SHUT UP STEVE JOBS

You may have read the article about Steve Jobs where he criticized teachers' unions for the poor results of America's students.

Again... what right do businessmen have sticking their noses in issues of education? You've perhaps already heard my view on businesses meddling with education... In a word, they need to keep their mouths shut. Just because you run your company like a fascist dictator (A Wired editorial likened Jobs' reign to that of Mussolini...)

This same editorial points out that:

"In California, the most pressing problems are schools that are too big, too bureaucratic and chronically under-funded. Teachers are criminally low paid and under-trained. Education -- and school funding -- has become solely about test scores."

That about sums it up in any large city. The bureaucracy is too big to manage, especially in New York, especially in the Bronx... especially in my building. There is too much to manage efficiently - but poor teachers are not the problem at all, in fact, the teachers in my building are far from it. Granted there are a few here and there, after all, there are, for example, 25 English teachers alone... our faculty is huge... but the vast majority of teachers are extremely dedicated.

What's sadder is they are talking about consolidating even in Maine... by firing the nearly 200 local school superintendents and hiring back one tenth of them, each to oversee nearly 10 districts. That would be a Herculean task... and one step on the way to the mess that New York City is.

Schools are NOT businesses and should not be considered as such. Schools are supposed to be removed from the "market."

In my junior classes we are reading Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. In the book, Mr. Washington explains how a good number of freed blacks after the Civil War became either "preachers or teachers" because they felt the work was "easy." He recalls one young person:

"I remember there came into our neighbourhood one of this class, who was in search of a school to teach, and the question arose while he was there as to the shape of the earth and how he would teach the children concerning this subject. He explained his position in the matter by saying that he was prepared to teach that the earth was either flat or round, according to the preference of a majority of his patrons."

Why does this sound like he was conducting his lessons like a business? He was appealing to the masses... and it was wrong 100 years ago in Booker T. Washington's eyes, and it is still wrong today.