Opportunity Knocks

Steve Jobs recently criticized the American education system along with Michael Dell. Sure, why not? Education is easy to take pot-shots at. He basically said education wouldn't get better unless we could fire bad teachers.

The problem is that this is utterly subjective. What if there's a teacher that's way too easy? Fire him/her for being too easy? Or what about too tough? Besides, that's not the point. The point is that we're not exactly (I imagine, anyway) awash with too many good teachers, mixed with bad teachers who are taking valuable spots.

Indeed, most schools are looking for someone--anyone--qualified. When a teacher's salary can be half that of a software engineer, can you imagine why computer science majors laugh at the idea of teaching for a living? Of course, given the bureaucracy of public school teaching, innovative teaching may not be encouraged.

Apple, for example, succeeds because they promote themselves very well, and make it desirable for the best talent to work at Apple. But because companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft hoard the best talent, the vast majority of software firms do with average coders who wouldn't even be given a chance (i.e., they'd be fired) at these mega-companies.

And the student-teacher ratio can be abysmal, making it hard for teachers to give individual attention to students. And let's face it, some students don't live in the best households. They live with abusive parents or neglectful parents that don't stress the importance of education. Teachers aren't also social workers, but perhaps to do their jobs, they need to talk to parents who may not be receptive to being told that they don't care about education.

I understand that Steve Jobs and Michael Dell are passionate about education because if the average American can be better educated, Jobs and Dell have a better chance of getting highly skilled workers. But to peg it down to being unable to fire "bad" teachers? It's arguable that it's easier to make the tech breakthroughs that Apple does than to encourage kids to learn. And there are far more teachers than Apple employees, which means that most teachers do lack a deep insight into the problem they have.

The fact is, it's just easier to fire teachers than to fire parents for not living up to their parental role of making sure their kids get the best education they can, and to support it.

We do have a problem with education, but the answer isn't simply firing bad teachers.