The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with Viacom to take over several youth-oriented channels on September 8th. The Gates couple has a message they want to send about their newest 5 year initiative to manipulate education to their advantage ("Get Schooled").

The brief video on the Get Schooled website opens with "Your teachers can't teach you."

During the video blurb, a male voice edging on harpy--no doubt selected after hours of test audiences-- ends by announcing "The one thing you'll never learn in school is how important school is."

This is, of course, horse hockey.

The program is funded by the foundation created by a man who did not complete college.

Kelly Clarkson and LeBron James host the program. Both are successful in their respective worlds, both have oodles of fame and money. Neither went to college. Both had full scholarship offers, Kelly for her voice, Lebron for his basketball skills.

I'm not of the school that everyone needs or should go to college, but I find it ironic hypocritical that Bill, Kelly, and LeBron feel qualified to spout that very message.

From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:

Get Schooled is a national platform that connects, inspires and mobilizes people - from policymakers and corporate leaders to communities and kids - to find effective solutions to the problems facing our education system.

I guess Mr. Gates would argue that the show is not hypocritical, because it's not about Kelly or LeBron--it's about their support personnel. Maybe the message is that if you want to touch the mighty, get a degree.

The opening attack on teachers, however, is unconscionable.

Go look at the video. Ask yourself how much is good information, how much is propaganda.

I'm not busting my butt to produce careerists. I am not busting my butt to produce a generation of children who define success by how much they make, or how far they rise in a corporate structure.

I am busting my butt to help produce a thoughtful citizenry that can see beyond the dangerous dogma promoted by Bill Gates and others with far more power than sense.

School's Matter, where I first learned about the above, also reports that the same foundation is gaming the "Race to the Top" grants.
I could have compared Bill Gates to Joseph Goebbels, but that would have been a cheap shot.