Apple CEO lambasts teacher unions

[The Straight Story]

Apple CEO lambasts teacher unions
APRIL CASTRO
Associated Press

AUSTIN - 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.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/16717129.htm

[originalpckelly]

1. Isn't he under investigation in the massive backdating scandal?

:shrug:

[frankenforpres]

45. ad hominem straight away?

surely DU is better than this.

Ad hominem as logical fallacy

A (fallacious) ad hominem argument has the basic form:

Person A makes claim X
There is something objectionable about Person A
Therefore claim X is false

Ad hominem is one of the best known of the logical fallacies usually enumerated in introductory logic and critical thinking textbooks. Both the fallacy itself, and accusations of having committed it, are often brandished in actual discourse (see also Argument from fallacy). As a technique of rhetoric, it is powerful and used often, despite its inherent incorrectness, because of the natural inclination of the human brain to recognize patterns.

[mdmc]

2. are teachers really that bad?

:shrug:

[sakabatou]

4. Believe me, some really are

>_<

[originalpckelly]

9. I agree, there are bad teachers...

there was this one bad math teacher I knew, should've been fired. Never was, however.

[sakabatou]

13. 2 English teachers

One retired and one still teaches.

[roody]

15. The worst teachers let their kids have lots

of free time on the computer. Or they pop in a video. Technology is a bad teacher's best friend.

[proud2BlibKansan]

39. Very true!

LOL

[Solo_in_MD]

19. Yes, but the real issue is that they are protected and not removed by the union

[roody]

32. The union is not their employer. The school district is.

An administrator can get rid of a bad teacher. The admins are too busy and it is a lot of work to document a teacher's mistakes. A parent complained to my principal that she did not see any positive vibes one day when she came in for one half hour. The parent had forgotten to talk to me about her complaint.

I said to my principal, "Please come and observe me." She laughed and said, "I don't have time for that." Well who is responsible for this??? Not the union. I am an excellent teacher and am positive as well.

[proud2BlibKansan]

40. They don't work for the union!!

They are hired and employed by the school district. In my district, they have 5 years before granting tenure. FIVE YEARS to fire a teacher who is really that bad. You wanna know how often the district actually fires the bad ones?? Yet you blame the union. Sheesh

[proud2BlibKansan]

38. A very small minority

just like in any other profession. There are bad doctors and accountants and lawyers too. I wonder if Jobs is concerned about them too.

[walldude]

57. Not only is it a very small minority but replacements are

not easy to come by. Maybe if teachers were paid a decent salary more people would be attracted to that profession. I know this, $27,000 a year isn't much for people who have to deal with a classroom full of kids every day.

[proud2BlibKansan]

62. And they rarely do much to help a poor teacher

Many of them can improve with mentoring and good administrators willing to provide the professional development they need. But often, these poor teachers are left to drown alone. It is really sad, especially for the kids.

[Canuckistanian]

70. Exactly. Those kinds of salaries don't draw the best and the brightest.

If the "common wisdom" for increasing politician's salaries is that you can't get good talent for a small salary, then why does this not work for teachers?

It's hard work AND you have to suffer from RW trash like this all the time.

Apart from social workers, being a teacher is the lowest paying profession that requires a college degree.

[trotsky]

3. Ooh, there's gonna be some Mac fanboi heads exploding.

Jobs & Dell hand-in-hand, bashing teachers.

I thought only Bill Gates was THAT evil.

[Igel]

24. Not bashing teachers.

Bashing the structures that allow bad teachers to keep on teaching by defending them.

I have to at least partially agree. Bad teachers should be fired; how to ensure that teachers that are fired are only those that are bad at teaching is the question. It's not just a problem in public schools: university tenure also rewards professors that are bad and which should be fired, but the risk of having faculty fired simply because they're unwanted or undesirable on other grounds is a problem.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

I am very torn on this matter. On one hand, I am very pro union, yet on the

other, I have seen (and known personally) teachers taking terrible advantage of tenure. The children suffer from this.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

5. Hey Jobs . . . nobody asked you, dickweed!

:argh:

[Downtown Hound]

6. Oh shut up Steve

I love Macs and most of the products you put out, but give it a rest.

[Deja Q]

7. He's just whining because schools aren't all suckering into his product any more...

Like they were during the Apple II days...

Strange he'd team up with Dell, the other big-name Intel PC vendor, but maybe that's so Steve can learn how to better run recycling programs...

http://www.badapple.biz

And they have a point: Bad teachers should be fired.

Bad teachers trying to trip ones down should be fired less gracefully.

Bad students should be made to enlist.

Define a bad student.

Define a bad teacher.

Define bad parenting while we're at it.

Any leeway for people to get themselves into order? Or is it all going to be magical guesswork?

Sheesh. Like Oprah, Steve is a real piece.

How about some real solutions to go along with what we already know: There are big-ass problems out there.

[proud2BlibKansan]

41. You nailed it

Yes, I think this is more about his desire to monopolize classrooms with his products.

[JVS]

8. hey jobs, think different asshole

[Deja Q]

18. Much like thinking in general, he dropped that slogan ages ago.

[roody]

10. One of our kids' biggest problems is that

instead of spending hours and hours reading books or playing actively outdoors or imaginatively indoors, they are addicted to video games. I am a teacher in need of buying a new computer; my ibook is 5.5 years old. I will email Jobs and assure him I will be switching to a company (PC is my only alternative) that supports union labor. P.S. Is there such a thing?

[JVS]

14. google gives this

http://www.unionbuiltpc.com/aboutus.php

[roody]

22. Thank you. Love your sig line.

[JVS]

50. thanks

[Deja Q]

28. Or home-build...

I don't know of any that have unions. Most PC makers slop whatever together and sell it, with a flimsy warranty.

A DIY job is the same thing and one can get more power for less money.

The big factor is the hard drive and the ones not devoted to video editing do live a healthy 3+ years.

[blogslut]

55. Here's another possibility

Ubuntu

http://www.ubuntu.com/

[trixie]

11. See nonunion people are incorrect

I am a supervisor and a member of UAW and we do get rid of bad workers. The UAW position is that they only want ethical and hard working people using their organization.

[Deja Q]

16. My union helped save a guy who deserved to be fired...

However, it is also true mistakes are inevitable - they are only human.

[Solo_in_MD]

21. The teachers unions I am familiar with/member of do not follow your position

to the detriment of the profession and the students.

[proud2BlibKansan]

43. The ones I have belonged to can't do much to prevent firing bad teachers

If the district follows the rules and connects all the dots, they have no problem firing bad teachers. The process is even regulated by laws in my state.

But in my district, administration rarely follows the procedures and doesn't get rid of the bad apples. Years ago, when I was a rookie, the president of our union told me that if the principals actually read our contract, they would see how easy it is to actually fire an incompetent teacher. But most of them fail to file the correct paperwork. Nearly 30 years later, that is still very true.

[roody]

48. I am in my ninth year of grade school teaching.

It is EXTREMELY rare that an administrator even walks through the room to say hello.

[proud2BlibKansan]

61. Count your blessings!

The good ones give us room to do our jobs. The bad ones hover and nit pick.

[Hardrada]

12. Workers form unions to be safe from arbitrary firing (as used to

be the case). Teachers, police, all sorts of civil servants, nurses. It's just a fact of life, Mr. Jobs. Get used to it.

[patrice]

17. Mr. Jobs, that's opinion until you come up with empirical evidence otherwise.

If Unions protect bad teachers, we should know, but saying it doesn't make it so. We need to see a wide spectrum of empirical research.

BTW: What makes any given teacher "good" or "bad" is at least partly related to the parenting involved. I'll consider some method of evaluating and judging teachers when that includes an assessment of the parenting too.

Many kids are so screwed up, to all intents and purposes, in the average scheme of things, they can't be "taught" and teachers are blamed.

Or if they aren't screwed up, they're tired from working to pay for cars and the prom and parents justify that with BS about the kid learning fiscal lessons; or over-extended with all kinds of activities that are supposed to make them attractive to the "right" college (apparently no one can get an education at a decent state university anymore :sarcasm: - I think this one has more to do with keeping up with the jonses than anything else); or their social lives are out of balance, because mom and dad are ignoring them or living their own lives again through their kids; or . . . .

[madrchsod]

20. what an asshat

not everyone in the world is as smart as stevie.. he should worry about how bad billy boy is fucking him over and leave us mere mortals alone

[Irreverend IX]

23. There are bigger problems than a few bad apple teachers...

Chronic underfunding of schools and the NCLB stupidity, to name two big ones. There are some abuses of tenure in the school system, but in my experience they're the exception to the rule.

[patrice]

29. That would be my guess.

Yes, bad teachers are out there (I can think of some I have met who, apparently, became teachers to recruit for their churches), but they are the exception, not the rule. If the research were done, I'd bet you couldn't corelate tthe totality of failed education with number of bad teachers.

[Little Wing]

25. Make teaching a job where you earn enough money to save instead

of just enough to live, and you might attract more talent.

Amazing concept!

[Deja Q]

27. Who wants talent anymore? or skilled workers?

All people want are low-cost, no-skilled-laborers-required "solutions" that end up not being low cost and solve precious little.

[patrice]

30. Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" says something similar to this.

We have internalized the oppressor and our educational institutions reflect that. We don't WANT our kids to go outside the mainstream.

[jakem]

64. There are plenty of school systems-

where tenured teachers make 50K plus per year, and entry level teachers who would bring energy and new ideas to the school system can't get hired for a 20K / year job.

The problem he is pointing out is not that of lack of retention, but perhaps of too much.

[Clark2008]

26. And if our students DID have better teachers and DID learn

more - what difference would it make? They still couldn't find decent jobs. Dell would still outsource all the good-paying jobs to India.

:grr:

[patrice]

31. And inside cliques would still control the jobs that remain. n/t

[Deja Q]

33. Well, on the plus side the Baby Boomers will retire and we will take their jobs.

Or so the theory goes.

[Deja Q]

34. As Republicans tell people often enough: Money is an incentive.

Then they bitch and gripe and whine and find scapegoats...

Petty.

[Ellipsis]

35. Steve's Reality Distortion field strikes again.

My experience would be more along the lines of teachers firing bad principles. Teachers within a school or district know on large who the "bad" teachers are. A lot of good teachers have been eaten, demoralized, and whipped into complacency by a "don't rock the boat.. shut up and take your pay check" administration. Part of todays issues may well be the fact that it's difficult to fire a teacher. More so the education model is still based on assumed concepts taken from the industrial revolution. "Giant factory schools" bogus student to teacher ratios. The education system need to be redesigned form the ground up.

Technology is not a substitution for a good curriculum. Technology will not resolve a superintendents poor or biased decisions. A computer is just a pencil with buttons. In this society we embrace computers every day. A four year old has an innate appreciation on how to use a GUI (graphic user interface.) If Steve had been a teacher, his company would not have burned millions of dollars acquiring some education solutions which never saw the light of day. The intimacies of education he knows from a highly sanatized perspective, with his own children... and what his minions regurgitate to him and typically thats to benefit marketing. I don't think he gets to the south side of Chicago much.

He is a brilliant man without a doubt, and he's entitled to his opinion... but sometimes he's just another salesman pitching a product, give him little credence.

Computers DO NOT drive education. Communities do. It's the community that needs to step up to the plate. When they do the results are obvious.

[LWolf]

36. And to think I was considering a Mac.

Not now, not ever.

What's "wrong with our schools in this nation," Mr. Jobs, is what's wrong with the rest of the country. Underfunding, dysfunctional micromanagement, and political scapegoating, to start with.

Deliberate perpetuation of an underclass in society as a whole, and using public ed as a means to social conditioning and control, to go on with.

Mr. Jobs, there is a worm in your apple. Whether it be the worm of ignorance or the worm of corruption, your apple belongs on the road behind my horse, not on my desk.

[proud2BlibKansan]

37. This is not the first time Jobs has said this

Personally, I think he is bitter that he wasn't able to keep PCs out of schools and blames the teachers unions.

He is an odd duck. I heard him speak years ago (at a national teachers conference - surprise!) and he wasn't very impressive.

[Trillo]

42. Will Teachers be able to fire Bad Administrators?

At first thought, the question seems absurd, but I assure you I'm quite serious.

[proud2BlibKansan]

44. I so hear you

That really is a much larger problem. In nearly 30 years, and somewhere around 10 principals, TWO were worth a shit. The rest either sat in their office all day or snuck around spying on the teachers while ignoring the kids. They talk to us like we are 10 years old. I got reprimanded one time for telling a principal that my mother was doing a fine job and didn't need any help.

But my favorite bad principal story is the one who wrote me up for having school stationery on my desk. Yes, to this day, there is a letter in my official file that says my principal found a piece of school stationery on my desk. That one still boggles my mind.

[donco6]

51. Beat me to it. And I'm an administrator.

Look folks, I have seen some horrendously shitty principals in my day. Some were downright evil. Some were just certifiable - they didn't even make it through the year. And we think the problem is laid all upon teachers?

Yeah, I've seen some bad teachers, too. But in general a bad teacher might mess up 30 kids - a bad principal can mess up 400 or more.

[B Calm]

58. There are a lot of Dysfunctional Administrators that go unnoticed!

Everybody is too busy looking at the teachers.

[ulysses]

66. DINGDINGDINGDING!

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Fierce]

46. I'd love a contract with a no-fire cause!

Show me one, PLEASE!

[B Calm]

49. There's no such thing. This crap is put out by cheap labor cons

who want us to be afraid of unions. They hate unions with a passion. They know when people get fed up with low wages and being "over a barrel" they unionize! When labor sticks together, wages go up!

[Fierce]

60. I was being sarcastic.

I was making fun of the "teachers can't be fired!" canard.

[B Calm]

74. and I was agreeing with you.... Guess I should have been more clearer

[LostInAnomie]

47. I'll never understand why teachers are such a popular group to pile on.

One of the highest educated/lowest paid groups of professionals that are literally the key to continuing our civilization, and they get treated like shit by both political parties, and countless other groups.

It will never make sense to me.

[Sabriel]

52. Here's one definition of a "bad" teacher:

A person who thinks the curricular restrictions instituted by NCLB are total crap and who goes out of the way to use stimulating, divergent-thinking activities to challenge students but not meet a specific standard.

Bad teacher! No pay raise!

[Rex]

53. Well ya know what? This IBM/PC guy now works on all Macs.

And I gotta say, I like OS X. Very nice. 8.6, not so good. The G5 ain't bad, easy to use. I am back home typing on XP and I really don't see a lot of differences. Granted the Mac seems to have a lot of shutdown issues. Still, I'm impressed by what I see so far.

Now.

I was one of those teachers that tried to bring technology into the classroom. 18 years behind most schools, yet the kids own the best technology out there. Most teachers don't know how to use new technology. I had to force my parents back in the 90s to let me build them a PC. Now they can't live without the internet. Education and technology go hand in hand. Some people just can't work well with them.

The problem is some people think they can walk through a school and become knowledgeable people on education. Sad, but true. Then they make stupid claims or they devote millions of dollars without even understanding the problem.

Unions have nothing to do with the problems in public schools. Rich morans should look up the pole at the rich assholes who write policy and enforce impossible standards like NCLB. Stupid people should never write laws. Smart rich people should stop supporting people they know are hurting the poor.

[last_texas_dem]

54. Sounds like an ass

He's speaking the kind of rhetoric that you usually hear from right-wing nutbags in Congress; I thought Jobs was supposed to be some sort of "liberal." (Not that I really cared enough to look into it that much.) Jobs sounds like one of those dudes who thinks the schools would all be improved if they were run "like businesses." Well, his kind of people have been pushing through those policies for the last couple of decades and what do we have to show for it? Standardized testing and the other requirements of NCLB sure don't seem to have made much of an improvement.

Oh yeah, and his particular analogy didn't make much sense anyway. I think a more accurate comparison would be "quality" of principal to "quality" of student. One of the legacies of NCLB is that teachers, administration, etc. are all judged by how well the students score on those stupid tests. So I'm sure it's harder to find "quality" administrators lining up to be principals of schools where, no matter how good of a job they do, they're going to have an uphill battle getting their students to score in the same range as students at other schools who come from totally different circumstances.

Jobs should have tried to be truly "revolutionary" and suggested that the schools be able to fire students rather than teachers. (ON EDIT: I'm being sarcastic here, but honestly I think this proposal makes as much sense as what he said.) I have no doubt you'd be able to get the highest "quality" of principals at the public schools if you'd just let them pick the students they have to deal with. After all, isn't that why private schools are supposedly so effective? Instead he just sounds like a typical pandering, union-hating businessman, sucking up to the people he thinks count and bashing at convenient targets. I'd like to hear Jobs and the other teachers' union bashers answer this one: if the problem is with the union doing its job and trying to protect the teachers' jobs, why is it that states with weak teachers' unions like Texas and many other Southern states, are considered to have some of the lower-performing, worst schools in the country?

[walldude]

56. Oh fuck him... I'd like to see how long he lasts

in a classroom with 30 third graders. When is the last time he was actually in a public school? What makes him an expert? I tell you this, he is an expert at dumbing things down so much that a fucking monkey could use them. That's really helpful.

[eppur_se_muova]

59. Want to get rid of bad teachers? Increase the supply of good teachers.

And you do that by offering DECENT SALARIES.

I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become IMPOVERISHED in the worst possible way.

[jazzjunkysue]

72. Amen. n/t.

[jakem]

63. He is not off base at all.

Of course it is a sound bite and necessarily lacking in detail, solutions, and subtlety, but...

My wife is a teacher (elementary) here in Western Massachusetts. We moved to MA in part because of a perceived committment to education, and a publicized teacher shortage. Wrong. We moved here after she finished a very highly regarded teacher education program, and had begun her master's degree in education. In the Boston area, she sent out 200+ resumes per year, and was only ever hired as a special needs tutor (a 'paraprofessional' position without much in the way of pay or benefits, or tenure). This while the city of Boston was paying California college graduated a $20,000 signing bonus to address the 'teacher shortage.' They were not trained teachers and had a terrible retention rate.

In western MA where we live now, she has been hired and layed off each year of the last 5 in a different position and a different school. The layoffs happen yearly as the budget is in perpetual chaos. Everyone without tenure gets fired every spring. If you are lucky you are hired again in late summer, leaving a few weeks for planning the classroom. Classroom supplies are often out of pocket. The school's often ruyn out of paper halfway through the year.

Meanwhile, there are countless tenured teachers who freely admit they are only waiting for their benefits to max out. Teachers who are slacking through the year, who are not interested in technology, in new ideas about education, in teaching. I don't blame them entirely, they lost some of their retirement savings under the Bush economy. But they are done as educators.

The system is broken. Local schools are being closed and consilidated. Good, new, and energetic teachers leave the system in frustration.

Jobs may not have the anwers. But the problem is not to be dismissed so easily. How much do you know about your local public school?!

[AnotherMother4Peace]

67. You paint a bleak picture of this school system through straw men ("countless

tenured teachers...") & anecdotal events ("school's often ruyn out of paper..."). You add a personal "skin in the game" note with your wife being laid off every year for the last 5 years. After reading your post, I need to suggest that you & and your wife look at your approach and attitude to teaching.

I find that tenured, experienced teachers are the go-to people on campus. They are the ones that know how children learn, and how to facilitate that learning process. These are the teachers that are higher on the pay scale, and the ones the district/principals would like to get rid of to save money. The unions are responsible for preventing this.

I also find that good teachers will be hired, especially good entry level teachers.

[jakem]

69. I am not saying all tenured teachers are a problem..

but if education reform is desired, then holding on to burnt out educators and making the entry threshold prohibitive for new trained teachers is not the way to go about it.

I am NOT encouraging dumping teachers because they are experienced and on a higher pay scale, nor am I anti-union.

But the system as it stands is not encouraging good teaching practices. In reality, there is little review of tenured teachers in regard to their attitude and ability as teachers. Technology is poorly implemented and poorly understood. The kids are not being done many favors by the establishment.

My wife has been teaching now for 10 years in various local school systems. This is (as I suspect you might not disagree on this point) an underpaid, overworked position for the most part.

Which part was the bad attitude? She continues to try to work within a bad system for the sake of educating kids who are generally not well served.

If you want to tell me your school system is different, fine. But please don't dismiss our very real encounters with education in our community.

[AnotherMother4Peace]

65. The unions have helped expose the inadequacies of "no child left behind"

Mandated, unfunded requirements and unfair protocol used to assess children with disabilities and foreign speakers are two the come to mind. Teachers hands are so very tied when it comes to what and how to teach. Bush asked Congress "What's wrong with teaching to the test?" & quite frankly that's what many school districts/principals are doing.

Steve Jobs should start with analyzing the elements and funding of "No Child Left Behind"

His rhetoric sounds like attempts at union busting.

[ulysses]

68. let's see...

there aren't enough good teachers as it is, so we're going to attract more high-quality applicants by...

...

...


wait for it...

...

...

attacking the groups that work for teacher job protections. Yup.

Brilliant!

[jazzjunkysue]

71. Schools do remove bad teachers. This is a non-issue. Please read.

1. I am a unionized public school teacher.
2. I also hold administrative certification, so I get the entire system from the inside.
3. Schools have 3 years to remove teachers without reason. That's before the tenure kicks in.
4. Even after tenure, if a school can make a case for incompetence or insubordination, illegal behavior or inappropriate behavior, teachers can be fired.
5. Short of that, teachers can be re-assigned to make them so unhappy that they will voluntarily resign.

The thing is, you absolutely cannot run schools without tenure because,

1. Without job protection, everyone gets an A, no one learns a thing, and the kids run the school. Don't even try to argue against that. Period. We can only fail kids because of tenure. We can only maintain control because of tenure. It's necessary when working with kids. Too bad. It is. Period.

2. Without tenure, every school board in america would pay us nothing, and you'd have to teachers left. Don't give me the song and dance about school boards rewarding good teachers. They'd have us fired after 5 years, maybe 10. They're paying taxes, and really don't care about good education. They will all want cheap education, and the majority of the country would be forced into private schools, where your kid can be thrown out if they bring behavior problems, learning problems, or just low teast scores. Sorry, but when the degree takes 6 years to get, and it does, you deserve more than just a few years of employment. Teacher training leaves you unprepared for anything else. And if you think public school is expensive, try paying for a private school that's half as good as a public in the same town. And remember, you pay by the child, not by the household. Public education is the #1 American perk and #1 American bargain. It's a luxury. A luxury people take for granted.

A teacher dedicates a lifetime to kids who want no part of learning. We should at least know we'll be able to buy a house and send our own kids to college.

I make no apologies for being a unionized teacher. Anyone who resents me can try my job at my payscale. I doubt if Steve Jobs would like to trade places with me: I'm in a 4 year old honda civic and a 50 year old 2 bedroom house. Let's see anyone who resents me trade places with me, and get their own 6-year certification. Let's just see that. Unless you're willing to do that, don't complain about public school teachers.

[AnotherMother4Peace]

73. Thank you for your service to our children. You have my admiration.

[jazzjunkysue]

75. It really is a pleasure and a privilege to work with other people's kids.

I love every day, and I will know when I retire, that I did more than make money for shareholders.

I know there are always some problems with the system and some lazy administrators who allow poor teachers to phone it in.

But the solution is most definitely not throwing out the unions or tenure.