Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency” • Hacker News Board

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#81

Post by 9999 » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 8:07 AM UTC

ryanhuff wrote: post #25

9999 wrote: post #6

>keep schools open until 6 Sounds great, how do you fund it? >keep school in session 11 months out of the year Ditto. >let principals hire/fire based on merit Seems legit, do we really have to BREAK the unions to do that? The teacher unions have many legitimate reasons for their existence regardless of some of their negative attributes. >relax regulations on building factories Is that really what's holding manufactur…

>let principals hire/fire based on merit Its a simplistic idea. Principals weren't hired because of their ability to build a successful team of teachers. They are administrators. Why does anybody think they can suddenly (successfully and equitably) cast judgement on teachers? If you want to transform how teachers are hired, managed, and evaluated, to be more similar to a private business, you have to start at the top…

The best teachers I had in highschool all seemed to despise their principals, precisely because they were nothing more than overpaid bureaucrats. The best case scenario was a principal that just stayed out of the way. Of course, it's the system that made them that way. If you let principals actually make performance based decisions, then you would attract a different sort of person to the position.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#82

Post by cynest » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 8:10 AM UTC

pyre wrote: post #72

redthrowaway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it's a very American attitude to deficiency (just work more/harder) that ignores the far deeper problems. Outside of the Asian countries, who nobody should be emulating, the countries that do education well all have sane school hours. let kids be kids and figure out what you're doing fundamentally wrong. Poverty and a basic lack of respect for education are a good place to start. Look at the Jews (not the Chine…

I thought that the "American Dream" was to be an all-star quarter back in high school and college, and then get signed by the NFL. Now that's a sound career path that everyone should follow...

For some people this actually is. It's a problem with a number of externalities especially when it's parents forcing it on their kids.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#83

Post by Pheter » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 8:21 AM UTC

Jobs exhibited his notorious attention to detail, telling venture capitalist John Doerr that the menu of shrimp, cod and lentil salad was "far too fancy".

Attention to detail and a certain bluntness has been attributed as part of Steve Jobs' immense success, but this come across as plain rude. It doesn't matter if Jobs is right or not, it's bad etiquette to criticise another's work in this context.

Of course, I am assuming that his opinion wasn't asked, and I know nothing of the relationship that Jobs and Doerr shared.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#84

Post by Gormo » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 8:38 AM UTC

dagw wrote: post #80

dolphenstein wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland leads the world in education, and now they are building factories?!? Don't look to China, look to Finland!

Finland leads the world in education Slightly off topic, but Finland leads the world in junior and high-school education . They have only one universities in the top 300 of the Shanghai rankings and nothing indicates that the advantage Finish students have leaving high school gives them any advantage at University. One needs to be careful about idolizing the Finish school system. While they are no doubt awesome at pr…

The purpose of education is not to enable schools to score highly on the Shanghai rankings - it's to enable students to develop the ability to think critically and independently, understand the world they live in, and learn to sustain themselves within it.

The focus on arbitrary aggregate rankings and making "us" more "competitive" is a dangerous distraction.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#85

Post by Gormo » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 8:44 AM UTC

veidr wrote: post #66

cjoh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"keep schools open until 6" is one of these things that clearly demonstrates that people really don't understand how government works. If you want your schools open until six, take it up with your school board, not the freakin' president.

Yeah, but if you want all schools to be open until six, I'd say the president is a reasonable place to start that discussion. (That's not to say that I think this (good) idea could ever be implemented in the USA, though.)

If you want all schools to be open until six, you need to take it up with each of the thousands of local school boards in the US, along with the many thousands of charter, private, and other independent schools.

The federal government has no policy-making authority w/r/t education in the United States. And if such authority did exist at the federal level, the appropriate place to start would be Congress, not the executive branch.

In reality, of course, you'd never be able to create a universal policy to reflect your particular vision of how education ought to work, and that's a good thing.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#86

Post by forgottenpaswrd » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 9:05 AM UTC

Wow, what Jobs really loved was getting in charge, a control freak. It became the face in the 1984 wall telling everybody what to do.

If you want to send your children to boarding school so you don't have to educate them, more power to you.

But if you want the state to become your nanny and top-down micromanaging how children gets results I beg to differ, specially when the person that want to control it is a dropout and risk taker but wants anybody else to get into conformity.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#87

Post by yardie » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 9:19 AM UTC

gwright wrote: post #69

outworlder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>keep schools open until 6 >Sounds great, how do you fund it? Reduce the "defense" budget. I wouldn't be surprised if you did the calculations and found out that schools could be open 24/7 with minor tweaks to the budget allocation. It is not a matter of funding, it is only a matter of priorities. Education and research should be first on the list. I believe Jobs was right, once again.

I have no idea if the math works as you say but the federal government doesn't fund primary education. That is all done at the local and state level and so it isn't just a matter of tweaking the federal budget (as if that itself was easy). I think the bigger problem is that teacher's unions have created a calcified public education system that is risk and change adverse. Hard to experiment with new ideas in that envi…

> teacher's unions have created a calcified public education system that is risk and change adverse.

Child from the 80s here. I've had just about every teaching method crammed down my throat through the 90s. This includes more homework, more lectures, socratic desk arrangements, independent study, peer review, group work, class review, and many others I care not to remember. I have never heard any teacher say, "my union asked me to do this." And, usually, it was some teacher or principal working on their MA or Ph.D that had to invent a new teaching method.

So far the only thing that works consistently is listening intently, sitting down quietly and banging out the work, and raising a hand for assistance when your stuck.

And that is how it's been done for 100 years. It may seem calcified to you but the rest of the world uses it while the US tried all types of new-age teaching methods.

I would wager the bigger problem with schools is bad, obnoxious students. The classroom bully that disrespects the teacher, disrupts the students and gums up the educational experience for everyone. They used to be kicked out of school but that became illegal, then they were put in detention, but a chaperone costs money. Now it's left to the teacher to be educator and babysitter to some asshole.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#88

Post by yardie » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 9:38 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #9

On the subject of "You’re headed for a one-term presidency because the US can’t build factories" : http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/car-company-us-loan-builds-car... With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government stimulus loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable…

"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."

I don't think this was a dig at US factories just the fact that the type of factory they were looking for doesn't exist in the US. They want a factory to build cars on contract. Car factories are incredibly expensive, take years to build, and decades to recover the cost. But if someone asked you to build something and you know its going to cost millions in retooling you want a bigger guarantee than 3-5 years.

Tesla was lucky by the fact that the old Toyota plant was available and ready. And they didn't contract the work, they bought it which means they are committed for the long haul.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#89

Post by morsch » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 9:57 AM UTC

yardie wrote: post #87

gwright wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea if the math works as you say but the federal government doesn't fund primary education. That is all done at the local and state level and so it isn't just a matter of tweaking the federal budget (as if that itself was easy). I think the bigger problem is that teacher's unions have created a calcified public education system that is risk and change adverse. Hard to experiment with new ideas in that envi…

> teacher's unions have created a calcified public education system that is risk and change adverse. Child from the 80s here. I've had just about every teaching method crammed down my throat through the 90s. This includes more homework, more lectures, socratic desk arrangements, independent study, peer review, group work, class review, and many others I care not to remember. I have never heard any teacher say, "my un…

The rest of the world does not teach that way, and particularly the countries that have good results in education -- e.g. Scandinavia -- don't. What's with the American exceptionalism? But (as you also hint at) good teaching methods are just one tiny piece in a much larger puzzle.

In fact if anything, my personal impression is that the teaching method itself is among the least important factors; if everything else is in order, kids are going to learn no matter what teaching method you employ.

Re: Steve Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency”

#90

Post by morsch » Fri, Oct 21, 2011, 10:04 AM UTC

badclient wrote: post #35

9999 wrote: post #6

>keep schools open until 6 Sounds great, how do you fund it? >keep school in session 11 months out of the year Ditto. >let principals hire/fire based on merit Seems legit, do we really have to BREAK the unions to do that? The teacher unions have many legitimate reasons for their existence regardless of some of their negative attributes. >relax regulations on building factories Is that really what's holding manufactur…

Sorry, if 7-8 hours of schooling isn't enough couple more hours won't change much.

7 to 8 hours is probably too much organised schooling, already. However, there's an argument to be made for letting kids stay on the premises in a semi supervised environment after hours.

There's lots of resources available in school which could be useful; you can offer some activities (but please, not an additional 5 hours on top of 7 hours of school), or help with homework (dito), and generally offer an environment that's hopefully more conducive to learning in the broadest possible sense than some of the worst home/street environments.