Let's Toss Jobs Under the Bus. Or Carry Him On Our Shoulders. Or Maybe Focus on Learning Instead.

UPDATE: A day late, but eSchool News puts together a decent article on the Jobs/Dell panel.  Where were they yesterday?  Not a great indication of a forward-thinking e-school publication given the speed of publishing today.  Just a thought.

It'd be easy to jump on either bandwagon:  carry Steve Jobs on your shoulders or throw him under the bus.

What are your thoughts on Jobs' comments against teacher unions at the Texas Public Education Reform Foundation in Austin (where he shared the stage with Dell's CEO -- almost a bigger deal than the comments, in my opinion)? 

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions Friday, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers.

Jobs compared schools to businesses with principals serving as CEOs.

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" he asked to loud applause during an education reform conference.

"Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, 'I can't win.'"

In a rare joint appearance, Jobs shared the stage with competitor Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Inc. Both spoke to the gathering about the potential for bringing technological advances to classrooms.

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

Note:  here's what Scoble offers.  Not offered because he's Scoble, but because it's getting press on a much larger playing field than normal.  Intriguing.

As a culture, we are consistently good at ONE thing.  Carving the world into 2 halves.  And blaming the other side.  Not sure what it offers.  But we Americans love a good them-vs-us mud-slinging. In spite of the bigger picture.  Or letting go of what grows increasingly less valid.  As a mentor of mine used to say, "If you keep pushing and pushing on the door but can't get out, perhaps its time to try pulling for once."

Perhaps we ought agree -- for once -- that the entire 'public education experiment' (in the US) of the last 150+ years has been an insanely SUCCESSFUL adventure. It worked.  Unbelievably well if you consider mass literacy, shifting from an agrarian to an industrial nation, making citizen voting habits nearly universal, and providing a relative social zeitgeist (along with TV) for most to share.

 

Self-imposed reality check:  Yes, it's been a bit not-so-great, either.  Brown vs. Board of Education brings one example to mind.  Boston's bussing issues in the 70's suggests that even good law makes for bad neighbors.  And clearly in the last 30 years, there has been more and more frustration with the state of education, but perhaps we've crossed the bell curve high-point of a system that was meant to serve for a 'reasonable' amount of time.  Perhaps we are blessed to live in a day and age where we can conceivably -- think about this -- provide a customized educational experience to everyone in ways never before imagined? There yet?  No...but inches! 

Instead of an educational system based on factories and creating "organizational men" happy to take the train back to Westchester County each night at 5:30pm for meatloaf before Sullivan took over the family living room, we have ever-evolving learning eco-system being built at mach speed in front of our eyes.  Is it here in full yet?  No...but inches!

Part of what allowed this historical success was the guarantee that teachers would be protected as the 'state' of public education grew into a federal/corporate entity (in some respects).  When public schooling began, the 'teacher' was respected on one level, but hardly was going to have much of a voting block without a community marching in step.

Fast forward to today.

While we want so desperately to save the ship from going down (saying the sky is falling is the only way to get people involved, I suppose), we may want to acknowledge that it's not an infinite and linear paradigm.  Simply comparing it to the past may not be a relevant feature in tomorrow's search for where learning is headed.

Perhaps if we got off the union's back for one, but also realized that the union served a different era.  Perhaps if we stopped trying to burn the education system at the stake for another, and began to celebrate how profoundly successful it was in a zero-to-million-miles-an-hour way.

And then maybe we can begin to get on with the business of focusing on learning.  Not systems.  Not unions. Not accusations.  Not business vs. teachers.  Not federal mandates vs. anti-testing. 

Just learning.  By any means necessary.  With an eye on tomorrow.  Not the history books.  And not the lines in the sand, either.

Comments

[John Powers]

I don't quite understand the ease for which the construct "bad teachers" is thrown around. First of all teachers can certainly be fired for doing bad things. Second it takes quite a few years of teaching before it becomes difficult to fire teachers without cause.

In a similar fashion I don't quite understand how sanctioning "under-performing" schools is supposed to turn schools around.

The metaphor for schools seems to be "beating them into shape."

If Jobs was talking about Apple that way lots of people would sell the stock, reasoning that Jobs has lost it when it comes to making Apple a place bright people want to work.

[Doug Johnson]

I am curious about the data on which Jobs and other union-bashers make these assumptions. It seems easy to me to compare student performance in union vs non-union states. I believe three top performing states - Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa - all have strong teacher unions. Not trying to be defensive here (I am not a union member as an administrator).

Doug

[Alfred Thompson]

The big problem with Jobs' comments is that they support the idea that teachers are the big problem with education. Clearly there is a lot more going on and parents, administrators, government regulation and oh yes let's not forget students have something to do with what works and what doesn't. The unions (and teachers) make an easy target though.

[Dave F.]

Problems with primary and secondary education have a host of causes. Institutional inertia within teacher unions no doubt plays a part, but so does institutional inertia on the part of school administrations, and so does opportunism on the part of politicians.

Have any of them ever suggested "let's build performance standards, lift salary caps, and pay excellent teachers $100,000 a year" -- to say nothing of offering them back-dated stock options, which seem to appeal strongly to CEOs.

Public education also makes a handy whipping boy / soapbox for almost any social agenda, from book-banning to "give 'em all laptops" as a panacea.

Jobs has made a career out of hyping initially inferior technology (the Lisa, the Newton, the early Macs, the suicidal iPod batteries). I'm doubtful he'd have the patience to sit through one year's worth of parents' night, let alone one year's worth of board-of-education meetings, to try and build some consensus.

Top down is great if you're the one on top. It looks less appealing from below, as when you're the parent of a nine-year-old and feel less prone to have CEO outsiders futzing with your child's education.