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unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

I suspect the G&Z agenda is to set up a sustainable model of investment in Africa by western countries. They don't want BIA to lose money because that would scare off investment partners who are more loss-averse. They believe in the long term, the most important thing is for people in democratic countries to engage with Africa and bring it about to their way of life. The collateral damage is that children may not be getting a great education; it may or may not be better than what they would have got otherwise, but it's breaking the old model of cyclic dependency on foreign aid.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

Large-scale philanthropy is not incompatible with a lust for power. I'm sure most people who try to effect wide-ranging change think of themselves as quite magnanimous - say, any third world dictator or 19th century robber baron. The effects of their "charity" may not be quite what the recipients were hoping for when they signed up.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

Certainly Gates & Zuckerberg are trying to bring about what they see as a positive vision for the world. Their track record is to provide a product (Windows, Facebook) that's "good enough", and creates a network effect that keeps more worthy competitors out of the market for a long time ("worse is better"). That's their idea of bringing good into the world.

It's a mistake to think that because a country is underdeveloped, there's little opportunity for return on investment. Actually that's where there's the most opportunity. The first investment doesn't have to pay off - just put a stake in the ground. Do you think China is also building infrastructure in Africa for philanthropic reasons?

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

I agree, in the context of US schools, privatization may imply a non-profit. However in this case, BIA is explicitly described as for-profit.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/06/...

In this specific case, I am 100% positive that Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are not investing in BIA to maximize their profit. They both have access to far more lucrative investment options.

I don't think this follows. You can't put all of your money into the most lucrative investment option. You have to diversify. For example people often invest in fine art, not because they're trying to make the world a better place by encouraging art, but as a hedge against other investments.

In this case there are assertions that BIA has a strategy of providing less individual attention to students in order to minimize costs, while taking money from the World Bank which could have gone to free public education otherwise. Sounds like Gates and Zuckerberg aren't in this to lose money.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

Higher education is more about social signaling than actually providing education (STEM subjects being a partial exception).

That's a very limited perspective. I enjoy reading history books, many written by people who studied history and teach history at institutions of higher education. Are you saying that everyone is just going through the motions to send a social signal, except for STEM?

Also you didn't address the question of for-profit vs private education. For-profit tends to be inferior because profit is the only mission; private institutions have a mix of goals, including solvency. BIA is by all accounts for-profit.

The BIA schools are teaching numeracy and literacy

Education at every level consists of showing someone how to act in the world. It's not just "this is what a number looks like, this is what a word looks like." I haven't been to a BIA school, but I've seen a lot of concerns that their method is to cheapen education by removing any human guidance, and divert money from the World Bank away from traditional education.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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/...

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/06/...

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

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.

unescapeon Uganda is shutting down schools funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates

Doesn't the same logic say:

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

unescapeon SF Muni fare system shut down by randomware

See also "Cyber Attackers Crash Muni Computer System Across SF" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13047458

unescapeon Cyber Attackers Crash Muni Computer System Across SF

The entire message read, “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted. Contact For Key(cryptom27@yandex.com)ID:681 ,Enter.”

http://www.sfexaminer.com/hacked-appears-muni-stations-fare-...

unescapeon Bye Bye Emojis: Emacs Hates MacOS

In my day we did all our programming with uppercase letters. Code should be congruent to speech, which does not have letter case. Best practices dictate that identifiers and keywords should never differ only in case. Thus as a programmer I have no need for lower case letters to do my job.

Unfortunately the "normies" won this battle and now I have to deal with the complexity of pressing the Shift key all the time.

unescapeon Bye Bye Emojis: Emacs Hates MacOS

If you want to help adding multicolor fonts to free platforms:

https://wiki.dequis.org/notes/emoji/

https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2015-August/047175.h...