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And I thought Jobs was a liberal. Guess not completely

The school=workplace analogy is flawed because we teachers can't fire bad students- we have to educate everyone who walks through the door, no matter what language they speak or disabilities they have. You wouldn't evaluate a manager if the manager couldn't get rid of "F" employees. Besides, every teacher in California goes through a 2 year probationary period when they can be let go at any time. 2 years is plenty of time to know whether someone is right for the job and it it the administrators and the school board- not the unions- which hire and fire teachers.

Too many American children are segregated into schools without standards, shuffled from grade-to-grade because of their age, regardless of their knowledge. This is discrimination, pure and simple -- the soft bigotry of low expectations. And our nation should treat it like other forms of discrimination: We should end it. - George W. Bush, Republican National Convention, Aug 3, 2000

http://www.usatoday.com/news/conv/118.htm

It's surprising that Jobs would stick his neck out in this manner, but I agree 100%

Wow. Double wow.

He's so right! Unions have no place in government AT ALL....

Oh great...here it comes...the right wing anti-union, anti anything that isn't white, straight, christian, apple-pie and baseball, minions will be out in full force with this one.

As much as I usually agree with MDN and of course, his Steveness, to insinuate that the biggest problem facing education is the unionization of its teachers is ridiculous. I am a union (county) employee (SEIU) and, believe me, if we are incompetent, we can (and are!)fired and "forced out" just like anyone else in the private sector...and WE don't get a severance package!!

The problems in our schools are way too complicated to be blamed only on the union. Sorry Steve...doesn't fly with me.

i've got to agree with Jobs because principals of schools are who sees teachers in action more than anyone else. they should be able to use that to fire bad teachers.

That is the problem with these stupid "liberal" and "conservative" boxes that the talking heads on TV continuously want to put us in. It serves no one's purposes but their own. I consider myself an intelligent thinking human being, not a knee-jerk ideologue. I'm happy to see that Steve Jobs refuses to have his thinking defined by the labels that have been put on him.

That's terrible analogy. What you've illustrated is exactly the flawed mindset that dominates public education--the problem is not us, it's our customers (students)! If we could just pick out the smart students, from two-parent perfect families, we would be fine! In what other industry, do the staff and managers blame the customers for ALL their woes!!
I like Steve Jobs even more today than before!

Liberal ≠ Libertarian

Many tech entrepreneurs are more libertarian.

Michael Dell is a simpering ass-kisser who's more concerned about saddling schools with his garbage PCs and reaping the profits than speaking the truth and trying to effect positive change.

Pure truth. Bravo, MDN!

Here, here!

100% with you Steve. You couldn't have said it any better...

Let it be said: Steve Jobs has big cajones. Saying that in a state (California) that is lorded over by powerful unions, it takes someone unafraid to speak his mind. Govenator Schwarzennger tried this and got roughed up pretty bad by the union thugs (politically speaking). God knows, in such a politically correct country, it's refreshing.

A neighbor of mine is a career school teacher (and a dedicated Mac user) in California. She is livid with frustration at what unions and bureaucratic school district administrators have done to bloat budgets but leech away funds where they're needed the most: in the classrooms. It happens far too much across the country, and the result is the US is falling behind other countries in terms of the competence of graduating students. If we bemoan the loss of programming and other tech positions to other countries, the cause in part is because we are becoming less competitive with respect to our math and science skills.

I am sure Steve Jobs will face yet another onslaught of negative press for speaking his mind, fueled in the background by union bosses. That's sad. Unions have a role to play by all means, but increasingly, the power of unions has served only to corrupt their ideals and make them lose sight of their mission. When the needs of students are forgotten, it's a disgrace. Thank God for people like Steve Jobs with the guts to hold them accountable.

Unions are the only thing teachers have going for them in this country. Steve has the debate backwards. The problem isn't getting rid of bad teachers, it's attracting good ones. Solve that problem and and the other issue goes away.
Schools aren't a business model, it's a public service.

Magic Word: tried - I tried teaching, and no amount of money is worth it.

'And I thought Jobs was a liberal. Guess not completely'

Liberal, sure...but he's not beholden to teacher's union campaign contributions, that's the difference

Regardless of politics, one has to agree that unions have pros and cons. In this case, mostly cons.

As a former teacher I can tell you that the people who we most need to get out of the schools are the incompetent administrators. They can and they do persecute highly capable, great teachers who are non-conformist and insist on exercising their professional judgement. Tenure was implemented to protect academic freedom and it did - and it still does - need protection. Many a fine, promising young teacher has left the profession in disgust because of the narrow, bureaucratic focus of administators.

Blaming it all on the teachers and the unions is entirely too one-sided. Steve Jobs, in a 1995 interview, credited his fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Hill, for keeping him in school and out of trouble. She said "Steven, I'll tell you what. I'll make you a deal. I have this math workbook and if you take it home and finish on your own without any help and you bring it back to me, if you get it 80% right, I will give you five dollars and one of these really big suckers she bought and she held it out in front of me. One of these giant things. And I looked at her like "Are you crazy lady"? Nobody's ever done this before and of course I did it.

Mrs. Hill would be in deep trouble with many an administrator who would tell her she cannot "bribe" her students. Yes, the stupidity can run that deep.

Are you kidding? What the heck does this have to do with race or religion? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The fact that you think these are relevant does more to discredit your pro-union nonsense than anything I could say.
Jake

"The school=workplace analogy is flawed because we teachers can't fire bad students."

And your analogy is flawed because in Steve's, students are customers, not employees.

George Bush discussing education? Please!

And Bush is the REAL liberal, spending $8 bil a month on the invasioon of Iraq...

"The problem isn't getting rid of bad teachers, it's attracting good ones. (...) Schools aren't a business model, it's a public service."

...and the way to attract good teachers is to considers schools a business where good employees get rewarded. Or you could try attracting them by telling them what a great public service they'd be doing. See which one works.

Actually, I'm pretty sure modern psychological research into motivation would frown on the technique used by Mrs. Hill. Rewarding students in such a manner only creates extinsic motivation which dissapears as soon as the reward does, and does nothing to create the intrinstic motivation required for the student to want to do the work for its own sake, or see the other reasons why it's a good idea to do it. In other words, you might be able to get a student to do the work that way, but you won't get them to want to do it, which is the real goal.

When was the last time any of you spent time on a high school campus? The custodians and the principal's secretary really know what is going on, not the principal...seriously, unions get a bad rap for protecting bad teachers and I hate that. I have heard teachers say they don't want to learn new things, especially about tech. But before you blame it on unions or teachers, recognize that students have a lot of other things going on in their lives and at the high school level, I only get to teach them about 5 hours a week, 28 at a time. I try and get the most teaching and learning done during that time that I can (Keynote is wonderful!), but then measuring my effectiveness by giving them 30 questions on a standardized test at the end of the year is not the answer.

PS. Steve could help by giving high school students the same discount he gives college students!

I belive Steve was actualy in Austin Texas today when he said this. I work at the University of Houston and some of my higher-ups were going to some to-do there.

Broken by years of neglect, it is, but who cares? So long as you can send yours to private school, eh?

MW: should've been "shortsighted."

"Michael Dell is a simpering ass-kisser who's more concerned about saddling schools with his garbage PCs and reaping the profits than speaking the truth and trying to effect positive change."

Actually, in this venue, it is Jobs who is pandering.

Texas is a "Right to Work" state (which, statistically, means "Right to work for less") and has a history of hostility to labor in general.

In the middle of Texas ... at an "education reform conference" ... it is far more courageous to stand up for teachers unions than it is to dump on them.

Never thought I'd say this... but this one Dell is right on, Jobs is just plain wrong.

Business needs to shut the f* up and pay their fair share of taxes—not pontificate about how schools should be run like a business...

Get the Wall street mini business crud curriculum out of schools (like stock markets-gambling classes) and introduce courses about collective bargaining, forming workplace unions, and labor history... see now that would be education for the people.

Lets get real... business wants free child minding for its employees, and a docile work force... if they were really into education then they'd have work place child facilities... yeah right Bizness has a solution... send the brats to the coal mines

I have no problems with unions per say-they have helped workers a lot.

My two experiences with them were not at all helpful to me, though. They also took my money and gave it to a party that I seldom vote for, without my permission.

The idea of unions is great in many instances, but the practice has been hobbled by far too many greedy politicians and union bosses. Making it almost impossible to hold some teachers accountable for their failings is unacceptable.

I may be a conservative, but I can agree with, or at least respect, any person who puts common sense and principle above politics and business. Go Steve.

As someone who has been in public education for over 20 years, Steve Jobs hit the nail on the head. Until this society faces the realities of what he and many others are saying, the USA will continue to be near dead last in the western world on standardized testing (and related knowledge) while spending anywhere from 3 to 8 times more money. It's good to hear someone with liberal political leanings (Jobs) speak so truthfully on this issue.

My wife's principal is a moron and won't push for any of the things she and her fellow teachers want in their classrooms, such as computers. Couple that with degenerate kids with no parental support and you get a mix that will yeild nothing but bad results with a few success stories mixed in.

Good job Steve. Now you've just insulted all those teachers who were fighting to keep Macs in schools. I guess we could always just hand everything over to the IT contractors now; they have the kids interests in mind, right?

What do you mean teachers WERE underpaid. They still are. It's pathetic how we treat the people who are educating our children in this country. They live at or just above the poverty line in many instances.

I tend to agree, though I also concede that it is to some extent an over-simplification, and I have witnessed the opposite effect as well. My father was a teacher for many years, and a good one. He left the profession and in his case this was the reason. Not his salary, not his students. This is perhaps a problem inherent with unionization/socialization; if one does not fall in line with established attitudes they are at the very least shunned within their milieu. It is sad that passionate, capable educators have to consider abndoning their vocation through traditional channels where they could concievably have the most impact because they don't fit the mold. The protection unionization offers must be viewed with some degree of culpability. Kids deserve better, especially those that can't afford a private education.

I find it highly interesting that so many people.....who've never spent the first minute in front of a classroom full of students.....are such experts on what's wrong with schools and how to fix them.

Yes, there are bad teachers and bad administrators......there are also ridiculously ignorant, apathetic students who want nothing to do with being educated.......and there are lazy, non-supportive parents whose little darling can do no wrong. If you want some REAL insight with regard to how a businesman learned about the realities of educational challenges, Google "Blueberry story" and get a good read.

Schools are NOT businesses and the people who belong to the "Widget School of Education" and look only at the bottom line are ignorant and blind. The "raw material" teachers are given is NOT of equal construction....every child is a unique individual with unique strengths and weaknesses...and cannot be treated like a uniform blob of plastic to be squeezed into a mold and spat out.

If you've never taught.....I'd say butt out until you can speak from experience.

Unionization and tenure in schools is BULL. Many teachers need to be fired right now. They work 8 months a year if they are lucky (summer vacation plus 1 month vacation/personal time), piss and moan about not getting paid enough, and drag their lazy asses at the expense of our children because they CANNOT be fired. Jobs is right; it's CRAZY!!!! I hate unions with a passion, and I'm sorry to say I'm forced to belong to one. All the union does is advocate for the worst of the worst and make us all look like asses. I would close my business before I'd ever let a union take over. Unions breed complacency and low lives...PERIOD!!!!

I have been an Apple devotee since the days of II2e. I am also an educator. Mr. Jobs needs to better understand the educational system in this country. Where I teach, there are "Regents" examinations which dictates that the material is covered in a specific time, so there is little time to linger on anything which is out of the subject area. What I mean is that there is no time to teach anything using a computer that is student directed. It simply would waste too much valuable time. Computers are great and there are many programs to elicit student response. But there is little to no time for students to explore ideas, concepts or do research. I suggest that Mr. Jobs devote his time to investigating those non-educators who make the rules, standards and inane rules to which we must abide. Are there bad teachers? Of course. There are bad whatevers in any field, but those bad teachers are the minuscule minority and have little or no impact on the educational system. Mr. Jobs might want to venture into a high school, sans computer, and go against the "clock" to teach the information. If he did, I would think that he would sing a different tune.

If students are customers, should we only teach them the courses they select? Shouldn't they then get to select the materials- movies over books? "Call to Duty" instead of reading letters from WWII vets? Maybe, but the state has a whole series of standards and benchmarks that they say must be met every year.
I see my students (high school juniors and seniors) more as employees and they receive grades instead of money. My job is to try and train all of them and use as many different strategies as it takes to get them to their goals. If it was a business and they were serious about results, I would be much better funded- California ranks about 44th in the country in how much it spends per students each year.

The trouble is government, not teachers' unions. No Child Left Behind is the biggest problem right now. And things were bad even before that. In my school district, the schools are closed on Wednesdays so that the teachers can keep up with all of the stupid governmental paperwork. That's pathetic.

Wow! If we will all eat only fruits and vegetables, cancer will be wiped out! And if Rex Grossman had just had more time to throw, the Bears would have won!

These statements are similar to the statements above made by Steve and MDN. The problems in the educational arena are enourmously complex. Citing only one thing to change--bad teachers, the NEA, or anything else-- among the galaxy of problelms in education is ineffectual and does nothing to improve the system. Give me a plan that identifies most of the problem areas in our schools and how to improve them. Then I will listen.

As an example, please tell me how the teacher unions or bad teachers are responsible for the following real world educational situation and how banishing them will improve it.

The class is a group diagnosed by a M.D. and psychologist as ADHD. They read at a very low level due to their attention problems. However, the medication prescribed for them by the M.D. helps them to focus their attention and during their 3 rd and 4th grade years (with the same teacher) they gain in reading level to beginning 4th grade level--a remarkable achievement. The 5th grade year, with the same teacher, about half of the students are taken off of their medication by their parents (without consulting doctor, psychologist, or teacher) because their child "no longer needs it". At the end of the 5th grade year the half of the class on medication has progressed more than a grade level in reading. The half not on medication is reading at a mid-third grade level.

I await your simple solutions!

In my mind, we should double teacher salaries, fire three-quarters of the administrators, and repeal No Child Left Behind. Then the teachers' unions would no longer be relevant.

JOBS FOR PRESIDENT!

My wife used to be a State worker. So I'm all too familiar with how difficult it is to fire bad workers: next to impossible. That's not to say there aren't those really good, really hard working teachers out there. But their accomplishments get overshadowed by the horror stories. Like any job in civil service, there are slackers and you can't do a damn thing about them in the majority of cases. There was the case of an English teacher who accused a child of theft. When the parents came into school to hear the charges, the teacher said "I seen it. He done it!" Once again, this was an ENGLISH teacher.

Unions protect workers from abuse by business. Unfortunately, unions also protect the incompetent. The whole union thing is broken.

I think Steve is getting ready to die. He's clearing the air.

It's not just bureaucratic unionisation that's the problem—it's also a trend away from a liberal arts education and a focus on the non-creative wrote learning for standardised testing. The whole problem is the emphasis on the learning and memorisation of facts to show benefits for such things as the No Child Left Behind act. These things stifle the liberal arts view of education—where the learning is combined with play, acting, arts, music, and other such creative endeavours. It's training a nation of engineers and scientists without the ability to think critically and criticise problems very like this.

AMEN, STEVE JOBS!!

STEVE JOBS FOR PRESIDENT!!!

WHO'S VOTE DO I HAVE FOR STEVE JOBS FOR PRESIDENT?!

As a teacher, I have to say that teacher unionization is WAY down on list of things f'ing up our schools. There are some bad teachers, but it is a broken system that is the main problem and prevents many teachers from doing better. Low budgets, school over-crowding, large class sizes, run down facilities, poor texts, lack of parent and community support, the undermining of teacher authority by the constant depiction of teachers as incompetent or 'the enemy' in popular culture, the meddling of corporate types and politicians who talk out their asses about education and accountability when they have no clue what they are talking about. We have a shorter school day and school year than much of the industrialized world, and there isn't an emphasis on the importance of education that there once was (school isn't cool). Where there used to be the idea that you got out of the ghetto through academic achievement, now it is the hoop dream of becoming a basketball star or rapper that kids aspire to.

The politics of school "accountability" has recently created an incredible number of hoops that schools have to jump through but it does little to nothing to actually improve the education of students. We live under a fiction that standardized testing is the sole measurement of a students education. Arts and trades have been cut from many school curriculums because we are so focused on "the academic core." We have forgotten that many people have aptitudes and interests that will take them far afield of that realm, and which society needs. If cultivated, those skills and talents can actually have a positive feed-back on academics.

Now as for this nonsense about principals having the power to fire any teacher they want on a whim: Bad principals are just as big an issue as bad teachers. You would end up with bad principals firing a lot of good teachers because of petty politics. The truth is, when there really is a bad teacher, there is a course of action a principal can take to get rid of them.

Want more and better teaching candidates? Make the credentialing process more rigorous but reward those who become teachers with higher pay. If you want the best and brightest, make it worth their while... otherwise they will go into medicine or law or business management or some other higher paying profession. If you have more teaching candidates to choose from, you can get rid of the ones who are bad before they can become credentialed or tenured.

The truth is, teachers are on the front lines of a constant uphill battle and are an easy scapegoat for politicians and business people. Jobs piling on doesn't help, it directs attention away from where the more urgent educational issues are.

The problem isn't getting rid of bad teachers, it's attracting good ones.

Well one step is to allow parents and teachers to DISCIPLINE kids again.

Today's public classrooms are anarchy. Who the hell wants to work there??

Now, I'm not talking about bringing back the Bad Old Days of raw physical assault. But there has, HAS to be a way to drive home respect and keep kids in line.

Always Wrong strikes again. You are truly pathetic.

One piece of the educational "system" that is hardly ever addressed is the part that parents play. Please voluteer or substitute in your local school and take a close look at what educators do every day. You will be shocked at what you learn.

This is not to say there are not inept teachers. But there are many inept, even evil parents. There are many students whose lives have been completely sabotaged by their parents. The number of sad, terrible, horrific stories that students bring to school every day, and that their teachers try to address, is astounding. The fact that parents are not even required to be a part of their children's education is a sad commentary indeed.

The entire public education system is out of wack including the teachers. Parents are to blame as well as they have become increasingly disinterested in their child's welfare at school. The teacher's union is a bloated shell of its former self. High School should be run like college. Students should dictate their areas of study with the basics as well. What if I wanted to learn film in high school. My only option of film production was a stupid high school news. High School should be treated as college prep. US History and government should be taught as freshmen and seniors. An educated population makes for a democratic population.

you guys have no clue whats going on. ask the rockefeller family. maybe google can help.

I agree that unions have a lot of positive attributes.

I also agree that unions sometimes go too far.

Everything in life is a balance.

I remember watching a tv show about the teachers union in new york. The school was trying to fire a teacher who was exchanging sexual explict e-mails. But the unions were protecting the teacher. When you cry wolf too often, people will stop taking you seriously.