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Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

"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..

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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.

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.

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/...

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