Rush Limbaugh spoke about Apple CEO Steve Jobs take on U.S. public education and unions today with quotes from April Castro’s article for the Associated Press:
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.” 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.”
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.
Full transcript here.
Related articles:
Apple CEO blasts teacher unions, says US schools are ‘unionized in the worst possible way’ – February 16, 2007
Apple CEO Steve Jobs: ‘I’m going to just stay away from all that political stuff’ – August 25, 2004
Rush Limbaugh and Apple Computer to intro new podcast service via iTunes – March 08, 2006
Rush Limbaugh announces video podcasts for Apple iPod starting December 12th – November 30, 2005
Rush Limbaugh: ‘I am the hottest thing in podcasting’ – June 09, 2005
Rush Limbaugh and Apple Computer working to bring podcasts of radio show to iTunes Music Store – May 17, 2005
Rush Limbaugh says ‘Mac OS X Tiger Rocks,’ posts link to free Rush advertisement for Mac – April 30, 2005
The Hill: Put Rush Limbaugh on Apple’s board of directors; he could sell tons of Macs – January 26, 2005
Rush Limbaugh calls for Apple iCal to Sidekick solution – November 12, 2004
Rush Limbaugh: Why does Apple put politics first? – June 27, 2003
Rush Limbaugh comments on Gored Apple – March 21, 2003
“He compared skrools to businesses”
Does he also have “skrool” aged children?
“This is just getting embarrassing. Steve should just stick to what he’s good at; this political crap is so dumb.”
You are sooooooooo right. Caring about schools is embarrassing and dumb
“I love the site, but seeing that racist, draft-dodging, hate-spewing,”
Isn’t it sooo much easier to throw out hateful insults than to argue facts.
I didn’t realize that Limbaugh was a draft dodger or a racist. But if YOU say so, it must be true…..even if you don’t provide proof.
No one else is guaranteed a job if they suck. Why are teachers special?
It’s a tough job and they might need to be cycled out if they are burned out and incapable of handling the job anymore. It’s too important a job to have people in it that are not effective and have no passion for the job anymore.
I had lousy teachers and we learned very little from them. I recall going into my high school guidance counselor and demanding that never be put in a certain teachers class again (one or 2 who taught my major) because they were so ineffective it was a joke.
Rush and Steve Rule!
“I wonder when was the last time Steve or Rush spent extensive time in a school. You know, as a volunteer or as a parent of a student. Its pretty easy to make comments from a distance without any knowledge of what is really going on. Kinda of like us making comments on what is wrong with Apple’s upper management.”
How do you know they don’t? Apple and Jobs do a lot of business with schools, therefore he may have been in many schools. And as somebody attempting to peovide solutions to schools, I am confident that Apple has done extensive research into the school systems so they can understand the needs of that market.
As a parent that has volunteered in public schools and attended public schools, I can testify to the VAST discrepancies between schools and teachers. Some are great, some are awful.
That being said, there is also the tendencies to allow the kids too much control and the teachers too little control. Money is great…technology is great….small classes are great, but there are more important things. Good, high-quality teachers that can control a classroom trump all the other things, as do involved parents.
Personally, I would rather see more money given to teachers to help attract better teachers than more computers.
“Our country was founded on the presumption that ALL points of view are valid, as well as necessary.. if we are to keep our nation healthy ..”
That is completely incorrect. This country was founded because the settlers of the colonies were tired of being ruled from afar without representation.
Also, ALL points of view have never been considered valid. Roger Williams was removed from Massachusetts Bay Colony and nearly killed just because he disagreed with the leadership.
Irish settlers were banished to the forests just due to the fact that they were from Ireland.
Black Africans were enslaved and their voices were ignored just due to the color of their skin.
Joseph Smith and his Mormon followers were chased out of multiple states and killed for having different religious beliefs.
Women were not allowed to vote.
The KKK’s viewpoint is not thought of as valid by most Americans.
“Sorry but Rush and Steve are both wrong. Their solution to the problems in education are far too simplistic. If only it were that easy – you cannot just fire all teachers and problems are all solved.”
-Nobody suggested that we should fire all the teachers. Furthermore, nobody said that this is the solution to school problems. The ability to remove bad teachers is just one problem that happens to be getting the discussion.
Teachers must be trained to be competent in their field(s) of instruction. This is how you get a much better teacher in the classroom. Paying teachers more would be nice, but that is not the only thing that needs to be done. Stop cutting their health care benefits as well, because that is a trend that is happening all over America. Who in the hell feels great about going to work when you know your employer is giving you the shaft? Think about it…
-Not all over America. In my home state the teachers had the top Blue Cross plan for themselves and their families for life.
To get children to behave better in the classroom, parents should sit down with their children and explain a few things. eg. how to respect their teachers and elders – that would be a start. Perhaps then a teacher that is competent could teach a class without having to be constantly interrupted by someone who thinks its funny to be disrupting the teacher’s lessons.
-Unfortunately, the children that are causing the problems are often the ones who have parents that DON’T do these things.
We need the ability to get rid of school board members and principals that are bad as well, not just the bad teachers. Like I said in a previous thread… Teachers, parents, students, administrators are supposed to be in a partnership for schools to run well. When one part of this breaks down many problems arise.
-Thats true!
School administrator pay really needs to come down when you compare their salaries with that of teachers. The gap is incredibly ridiculous. No school board member deserves pay reaching $200,000 a year, especially when a teacher has to scrape by on just $30,000+ a year. See the inequity in the school system?
-While I can’t speak for all schools, most school boards make nearly nothing for their school board work. Some are even voluntary positions. As for administrators, they do make those amounts, and deserve to, if they are doing their jobs. The solution is to raise teacher salary AND accountability. Some states do pay their teachers fairly well, but many do not.
“However – I think this is Rush’s attempt to cross-over. He is bored and his audience stale. He wants to try new things. So jabberwocky-ing his way into the attention sphere of Apples audience is his cry for help.”
I don’t think so. This is one of the things he has talked about for years.
“He’s an idiot. And he obviously has company.”
Well, you did say that YOU listen…..
“People don’t shop at Wal-Fart because they “want to” they shop there because they can afford to shop there!”
Incorrect. I am fortunate enough to have the ability and money to shop at a variety of shops. I shop at Wal-Mart because I like the fact that they have huge varieties of products in one place, their shelves are full and they have lower prices. I also like Target for similar reasons. Granted, there are some items I wouldn’t buy there (Computers, for instance), but for most things, I like it.
I realize that there are some folks who will shop elsewhere for a variety of reasons….they hate crowds, they like the more personal interaction in smaller shops, etc. However since you said “people don’t shop….”, and I am a ‘people’, I thought you might want to know that your generalization was wrong.
i had a bad experience once
The sad fact that Jobs and Limbaugh – an incredible hypocrite-blowhard agree on this issue points out how uneducated/ignorant they both are about the real problems facing educators. Of course there are lousy teachers, but there are far too few controls on the many lousy administrators/principals, many of whom were lousy teachers who left the classroom to make more money and get more power over their betters. The current mania of NCLB and standardized testing is killing education, and forcing teachers to teach more and more only to the tests that politicos and administrators make the alpha and omega of education. Shame on Jobs, and Limbaugh, well he has the credibility of a junkie. Go figure . . .
Wow! Rush is jealous of Steve.
> …When Jesus returns…. Get over it. Like Ghandi, no one ain’t coming back from the dead. I can’t understand why people expect such an event. Even Howard Hughes couldn’t hide that effectively. Until he died.
I’d be interested in knowing what Al Gore thinks about this issue.
What would the reaction be if Steve’s comments on this were something that Al Gore and Rush could both agree upon?
Wow. I’m so glad I don’t read the political threads. All I know is, if some guy came up to me and showed me the above picture of himself, posing in such a manner, I would say to him:
“Wow, you’re a real douchebag, aren’t you?”
Can any of you imagine the type of person who would *want* to be shot like this? Do you know this person in real life? “Oh yeah, can you make me look like the guy from the
” rel=”nofollow”>Warrant album cover? That would be great! Maybe you could get all my money and my latest wife in the shot too, you know, so I could show off all my stuff! Excellence In Photography!!!”
Gawd, please stop parroting this drug addict’s tripe. It’s gotten stale. REALLY stale. Let it die.
-c
The problem isn’t the teachers, it’s the paradigm. Making it easier to “fire bad teachers” will simply result in a rash of arbitrary dismissals more likely for political reasons than anything else. Attracting good teachers to a bad system will only disabuse good teachers of their idealism. Also, good teachers are the most likely candidates for termination in a bureaucracy given that they are usually somewhat non-conformist and assertive.
No more curriculum by committee. No more federalized standards, oversight, and economic “incentives.” The current administrative aspects of education do more to harm education than “bad teachers.”
On the philosophical level, use a multiplicative approach rather than an additive one. The highest priority should be to teach kids to love learning and how to solve complex problems, not how many facts you can stuff in their heads and extract later in a test.
(Yes, I’m over-simplifying, too.)
Great joke, very funny.
The only sensible thing said in all these threads.
_______________________________________________
Maybe –
S. Jobs has got the ball rolling and out in the mainstream, his take was purposely simplistic and the discussion is now developing.
I often tune in to Rush on my car radio when I take my lunch break.
HILARIOUS!
Yesterday, he was coughing a lot, and explained that it caused a pain in his side, etc., then discussed at some length his cough syrup.
THERE YOU GO. HE’S HIGH AGAIN!
I wonder how much codiene syrup he can suck down. I mean, if he can take THIRTY OXYCONTIN A DAY (while railing against drug use on his program), I’ll bet he can down, what, 3, maybe 4 bottles in a day?
What a wastehead.
Sorry to enlighten those to which this statement applies:
Rush Limaugh is a Big Fat Idiot.
Two pages of posts and more to come. Why the hell do you think MDN is running this piece. Their advertisers would love it. Both left and right moths go straight into the flame. Good one MDN you sucked ’em all in.
Steve Jobs and Rush share this fact giving them great expertise: Their highest accomplishment educationally is High School.
A much better picture of Rush Limbaugh can be seen HERE .
Very funny parody! (You could here the whining, even through that extrapolation).
I notice they all whine that way, Crusty old Ed Levine, Sean Hannity- especially.
He whines about Hillary, “people say she’s mean”.
What a pussy!
Here’s another good one.
http://www.jibjab.com/jokebox/jokebox/jibjab/id/106527/jokeid/40526
Steve may be liberal, but he’s also a billionaire and that clouds his judgement. He has no idea what its like to live off of $50,000 a year, let alone a teacher’s salary which averages less than $40,000. I know a lot of teachers. Its a thankless job. They work 10 hour days. They are no longer allowed to teach, because they have to follow some curriculum to prepare students for standardized testing. Forget talking about current events. It won’t be tested and they are on a tight schedule to memorize content before the tests take place.
Teachers aren’t the problem. Its the legislators and administrators who are the problem. But isn’t this the case in almost all business and government today?
Actually, a little-known fact-
Mr. Limbaugh was actually enlisted as the official Oxycontin spokesperson.
http://www.larryflynt.com/ad_parodies_gallery/source/rush-limbaugh-parody.htm
(Sorry, Granny. I know. I am a truly disgusting person. And creepy. Very creepy.
@ Jeff
You are the only person IMO that makes any sense here (I can’t count myself though). LOL
Do you guys know what teachers start at in my state of New Mexico? A whopping $30,000 for a BA degree, which is bloody pathetic IMO. My two year Computer Analyst/Programmer degree added on to the BA Mathematics (5-12) degree that I will receive soon enough will give me an extra $2. Wow! I busted my ass for my two year degree for a paltry sum of an additional $2. A teacher asked me this a while ago… With all the Math courses I have to take to be highly qualified as a Math teacher, why am I going to teach Mathematics? Sometimes I have to wonder…
If I go for a Masters degree within a year after I graduate, I will see only around $40,000 once I get it.