Response to Bill Gates

Thanks to my friend Lisa Galarneau for sending me this link to the Eide Neurolearning Blog that is maintained by husband and wife team of Drs Fernette and Brock Eide who specialise in working with children with learning disabilities. Their latest blog entry is titled Designing schools for the present age: Thoughts on a recent editorial by Bill Gates , and provides a response to the recent Gates editorial that I blogged about on March 2

The Eides focus on the notion of “diversity” among learners to put their support behind what Gates is suggesting, and use their expereience in working with learning difficulties to support their stance. To quote:

    “Because our clinic is located in Seattle we see many of the children of Mr. Gates’ employees. Often the supposed “learning problems” that make them poorly suited for the overwhelmingly verbal learning environments in their schools are manifestations of precisely the same visual and spatial reasoning styles that have made their parents so successful and creative in their professional lives. Such problems are entirely unnecessary.”

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