Apple CEO Steve Jobs hasn’t been silent about the link between the state of our education system and teachers unions. Last month he deplored the “unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers” as “off-the-charts crazy”. A little more research, however, demonstrates that Jobs has been sounding this alarm for quite some time.

From 1995:

The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.

And another, wherein the technology guru indicates that technology isn’t the answer:

It is so much more hopeful to think that technology can solve the problems that are more human and more organizational and more political in nature, and it ain’t so. We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46 year old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn’t be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer.

(Hat tip: Internet & business blogger Donna Bogatin)