Cory Doctorow, sci-fi author, blogger and general king-geek, posts about the troubling development of US high schools asking freshmen to declare a "major".

Some US high-schools are forcing students to choose "majors" in the
ninth grade. This sounds similar to the UK system, where teens take O-
and A-levels and seal their post-secondary education choices at the age
of 15 or 16. Maybe this works for some kids, but it would have been a
disaster for me.

I have to agree with Cory on this one.  In eighth grade I took one of those aptitude tests that were so popular at the time and I was told that the best career choice for me was becoming a park ranger.  Anyone that knows me knows I’m not the "one-with-nature" type so that career path was a non-starter. 

To be honest I’m 40 years old and I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up, so I can’t imagine asking my teenagers to figure out what they want to do their first year of high school.  What I do want them to do is learn, explore and try new things and not kill or seriously maim themselves in the process.  I figure we’ll have been successful if we look back 15 years from now and see that our kids found something in life that they’re passionate about, do it to the best of their ability and make a positive contribution to society in the process.

What I want my kids to see is that the learning process is what’s important, not the test grade.  Memorizing a math formula is worthless without learning how to apply it; memorizing historic dates is irrelevant without understanding the context of each historical event; learning to diagram a sentence is a waste of time if you don’t learn to communicate your thoughts and feelings with your writing.  I’m not saying that my kids shouldn’t learn the importance of working hard even when the subject is "boring", that’s as important to learn as the Pythagorean Theorem, but I am saying that they need to see that  learning in and of itself is a vital component of realizing their dreams, whatever they may be.  If their school asks them to decide in 9th grade whether they’re going to be an artist or a scientist then the school is doing them a supreme disservice.

Steve Jobs recently blasted teachers unions, and at least some people agree with him.  Here’s what the Apple CEO (or as I like to call him, PodBoy) had to say:

Jobs compared schools 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.

"Not really great ones because if you’re really smart you go, ‘I can’t win.’"

In a rare joint appearance, Jobs shared the stage with competitor
Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Inc. Both spoke to the gathering
about the potential for bringing technological advances to classrooms.

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is
that they have become unionized in the worst possible way," Jobs said.

"This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

I have to agree with Jobs, but Don Dodge, the guy that heads Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team, hit the nail on the head when he wrote that Jobs was only half right.  The other problem with teachers’ unions is that they don’t reward high achievers:

My take? Steve got it half right. I agree that You can’t fire the bad ones. The other half of the problem is that you can’t reward the good ones.
That is what all unions do…protect the incompetent ones. Unions
eliminate "pay for performance" and instead "pay by seniority". How do
they get this seniority? Just breathe…because they can’t be fired.
About the only way a teacher can be fired is for sexual misconduct,
some other crime, or obvious malfeasance. Perhaps worse, unions don’t
allow rewards for excellent individual performance. Where is the
incentive for teachers, or any union member, to work harder, take
risks, and excel?

Robert Scoble agrees with me, while Dan Farber says the problem starts with teacher salaries.

Most of us work for businesses without unions, and most of us do
just fine without the "protection" of a union. In fact, we enjoy "pay
for performance" and work hard to earn promotions and
bonuses. Yes, there are some large businesses that protect incompetent
workers and refuse to fire them. But at least they don’t hold back the
star performers and do reward them for their efforts.

Later in his post Dodge points to some interesting numbers about teacher pay.  Here’s another excerpt:

The Hoover Institute published a paper
on teachers salaries, citing the American Federation of Teachers effort
to compare teachers wages to other professions. The Hoover report
responded;

"Where,
one wonders, are the comparisons with journalists, registered nurses,
assistant district attorneys, FBI agents, military officers, and other
not-so-highly compensated professionals and public-sector employees? Shouldn’t the average pay of a high-school English teacher be compared with that of writers and editors?
One could make a case that the salaries of high-school physics or
calculus teachers should bear some resemblance to those of computer
system analysts, but does the AFT believe that the appropriate
compensation benchmarks for 3rd-grade teachers are the salaries of
engineers or attorneys?"

Teachers only work about 180 days per year,
so on an hourly basis they are making a very good wage. The rest of us
work about 240 days per year, or about 33% more. Doesn’t it make sense
that teachers should be paid 33% less than the average worker with
similar responsibility? Take a look at this chart from the Hoover Institute that compares average hourly wages of many different professions.
Teachers make a higher average hourly wage than accountants, computer
programmers, auditors, and even more than architects and engineers who
work in State and Local governments.

Steve Jobs said that putting more technology into schools will not
significantly improve the results. This is a bold statement for the
Apple CEO to make after decades of subsidizing the purchase of Apple
computers for use in public schools. But once again, I think Steve Jobs
is right. Until we solve the problem of how to reward great teachers
and remove poor teachers we will not see significantly better results.

The problem is not money. Schools already get more
than 50% of the local budgets in most cities and towns. Health care is
the same deal. We spend more per capita on health care than any country
in the world. The problems with education and health care are not lack
of funding. The problem is lack of incentive.

I can’t tell you how glad I was to read Jobs’ comments and Dodge’s post.  Dodge in particular articulated my own point of view in regards to teachers much better than I ever have.  In particular I’ve always felt that teachers screwed themselves over by unionizing.  I truly believe that teaching is an immensely important job and if the teachers had formed a professional society (think doctors and lawyers) they’d be treated with the respect they deserve.  Instead they’ve bought in to the group-think of unionization and accepted the numbingingly bureaucratic public education system as is.

Good teachers should be paid as well as anyone in this country, but unfortunately for them they’re paid the same as the clock puncher one classroom over.  Real education reform will only begin when we stop trying to throw from money, buildings and materials at the problem and address the most critical component to a good educational system: the teachers.  As I wrote when our local school system asked for a new bond to build more schools, I’d rather send my kid to class in a trailer with a smaller class size and a good teacher than in a beautiful new brick building with a class of 35 being taught by some semi-educated dolt.  Unfortunately we parents don’t have a lobbying group to offset the work of the teachers union in the legislature, so the chances of this kind of reform happening are smaller than finding an honest politician in Raleigh.