>An Apple for the Teacher? Perhaps, But Not for Teacher Unions
The Huffington Post now reports that Steve Jobs was quite harsh with Barack Obama when the two met last year in San Francisco. “You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” Jobs bluntly warned the nation’s chief executive.
The story comes from Walter Isaacson’s forthcoming book on the revered Apple CEO, a copy of which the Huffington Post recently acquired. Other revelations include Jobs’ belief that Obama’s administration failed to understand or appreciate how private industry really works. Jobs “seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative,” according to the Huffington Post.
In his discussion with Obama, Jobs was gravely concerned over the state of the nation’s schools, which he felt were “crippled by union work rules.” He favored empowering principals with the authority to hire and fire based on merit, as well as longer school hours and a longer school year. Jobs said, however, these kinds of reforms would never materialize “until the teachers unions were broken.”
While these views might seem uncharacteristic of a man widely regarded as a liberal, education issues have increasingly united reform-minded individuals across the political spectrum (witness the rise of Democrats for Education Reform). And this wasn’t the first time Jobs endorsed bold measures in the realm of K-12 education.
In a 1995 interview with the Smithsonian Institution, Jobs fingered the unions as the #1 barrier to meaningful reform: “The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened.”
https://choicemedia.tv/2011/10/22/revealed-steve-jobs-on-education-reform/
