While wealthy families are embracing the potential of new technologies for learning, and investing more and more in out-of-school and connected learning, less privileged kids are being left behind. Access to specialized, interest-driven and personalized learning used to be difficult and scarce. But in today’s networked world, there’s no reason why all children should not have the opportunity to pursue connected learning.

The justification of inequality

We have the schools we have, because people who can afford better get better. And sadly, people who can’t afford better just get less--less experienced teachers, inadequate funding and inferior facilities.

how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy

Maria Anna (called Marianne and nicknamed Nannerl) was – like her younger brother – a child prodigy. The children toured most of Europe (including an 18-month stay in London in 1764-5) performing together as “wunderkinder”. There are contemporaneous reviews praising Nannerl, and she was even billed first. Until she turned 18. A little girl could perform and tour, but a woman doing so risked her reputation.

But he just continued on his way. She had to say, “That’s her book” three or four times before he finally took it in. And then, as if in a nineteenth-century novel, he went ashen. That I was indeed the author of the very important book it turned out he hadn’t read, just read about in the New York Times Book Review a few months earlier, so confused the neat categories into which his world was sorted that he was stunned speechless — for a moment, before he began holding forth again. Being women, we were politely out of earshot before we started laughing, and we’ve never really stopped.

And though I was grateful to James for calling them out, I wasn’t even challenging anyone’s access to making money. I just made humorous remarks about some books and some dead writers’ characters. These guys were apparently so upset and so convinced that the existence of my opinions and voice menaced others’ rights. Guys: censorship is when the authorities repress a work of art, not when someone dislikes it.

art can also help us fail at empathy if it sequesters us in the Boring Old Fortress of Magnificent Me.

The fact that professionals prefer anecdotes from people like us over concerted efforts to understand a demographic as a whole is shameful. More importantly, it’s downright dangerous. It shapes what the tech industry builds and invests in, what gets promoted by journalists, and what gets legitimized by institutions of power. This is precisely why and how the tech industry is complicit in the increasing structural inequality that is plaguing our society.

Whatever our intentions, the truth is that we can inadvertently widen inequality in the course of making money, even though we claim to support equality and justice when giving it away. And while our end-of-year giving might support worthy organizations, we must also ask if these financial donations contribute to larger social change.In other words, “giving back” is necessary, but not sufficient. We should seek to bring about lasting, systemic change, even if that change might adversely affect us. We must bend each act of generosity toward justice.

The problem is that the idea that women are not as good is so deeply embedded in the mind of so many people in positions of power, that it is not even recognized. It’s a belief system that leads one to automatically and without awareness, connect “women” with “lower standards” and “woman as good as a man” with “the exception.”And its cumulative effects are profound. It’s why women must be 2.5 times as good as men to be considered equally competent. It’s why holding blind auditions for orchestras increase women’s chances of advancing to final rounds by 50%.

Instead, we need to fix our own broken processes. We need to question our own assumptions. We need to fix ourselves, our communities, our society. We need to be proactive in digging out the roots of the problem right here, in our own world.

Every aspect of our lives is open for scrutiny. Every aspect of our political system is open for scrutiny. Every aspect of our socio-economic system is open for scrutiny. We are responsible for that task.THAT is our job. We don’t need to “help” people of color. They neither need nor want our “help.”

12% of college graduates with STEM degrees are people of color.12%This means more than 1 in 10 resumes that cross your desk should be from a person of color. This means more than 1 in 10 people you interview for jobs should be people of color. This means more than 1 in 10 people you hire should be people of color.This means if you are not seeing those numbers in your organization, something is very wrong with the way you hire people.

It is not sufficient to be “good.” It is not sufficient to want to “help.” We can’t “go there” and “help them” to make things better. Because the problem isn’t “there” with “them.” It is here with us.What we need is to look for the roots of inequality that emerge in our own lives, and eradicate them.

“You can’t have this horse. We want it,”

Apple does not sell great design. It sells design that flatters its owner. (And Apple’s timing has been perfect to exploit the rising tide of wealth inequality.)

she is merely an artifact used by men to display their prowess.

The girls unanimously agree that this is a constant problem in their work and they feel helpless to combat it.

The girls hesitate to use such tactics against some men and fall back on feminine displays of weak­ness and helplessness to get them to move.

the customer won't leave her alone and she must do her best to ignore him....

most gorgeous dream

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GIBBONS-PENROSE INEQUALITY

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This is the contradiction of the Google Bus, and it’s one that should resonate across the country. The Google Bus is the embodiment of a system that indemnifies the actions of corporations while increasingly criminalizing and punishing individuals. Google and its ilk have always known that they could break the law right up until the day they were invited to make new laws. That is the power of corporate wealth, and in San Francisco as in the rest of the country, it rules supreme.