Teaching – some thoughts

Recently, Steve Jobs spoke on education and what’s wrong with it. Steve is quite a pontificator but in my observations, he over simplifies. I think he does this because at heart, he’s a marketing guy and it’s all about bullet points, key messages and sound bytes. In this instance, this over simplification is more than that.

I think the problems in education are many. I recently came across a post at Alfred Thompson’s (no relation) blog where he documents the problem in passionate and gory detail and still leaves it at the problem being bigger than he is describing.

In describing the problem at first, he starts out with:

Heaven save us from experts. They all seem to have one thing in common – they think that teachers are, if not the only problem, the largest problem with American education. By my reckoning there are several groups that are a much larger problem. They are:

* Government officials and the rules they lay down
* Parents and the lack of support they give education
* Students and their lack of willingness to do their part
* Voters for not supporting the needs of good education

Yes there is work that can be done to improve teaching and teachers (let’s start with schools of education by the way) and also school administrators. No question that there is room for improvement. But for the most part we are looking to fix large problems by fixing small things. Look at it like trying to fix a car by putting new tires on it while ignoring the fact that the engine is missing.

It is really worth reading the entire post if you are interested in the subject. I think he nailed this one.

Yes, there are problems with teachers, teacher unions, and administrators but there are bigger problems. The bigger problems are so darn scary though that everyone who comes into contact with this subject is just too darn afraid to come near them – I mean who wants to tell a parent that they need to actually be involved with their out of control kids or tell the voting population that we need to vote in tremendous tax increases to pay for the right monetary support of education? Those are death topics to politicians.

Yet, it is still the only way to get us out of the quagmire we are in.