October 7, 2011
Steve Jobs Advocates non-monolithic education
Smithsonian Oral History:
DM: But you do need a person.
SJ: You need a person. Especially with computers the way they are now. Computers are very reactive but they're not proactive; they are not agents, if you will. They are very reactive. What children need is something more proactive. They need a guide. They don't need an assistant. I think we have all the material in the world to solve this problem; it's just being deployed in other places. I've been a very strong believer in that what we need to do in education is to go to the full voucher system. I know this isn't what the interview was supposed to be about but it is what I care about a great deal.
DM: This question was meant to be at the end and we're just getting to it now.
SJ: One of the things I feel is that, right now, if you ask who are the customers of education, the customers of education are the society at large, the employers who hire people, things like that. But ultimately I think the customers are the parents. Not even the students but the parents. The problem that we have in this country is that the customers went away. The customers stopped paying attention to their schools, for the most part. What happened was that mothers started working and they didn't have time to spend at PTA meetings and watching their kids' school. Schools became much more institutionalized and parents spent less and less and less time involved in their kids' education. What happens when a customer goes away and a monopoly gets control, which is what happened in our country, is that the service level almost always goes down. I remember seeing a bumper sticker when the telephone company was all one. I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell Logo on it and it said "We don't care. We don't have to." And that's what a monopoly is. That's what IBM was in their day. And that's certainly what the public school system is. They don't have to care.
Let's go through some economics. The most expensive thing people buy in their lives is a house. The second most expensive thing is a car, usually, and an average car costs approximately twenty thousand dollars. And an average car lasts about eight years. Then you buy another one. Approximately two thousand dollars a year over an eight year period. Well, your child goes to school approximately eight years in K through 8. What does the State of California spent per pupil per year in a public school? About forty-four hundred dollars. Over twice as much as a car. It turns out that when you go to buy a car you have a lot of information available to you to make a choice and you have a lot of choices. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Nissan. They are advertising to you like crazy. I can't get through a day without seeing five car ads. And they seem to be able to make these cars efficiently enough that they can afford to take some of my money and advertise to other people. So that everybody knows about all these cars and they keep getting better and better because there's a lot of competition.
Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 7, 2011 4:35 AM
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I've just started reading Elizabeth Warren's book The Two-Income Trap, published in 2003. Warren, if you recall, was President Obama's choice to head the new consumer protection agency. I've skipped around a little so I only have garnered the gist of the issues she is discussing and her solutions, but nonetheless, I've found her position, in 2003, surprising. Of course, much has happened in the last 8 years, and there would be substantially more, and perhaps different data available, and given this, I have no idea what Warren's take on the issues and solutions would be today. With these important caveats, here is my understanding thus far.
Her concern is understanding why the middle-class is in such financial straits.
She first dispenses with the legend that the middle class is in trouble because of profligate spending. Data shows, she says, that it's not Gucci, and Nike and gourmet meals and unneeded and expensive toys -- the percentage of income devoted to such categories is significantly lower than in years past.
No, the reason is housing costs. But there is more. The data shows that it is not housing costs for everyone, but only housings costs for families with children. The middle class without children are (in 2003) not seeing spirally increasing housing costs (it's about 2% per year after inflation adjustment), but 3 or 4 times that amount for families with children. It's not be because the houses are bigger for families with children either.
Why is this occurring? The data shows that families with children are driving up the cost for housing which are near good schools and in neighborhoods that are safe.
One of her recommendations is a fully funded voucher program and family choice where to send children to school.
That is as far as I've got, so far. But it's an interesting, if somewhat surprising, position. It bares understanding and updating in the current climate.
