Steve Jobs and Rush Limbaugh Agree?

RUSH: In Austin, Texas, last week, ?Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions Friday, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers.? Now, he said this no doubt in response to the school districts and the teachers, a whole bunch of people are crying and moaning to computer companies, ?Give us computers! Give us computers so our students can learn!? Jobs is in the business of selling computers, and iPhones and iPods and whatever else they’re going to invent there, and he basically stood up and told them, (paraphrasing) ?Look it, you can put all the computers in the world there, but if you got rotten teachers it isn’t going to matter.? He compared skrools to businesses with principals serving as CEOs. “?What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good?? he asked to loud applause during an education reform conference.?
Yeah, what kind of person indeed could you get to run a small business if you told that person, ?You’re stuck with all the incompetence that surrounds you here and you can’t do anything about it?? Well, there is a kind of person you could get for that, a socialist liberal Democrat would probably take the job. As Jobs said, ??Not really great ones because if you’re really smart you go, ?I can’t win.’?? In a rare joint appearance, Jobs shared the stage with competitor Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Inc. Both spoke to the gathering about the potential for bringing technological advances to classrooms. ?I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way,? Jobs said. ?This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.? At various pauses, the audience applauded enthusiastically. Dell sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap. ?Apple just lost some business in this state, I’m sure,? Jobs said. ? Earlier in the panel discussion, Jobs told the crowd about his vision for textbook-free schools in the future. Textbooks would be replaced with a free, online information source that was constantly updated by experts, much like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.?

Now, about textbooks, one thing, just a little aside here. I got a note from a listener, a college student, taking a philosophy of something or other class with a 600-page textbook. On page 464, I am cited as a glaring example of something or other in this textbook. I forget what it was about but this was obviously a new textbook. Point is that textbooks today are written by ideologues, they’re written by leftist activists, as you well know because they’re bought by leftist activists in the academic professorial ranks, and so Jobs’ idea is to open it up here to a number of online sources. The bottom line here is when he says, ?I believe what’s wrong with our schools in this nation is that they’ve become unionized in the worst possible way,? conservatives and just plain people with any common sense have been saying this for decades, but could they get put into the headlines of a story? No. Only if you’re a big lib, only if you’re a big Democrat, do you get applauded for this kind of talk.
I am happy and proud to be on the same page with Steve Jobs. The way to put it is, I’m happy and proud he’s on the same page with me. If he finds out I agree with him, he might change his mind. But I mean this is classic. This is an AP story. Do you know how many average, ordinary American people have been saying this? Do you know how many political candidates on the Republican side have been saying this, and when they say it, they get tarred and feathered and the NEA comes after ’em? Jobs says it, ?Wow, why, we must really think about this. Why, there might be something here that we haven’t considered before,? blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.