QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 9th March 2011, 3:06pm)
The Humboldt education reforms provide a useful contrast to the present-day drive to computerize education. Humboldt set about to make the student conscious of how his mind works, so that he might learn creativity. For example, the practice of teaching multiple foreign languages, including classical languages, has the effect of making language a conscious process, whereas one speaks one's native language automatically without having to consider how it works. The workings of the mind are highly interdependent with the operations of language. By the same token, teaching classical music composition means teaching a different sort of language; instead of having specific referents in the world, music expresses ideas which are inherently ambiguous and convey meaning through change. Considering how to compose a piece using this method also causes the student to reflect upon the power of his mind to perform non-logical and non-arbitrary, i.e. creative operations.
Compare this to the brave new world of Obama & Bill and Melinda Gates. They are basically thinking of kids as little portable hard drives that can be filled with data (actually, this is remarkably like the epistemology of L. Ron Hubbard.) Little hard drives do not create anything new; they simply retrieve data. This is guaranteed to achieve "robotic" results.
Back up. The Gates Foundation spent $3 billion in 2009, but most of it outside the US. Most of the education money was spent in the US, indeed-- about half a billion. But that was only 1/6th of it. The Foundation funds education in the US (a relatively small fraction of its funds), but not health in the US. It funds health care (emphasis on vaccines and prevention) in the third world, but not much there on education.
Most of the Foundation's money (out of the total) goes for health issues, not education. Gates' comment on education in Africa is that it's pointless to try to spend money on any kind of education for a child that has TB, HIV, or is protein and vitamin malnurished, and anemic due to malaria and a gut full of worms (causing iron deficiency). His hypothesis is that if you fix or prevent those problems, children will think better, no matter what education they get elsewhere. I think this quite a reasonable idea.
I think your criticisms of Gates' foundation are quite unreasonable.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annualrepor...id-summary.aspx