Steve Jobs views on Education

We are blaming that Education is getting corrupted by the private colleges and schools demanding higher fees and donations but at the same time we ourselves admit that education standards have increased by these private colleges and schools. Days are gone that students and parents likely to turn towards Government Schools. Images of some village school will obviously come to our mind where the number of teachers is more than the number of students!

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was a college dropout but he had certain views on education and reforms in it. Steve’s views on education were interviewed by Smithsonian Institution and have published the excerpts of the interview. Even though Steve expresses his ideas on US education or education in general his views are valid for any country.

Steve’s views on Education as appeared on the Smithsonian Institution’s Oral and Video Histories of Steve Jobs. It can be found on the website http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/sj1.html too:

 “I'm sure it did. I'm a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don't believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life's not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education. Maybe even more important than a great family life, but I don't know how to do that. Nobody knows how to do that. But it pains me because we do know how to provide a great education. We really do. We could make sure that every young child in this country got a great education. We fall far short of that. I know from my own education that if I hadn't encountered two or three individuals that spent extra time with me, I'm sure I would have been in jail. I'm 100% sure that if it hadn't been for Mrs. Hill in fourth grade and a few others, I would have absolutely have ended up in jail. I could see those tendencies in myself to have a certain energy to do something. It could have been directed at doing something interesting that other people thought was a good idea or doing something interesting that maybe other people didn't like so much. When you're young, a little bit of course correction goes a long way. I think it takes pretty talented people to do that. I don't know that enough of them get attracted to go into public education. You can't even support a family on what you get paid. I'd like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for, making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Why should they work at a school for thirty-five to forty thousand dollars if they could get a job here at a hundred thousand dollars a year? Is that an intelligence test? The problem there of course is the unions. 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.”