This article surprises me...Jobs and DELL on the same stage

[samintx]

I didn't know Jobs spoke out on such things and also appearing with DELL surprised me

[stephen]

Wow... even if he thinks that - that wasn't exactly the smartest thing for Jobs to say. For his sake, I hope it doesn't get too much publicity.

But it probably will.

[spearmint]

Being against teacher unions and having the guts to say it makes him a real leader. Here in California they want more money and reject stiffer rules for certication.Mean while education slipping down the toliet. Well paid teachers too. Two years of bad performance get you extra training and finally seven years of bad performance gets you fired.

[samintx]

Here in Texas the teachers sign up for minimal janitor duty and get full SS benefits. Not fair to other social security payers.

[Panopticon]

already noted on the FPR side: http://forums.macresource.com/read/2/250643

[OWC Jamie]

Both are probably quite concerned with the mindless drones requesting interviews for employment.

[MGS_forgot_password]

My mom is a teacher in Texas and she also hates the NEA.

[microchip13]

The comparing Businesses and schools statement that Steve made I find to be true, yet on a district wide scope with my School District.

[Silencio]

Even more surprising is Dell's sticking up for the unions.

Of course, neither of them said that there's plenty of blame to go around on all sides of the fence for the current sorry state in U.S. education. I'd say district administrators and state and federal governments bear even more responsibility than teachers and the NEA. Those who control the purse strings are the ones driving this bus.

Jobs made a crack about how his comments about teachers probably lost Apple some business in Texas, but it's not like teachers and the NEA make the computer purchasing decisions. Maybe the bigwigs in the district offices liked what he had to say and would be inclined to buy more Macs now.

Jobs may have been historically tarred as a touchy-feely liberal, but he's mostly a classic SiliValley libertarian as far as I can tell. If Ayn Rand were still around, she'd have a wealth of material from Jobs to draw on for The Fountainhead II.

[deckeda]

[quote Silencio] ... Of course, neither of them said that there's plenty of blame to go around on all sides of the fence for the current sorry state in U.S. education. ...
And blaming "bad performing teachers" for poor education is like complaining about the bank tellers for how the bank is run. The front-line folks are NEVER in charge of the overall outcome. It's short-sightedness to the nth degree.

My position is, I'm not really pro- or anti-union (if anything, I lean more to the right on the topic of unions in general) but rather, that they are largely irrelevant to the discussion of quality education, for the same reasons that auto unions don't have much influence in the outcome of how well cars are designed or put together.

Remember back in the '80s when it seemed "everyone" thought that the reason U.S. cars were junk was because of line workers, and by extension, their unions? It's called picking on a easy target instead of the alternatives.