The Courage to Speak Out
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In a recent appearance, Apple’s Steven Jobs showed the guts, severely lacking in Hudson area businesses and Republican Party officials, to candidly take on the teachers union and the lack of education quality; even though a good part of Apple’s customer base are teachers and schools. As has been stated here before, a union is a union regardless the industry or service it is in. The legacy of unions has now been written in decimated industries from the airlines, automotive, mining, and now education. Wherever unions have been allowed to dominate, the labor costs have skyrocketed past the point of competitiveness and product quality seriously lacks compared to its non-union counterparts.
Today in education, our government, unionized schools costs in excess of $10,000 per student, Washington D.C. schools are $15,000 per student, and achievement scores in math and science are at the bottom in international comparisons. But why would we expect anything different when you combine government and unions.
In this context, Jobs’ candid statements nearly had it right. It isn’t just the unions; it is and always has been the system of government-run education and the lack of economic competition. And until we allow meaningful economic school choice for parents [like the state of Utah] nothing will change.
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