that “power” evaporated pretty quickly 20 years ago while I was attending one of most prestigious CS schools in my country and when I saw that the powers that be were doing absolutely nothing to handle/address the student suicides that were happening during each exam session (presumably because of the stress).
On the one hand, there is something rotten in the university ecosystem. I have met a ton of people who laboured their way through degrees (even in sought-after fields) who have now ended up working minimum wage jobs at Starbucks or something equivalent. In the US, these people are also usually in debt, between ~$20-150k.
On the other hand, the gatekeeping that a degree offers does seem to be important. I think this is mainly because degrees serve as a sort of stamina test, of the kind which is hard to replicate elsewhere. Someone who plodded their way through a coding bootcamp is unlikely to have the same grit and determination as someone with a Bachelor's degree.
Perhaps we just need a better way of gatekeeping, and then the universities can once again serve as centres of education and learning. I think it would also help if employment guarantees were offered, so universities would be incentivized to teach their students relevant skills.
> Do not invest in schooling in the industrialized world. This brings miniscule returns on investment. Invest in bringing the web to all kids in all corners of the world. This will change this planet!
Wow, was this written in 1995 or something?
Reads ridiculously out of date and wrong today.
"The web" today is Facebook and Instagram and exploitative mobile games. Not what you want your kids to be exposed to.
Sure, my daughter has access to more knowledge than I could have ever dreamt of in my youth. But left unsupervised, she'll spend probably 99.99% of her time on TikTok and Instagram and 0.01% on Wikipedia. Access is great and necessary, but far from sufficient.
edit: I don't know if I would have chosen differently, if all were available in my youth.
edit2: I think do know. I probably spent much more time on video games than on Encarta.
That's up to the user. I was in the maths group for the write-offs when I was 14/15, and thanks to almost entirely my own reading I am now studying theoretical physics and writing compilers (amongst other things you tend to see on HN, that kind of stuff). That would still be possible without the internet but there's no way I could've done it almost entirely of my own volition (i.e. online resources)
In my case I'm not particularly intelligent (My IQ is probably about 110ish) but my ego drives to learn ever more difficult looking things, that and the having the attention span of a child (I've recently noticed I can barely read aloud without stumbling). Having the internet available to do that on my own terms is why I know anything at all today, I really don't do well being sat in a classroom.
I still do the usual gaming and the like, but I really don't buy that you can force people to learn if their hearts not in it (maybe my parents were too laissez-faire, who knows - if all goes to plan I'll be the first in the family to have a degree worth the paper it's written on).
My best friend had that kind of very-structured upbringing and I could just feel that I could run rings around him because I'd got to the same place (We ended up at the same University) the long way round - even though we're basically made of the same stock mentally.
I spent more time with videogames than encarta. However, trying to get pc games to run in the 90s taught me how to troubleshoot computers. When I had Internet access I still played a lot of videogames but I also learned a ton of stuff from poking around on websites. The Internet taught me networking, programming, digital forensics and lots of other useful stuff.
I spent thousands of hours (probably nearly ten thousand) on Wikipedia in my youth. As someone who worked multiple jobs as a teenager to afford a computer and dial-up internet, and was self-taught at programming and other things, the internet, and later Wikipedia specifically, were amazing resources for me growing up in the 1990s-early 2000s.
I do recognize, however, that I'm the exception and not the rule in this regard.
The internet now is very different than the internet I grew up on, and it isn't the future I hoped for (where I imagined everyone would learn as I did, directly benefiting from having access to much of humanity's knowledge).
I lament what the internet has turned into - the overwhelming success of centralized platforms, surveillance capitalism, viral misinformation, etc. I worry about how much worse this all may get once deep-fakes become commonplace...
P.S. I also played video games - but overall I spent more time reading and learning/building things than playing games.
the vast majority of knowledge acquired by humanity isn't even written down, on the web or anywhere else, because knowledge can be institutional, tacit, incorporated in organisations, embodied in cultural practises, families, even biological systems and so on. If your six year old learned to swim on wikipedia, do you throw her into a pool?
The kind of knowledge that facilitates economic development is of that sort, it's institutional and tacit. In How Asia works Joe Studwell makes an interesting observation. When South Korea and Taiwan had already taken off economically, significant parts of the population still could not read. The expansion of education lagged, not preceded economic growth.
Beaming markup text around the world is not all that it's made out to be for real world development.
Sure, but there are safeguards against crack pot theories being employed in a hospital. To make that analogy work, you would have to compare building out access to the web to building out access to public healing centers that don't require the use of clean water, nor the sterilization of instruments, nor doctors and nurses with any medical training. All while encouraging the provision wildly unproven treatments.
There are also safeguards against writing crackpot material on Wikipedia.
Medical malpractice happens all the time, the comparison isn't invalid. The difference is the cost to the user, i.e. building yourself an echo chamber is free whereas even a suspiciously cheap (say) plastic surgeon is not.
This argument works on multiple levels, the internet has crackpots on it but it also has easily indexable alternatives who are only n degrees away from offline authority figures. The issue is more to do with psychology than the internet's intrinsic (sociological) properties.
Depends on the individual, plenty of people have access to the Internet and remain in their own language bubble, never bothering to step outside of it.
Schools pretty much force you to at least know the basics to get a passing grade. The web only helps if you have self-initiative.
I can compare the two. The school passing grade does not imply any useful command at all. And it is eternally boring. And if you are not languages talent, you don't like it cause you are only failing and never feel good.
The internet makes massive difference in availability of movies with subtitles you can watch over and over, songs, later easy to read blogs. Discussion forums also provide super simple english to begin to read. Books and articles are too hard in comparison, both in vocabulary and sentence structure.
Duolingo is massive thing.
Yes, teacher is necessary too. But if you actually want your kids to learn other language, the web and games available easily for free now make massive massive difference.
And yet I only look at Wikipedia in my native language(s) when I'm looking up local history, people, or events, despite understanding perfectly four non-English Wikipedias.
For general knowledge, Wikipedia is only useful in handful of mostly European languages.
> The web is also access to almost all knowledge ever acquired by humanity
This is such a lie. Can you point me to a sustainable website with useful knowledge?
Almost all knowledge has been artificially fenced off in order to allow the elite to extract rents from it. Patents and copyrights monopolize vital production processes, and put it in the hands of knowledge Capitalists.
"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier." [1]
Wendy Liu adds:
"Place Silicon Valley in its proper historical context and you see that, despite its mythology, it’s far from unique. Rather, it fits into a pattern of rapid technological change which has shaped recent centuries. In this case, advances in information technology have unleashed a wave of new capabilities. Just as the internal combustion engine and the growth of the railroads created Rockefeller, and the telecommunications boom created AT&T, this breakthrough enabled a few well-placed corporations to reap the rewards. By capitalising on network effects, early mover advantage, and near-zero marginal costs of production, they have positioned themselves as gateways to information, giving them the power to extract rent from every transaction.
Undergirding this state of affairs is a set of intellectual property rights explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime.
Seen in that light, tech’s recent development begins to look rather different. Far from launching a new era of global prosperity, it has facilitated the further concentration of wealth and power. By virtue of their position as digital middlemen, Silicon Valley companies are able to extract vast amounts of capital from all over the world. The most salient example is Apple: recently crowned the world’s most valuable company, Apple rakes in enormous quarterly profits even as the Chinese workers who actually assemble its products are driven to suicide.
Whereas we were once led to believe that the network society would produce an egalitarian world, we increasingly see tech as a machine for the commodification of information itself. Something that has the potential to be abundant is made artificially scarce, because capital finds it profitable to enclose the digital commons and dictate its terms of access. Facebook wants a monopoly over your social network so it can show you ads; Google is the internet’s directory; Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music are your tollbooths for cultural production; Amazon is the gateway for your retail needs. These corporations serve social functions integral to modern life, [...] yet, not only are they not publicly owned, they are immune to any sort of democratic control." [2]
If you re-lived your life could you get by on only learning from Wikipedia? And reach the same level you're at now?
Can you stare a Global South kid in the face and tell them they have not been disinherited by the Global North + South Elite? That they (or their family) are poor because of 'bad choices'?
I'm definitely where I am now because of the internet and Wikipedia.
At the same time, I agree with you about how the internet and technology have changed and continue to change. I agree that too much knowledge is still vaulted away, that a few companies have established large monopoly positions in tech, that they are destroying the egalitarian dream of the early internet.
The problem with this statement isn't even that the web is bad, it's that traditional education is a number one priority for any country that wants to progress.
They suppose that in an industrialised country, everyone is educated properly. One look at America will tell you otherwise.
This was a bizarre read. On the one hand it came across as a (well-tempered) rant against Bill Gates.
On the other hand, the author seems to want the world to produce more people like Bill Gates:
> He looks at education from a societal point of view, while I look at the brain of an individual. He wants to move the masses to high achievement, while I want to produce more little Bill Gateses.
> Unlike myself, Bill Gates does not focus on having more Bill Gateses. He focuses on helping the poor, in boosting qualifications of the middle class, and adds "you can't run a society on top 5%". He is right, however, that top 5% can forge a path in education that would inspire all the rest. They cannot be run through a compulsory system set on pushing through the remaining 95%.
I see where the author is coming from here, but I question whether "the education system" is at fault for the lack of excess Bill Gateses in the world. (I would attribute it more to things like genetics, money and luck).
My own view at the moment leans towards "a rising tide lifts all boats". No, the education system doesn't work for everyone, and it's certainly not just the top 5% that it doesn't work for. (Sir Ken Robinson has had some interesting things to say about this - I highly recommend his books and TED talks.)
The education system in every country (and state in many cases) is different, and every individual's experience of their education is different.
> My approach is probably more suited to well-developed nations where the industrial approach makes people sick of schooling.
This is a really interesting observation - let's just talk about ways the education systems can be improved in Income-Level 4 countries then (https://www.gapminder.org/topics/four-income-levels/), and leave Bill Gates out of it completely.
> I see where the author is coming from here, but I question whether "the education system" is at fault for the lack of excess Bill Gateses in the world. (I would attribute it more to things like genetics, money and luck).
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Problem_of_Schooling I would read this from the same author. He attributed failure of education system largely to coercion, which makes sense if you read the part on pleasure of learning/learn drive
To improve education you have to improve opportunity, and in different places that will mean different things.
Talent and ability is well distributed, but having access to resources to make the most of that ability tends to be concentrated in the richer urbanized areas.
20% of the US population is rural, those kids are lucky if they have access to broadband, or teachers that can teach well, or access to cultural opportunities (museums, concerts, even libraries). In my metro, the poor side of town has problems getting broadband internet and computers for every child that needs one.
Our time would be better spent making sure everybody has a better opportunity rather than just focusing on those who were lucky enough to live on the right side of town.
Not only that, but he is paying for documentaries that attack the public school system, yet paint him and other pro-charter 'thought leaders' in a positive light:
"'Waiting for Superman' is a new documentary film that is being lauded as a path-breaking exposé of the problems with public schools in this country, and as a vehicle to pretend that some hard-working, school “reform” experts, have the solutions.
[...]
But the movie is remarkable for the “facts” it doesn’t show: how public money has been handed over to corporations and banks, resulting in public schools closing, students being jammed into overcrowded classrooms, with no equipment, books, or sometimes, not even toilet paper. It doesn’t show how so-called top leaders in education summits are primarily CEOs and charter school operators, as well as Wall Street “Investment” bankers and representatives from foundations pushing the agendas of billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad." [1]
Rick Ayers on DemocracyNow:
"In a way, it reminds me of the Horatio Alger stories in the nineteenth century, when there was great union agitation for raising up the working class, and these Horatio Alger stories would be these wonderful individual stories of individuals who worked hard and did what they were told and became successful, so we do not need a union movement, we just need individuals to succeed under capitalism. And these stories about individuals making it out of the ghetto and the very moving examples of the scholarship student who gets out are put forward precisely to avoid any talk about real problems of poverty, real problems of access, real problems all the students are facing in a place like Harlem."
What makes you point to that as the cause of education? I can see that being the outcome but I am skeptical that it is the cause of it (without evidence)
So many misconceptions about education, some good ideas though.
1. adult-centric point of view is one of the driving forces behind the failure of modern education.
Wrong. Educators spend many years studying pedagogy, and what is and is not developmentally appropriate. They get rapidly good at telling which kids need extra help, and who can go read independently on the rug.
2. healthy childhood of few concerns without the relegation to daycare is the root of greatness
Correct. This is the true secret, all children must have a safe place where they can independently learn. Anxiety about family, money, food, is generally terrible for learning.
3. best formula for helping kids get interested in science by Neil deGrasse Tyson is: "Get off their back!".
Largely Correct. Schools should provide more time for self-study and play. A longer day with less direct teaching and more exploration and play would do wonders for many children. Several countries already do this (Not enough)
4. passions born in childhood change lives
Correct, but not everyone will have this drive. Personality matters. There are dandelion children, and orchid children. Some will succeed no matter where they grow. Some wilt and die without constant care.
5. relentless lifelong pursuit of goals born from youthful passions is a solid formula for success
Partial, see above. Personality is more important than IQ up to a point. Nobody can teach you personality, they can only repress it.
6. mass production of great teachers is no easier than mass production of genius
Wrong. Enough 'natural' teachers exist, but due to the disparagement of the profession in the US, as well as the poor relative pay, most choose something else. If we valued teachers, and paid them well, this would change immediately. PS It has nothing to do with unions.
7. in development, minor trajectory nudges within the push zone by inspirational tutors are welcome
Correct. This requires great teachers, but we can also leverage all the 'greats' from other fields that are looking to pay it forward. More funding would allow this.
8. pranks, rebellions, and disobedience at school are an expression of freedom and may foster better learning
Correct. More free time, more time for expression. Oddly, this is where American schools are much better than most European. In America, there is more room to be an individual, and most are not crushed with conformity and homework as they are in Europe.
9. grants for kids to get to college are as good as grants for kids to skip college. All support for the youth is welcome
Correct, but remember personality? Most don't know what they want to do or be until they are in their 20s. Many creative individuals are late bloomers, they don't know what startup to start. They have not found their calling yet. Most are better off in college, doing more exploring.
10. dropping out of college can turn out to be a good thing
Wrong. Yes, everybody likes these stories. Everybody likes these inspirational tales of drop outs. But you're looking at major survivorship bias here. Most dropouts do not make it, at least not right away. Most would have been better off completing their schooling, because most do not have the personality to persist at a startup, or they are missing any of the other 20 or so qualities necessary to succeed. Most need to spend time learning those qualities, and many actually know that they do ... they don't have the arrogance/confidence to believe they can succeed yet.
Bill Gates is not wrong. All progress is made by inches, in fits and starts, in tweaks and small changes of degree, and by experimentation. Big sweeping changes just create 100 other issues. Any fundamental changes must be backed by solid evidence, and there must be agreement about what a good outcome should look like. Suppose the changes suggested create 100 more Bill Gates, but destroy the lives of 10,000 poorer children? Is that a good outcome? With limited time, money, and personnel, the tradeoffs are always immense.
could you use newlines? It's a little hard to read entire thing as is.
> Educators spend many years studying pedagogy, and what is and is not developmentally appropriate.
take a look at 50 bad habits learned at school [1]. plenty of mistakes left and right.
Education counteracts evolution [2] is likely also relevant. Curriculums I went through growing up in the US never seemed particularly sane or focused on what is developmentally appropriate. Much of it was overly stressful which I'm sure you know isn't so great for brain development.
In the whole article the word Intelligence or IQ wasn't mentioned once. The whole Bill Gates success formula is "healthy childhood and no daycare" is complete bullshit. You know what enabled him in the first place to be a genius? Being a genius. For outliers like Gates, Goethe and Gauß you don't need any of these mentioned factors. It is close to 100% just genetics. Also survivor ship bias is a huge factor.
I've wondered about this for some time. The Mensa demographic is 'highly intelligent under-achievers'. Why?
Part of it is early formation. Smarter people can find elementary schoolwork trivial. So they don't get any kind of work habits early on. I was one of these, like you, and still have a hard time buckling down to a task.
There must be more reasons, but that one seems fundamental.
My boys are smart - their mother is the product of a school teacher and a research physicist, so they got it with both barrels. They could have turned out smart-and-lazy. But we put them to hard tasks as soon as they could talk. Music, farm chores, Scout projects. Gave them jobs that were so big they couldn't see the end, so they just had to plug away cheerfully day by day.
Worked. One is an industrial Engineer for new products, invents new ways to aggregate steel in his spare time. Another went to Conservatory in Cello (he liked it better than piano and had to choose). The third spent last month up North, climbing 6 mountains. All three Eagle Scouts in a challenging program. All happy well-adjusted men.
I think that there is a general misconception in thinking that Mensa beeing "highly intelligent under-achievers". People that are not putting hard work into something are under-achievers in any demographics, because that's what the word implies. It's not a inherent problem in Mensa. Being lazy is the norm, it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, being an over-achiever is something that has to be trained.
It's not like that if you are intelligent you will automatically succeed and become the next genius. But without intelligence in the first place it's close to impossible to achieve something extraordinary.
Bill Gates wants to help the 99% by improving school life for them. This article argues that instead of slightly raising the average among the 99%, we should instead help the top 1% and given that we now focus our budget on a lot less people, each of them will see bigger improvements.
Among other things, the article says "healthy childhood of few concerns without the relegation to daycare is the root of greatness". Unless they are independently wealthy before having kids, most normal parents will need daycare because they still need to work for money.
My personal opinion is that recent years have clearly shown us that we live in a winner takes all system and that wealth doesn't usually dribble down. Large companies keep billions in profit offshore, where they don't pay taxes (that could help education) and where the money surely won't help the middle class find jobs with livable wages.