Woz schools ESC audience
Here’s one more fun fact on Steve Wozniak, better known as Woz: He wanted to be a teacher growing up, at least that was one of his ambitions along the way. He has praised his school days teachers openly, making particular note of a “Mrs. Skrak,” who he was taught by in the fourth and fifth grades.
So it was of little surprise when Woz at Tuesday’s opening ESC Silicon Valley keynote revealed that he had “secretly” taught elementary and middle school kids for eight years. Nor was it surprising that Woz — the designer behind the Apple I and Apple II computers and co-founder of the company that brought these first personal computers to the masses - is unhappy with the education system. In his view (and judging by the applause he received from the standing room only audience, in many other people’s views), the school system is an antithesis of creativity, limiting original thinking.
“School in itself is pretty much a restricted force on creativity,” he said during the fire side chat with EE Times‘ Brian Fuller. “When you come to class, you do the exact same thing as everyone else from the book. You come in, you take a test, you get compared to others from day one. [Your] answers on the test better be the same as everyone else in the class or you are not called intelligent.”
From my seat, Woz’s message was one of frustration, not of an angry man who hates the school system (which is what you might see in other media reports). He noted that in a room with one teacher and 30 students, there’s no time for personal attention, no time to go back and review difficult subjects. Instead, there are standardized tests that measure memorization, not learning. Nor are resources always readily available.
“There will never be enough money,” Woz, who grew up in the public school system himself and sent all three of his children to public school, said. He noted that school budgets are determined by government and voting. A household with two adults and two kids has the same electoral power as two single adults, who may or may not consider education a priority when casting their votes. ”Kids don’t get to vote,” he remarked.
And, in the crowded school system, differences are not always celebrated. “When you’re kind of a nerd … [other kids] start acting weird and you become an outsider. You’re not in the normal social realms. I was a nerd in that sense.”
But it was that being an outsider that helped sculpt Woz’s thinking. “That made me be very independent. I work on my own at home. I fell in love with computers. With no training, I did it myself. I wanted to teach myself and wondered how from these chips you made a computer.
“Independence really lets you start thinking, ‘I can have some really strange dreams and I can achieve them. There are ways.’ In school, if you start thinking differently -no, no, no, that’s the wrong answer - you get told there aren’t different ways to think.”
These lessons need to be applied to corporations, environments that, like the school system, can be cripple creativity. Deadlines, budgets, and hierarchies often stand in the way of employees exploring new ideas. Employees should be able to think differently, particularly engineers. But, truth be told, that’s not always how it works, especially on the higher rungs of the corporate ladder.
Engineers often describe themselves as being on the lowest rung of that ladder. EDN’s analog editor Paul Rako and I had a brief conversation about this the night before Woz took the ESC stage at the Innovation Awards (see Paul in the photo with Brian and Woz. Woz decided to bring some folks up on stage durng the Q&A portion of the chat). Woz liked that rung. In one of his first jobs at Hewlett-Packard, where he designed calculators, he decided he wanted to stay there.
“I was going to be an engineer for life and never go up the management ladder where you have to direct other people and be superior. I didn’t want to be superior; I wanted to be equal. I wanted to be an engineer for life there.”
Eventually and after being open with the company about his Apple designs, he made what he described as one of the toughest decisions of his life: He left HP, partnered with Jobs, and, well, the rest is history. Despite Apple’s success, Woz remained an engineer, shying away from management.
“When we started Apple, I made sure it was defined that I would be doing engineering and nothing else. I wasn’t going to run the company. I wanted to design hardware. I wanted to put chips together. I wanted to do magic things. That was established as my role,” he said.
Can you do magic things as management? Can kids be inspired and innovative in the current education system? Can an engineer be inspired in a corporate setting? Share your thoughts below.
Gregory commented:
Ouch Joe,
sounds like the real world caught you. Please don't disappoint others that still live the dream of creating in stead of borrowing.
Anyone who ever designed something (as stupid as it might sound to others) as an engineer or even an architect knows how good this feels, it makes you unbelievably strong, unique and part of the world.
I agree that making a big sales deal can also bring joy and happiness, but most times it is at the cost of another sales person or company that did not get the deal.
An engineer can build/create/design something in a pure positive way.
How to bring this message to the educational system? This is not easy (not only in the US, we have the same issues in Europe). Trying to have the same level in each grade doesn't help either, differentiation is the message but our generation of teachers did not learn how to do this.
We still have a lot to improve in this world and we need creative, open-minded people to assist.
Bill Mensch commented:
We are addressing your concerns at the Durango Discovery Museum's Mensch Spark Shop. Come see what we are doing there. Let me know when you might be in Durango and we will give a VIP tour of the Four Corners Area too. I love reading that your Apple is now not only the most valuable company but also the most valuable brand, $153B, wow! The original Core of the Apple was my 6502! Thanks for choosing it all those years ago! FYI, The Western Design Center and our licensees continues to ship hundreds of millions of 65xx processors in creative designs using our Embedded Intelligence (IE) technology. We are looking for the next Woz! :-)
Vasanth commented:
Teaching is an art of teaching the student to stand on his own leg to make him independent.
There are millions of books to read. No one can gain all the knowledge in one life time. A kid should be taught to take away only the essentials and to practice to concentrate on the assimilated info. The brain will take care of the result. Few kids of this caliber can change the fate of our earth.
We are talking about globalization. Why not we make the education system global.
Here is my conclusion: You can employ an R&D engineer from other world to work in our world. But the same is not true for managers. It is scientifically possible to research about gravity and you can create applications using it in all the universe (probably MEMS accelerometer is such a device).
Managers are great in their own place.
An Engineer is great in all the place. He is unlimited and independent.
I am a self taught embedded system engineer from india.
Stimpy commented:
Let's hear it for Woz, an iconic figure in the engineering community. I concur about the rote learning and lack of creativity in the school curriculum. I'd say more but I'm at work and I don't have a charge number to use for this discussion.
Greg commented:
It is for the reasons Woz outlines, that I coach Science Olympiad for my local Jr High School. As an engineer, I can share my knowledge with their bright young minds and hopefully inspire them to careers in science and engineering, by helping give them a first hand experience of the joy of creating, building, and succeeding with something.
The classroom with 30 kids can probably never be more than a 'middle of the road' general education due to resource limitations. The key is to light the fire of curiosity and interest so that it becomes a lifelong independent passion.
Pater commented:
In the education system we do have issues with lack of individual attention but I also think that is more and more a societal problem. I've recently told people in an extracurricular activity to call me to ensure a timely response but people are still e-mailing.
I think a big problem in the engineering employment market is a true lack of leadership and management understanding. In the companies I have been a part of the management doesn't take the time to determine employees' strengths and use them to their advantage. (Many employees are unaware of their own strengths). Management pushes to get more productivity by driving longer hours. The managers I have dealt with don't understand the value of systems and automation. They are underaware of the capability of computers and exactly what programming can make available to them. (Disclaimer: I am a mechanical engineer with a history of some high school, college, and hobby programming. NOT a programming expert) I would say the worst aspect I have found is that management also lacks the ability to see leadership potential in their own employees.
As in the work place, I believe the education system could benefit from more use of computers. Innovations with interactive learning software are required to make learning fun and creative. Progams tailored to learning style but available to everyone would allow more individuated education experiences.
Thomas commented:
Ed, the Chinese are the furthest thing from innovators. They are a hive-minded culture that copies and reverse-engineers the designs that they are contracted to build. However, if the west continues to fund and educate them through these efforts, they will become the next Japan/Korea (which the western nations built similarly). Then even Japan and Korea, as well as the west, will be buying innovative products designed by them and built in a lower labor cost nation like Indonesia or Malaysia.
BobUrUncle commented:
Woz was lucky. Some smart business people saw the value of the computer and made him successful. He would still be toiling in his garage but for these people. It takes more than creativity to become successful in business. This aspect is lost on a lot of engineers who blame management/soceity/aliens for appreciating their cool new invention. I was one of you. I believed in the "purity" of engineering and ignored the hard realities of the business world. Now I see the light and regret my engineer's hubris. Take a few business classes if you want to be a more well rounded person. Also, discourage your kids from entering the engineering "profession". The days when you could have a long and steady career in engineering is over. Globalization, rapid pace of change and the very real age discrimination, will combine to make them miserable. Cool tech is only cool for a very short time, but a mortgage is there for a lot longer.
DRe commented:
2+3 equals 7 if you add an extra 2. There is nothing wrong with that statement. Learn to brake the rules and free your creativity, what do you care what other people think?
As a society we should have more appreciation for creative thinking, making money is so much less important. Personally I think engineering is the best job in the universe
Ed commented:
Joe thinks Woz should "move on". If he can help change the education system so that in the next generation of Americans, innovation will become a higher virtue than money-making, he will be moving on - in a big way.
Otherwise, the Chinese will do most of the inventing while we spend our lives commuting in (Chinese-made) cars or sitting around being diverted by shows on (Chinese-made) TV's.
Woz, come to Washington and talk to the President. He's got young kids. He should understand your ideas on education and should be able do something to improve things.
Scott commented:
Trust me. In a nation of 0 tolerance, a tangled interpretation for separation of church and state and minimalistic effort, nobody will tolerate actual thinking. We churn out "teamwork" lemmings like an assembly line. As parents, we must teach our children to ignore the thrashings corporate society will leash upon them and return to solid solution oriented thinking.
JustAnotherEngineer commented:
Corporations do not innovate for this very reason. True innovation is done in small companies and startups, and the corporations BUY those because they themselves "can't get there from here". Invariably, for me, when I am at a small company that is kicking butt, the best creators are people who do not fit the mold, and who would never make it in a large, stifling, politically correct soul-crushing corporation. As soon as the small company is bought, those creative people move on, usually because they are forced out by the thought police.
.
I am disturbed that schools are resembling, more and more, the soulless corporation. It does not bode well for our future.
shanman commented:
Get your head out of that box! 2+3 does equal seven if the first two are pregnant and you give it a little time. Can someone really be an engineer if they cannot dream and think outside the box? There is nothing in the world like creating something new and stumbling across it unexpectedly outside of work or having your buddy call you from his vacation in Penang and tell you he saw one of your devices in an open equipment closet. It's even cool to find your old devices at equipments swaps or on sale by the recyclers at DEFCON. Knowing your designs have changed the world in some way is what it is all about. I have turned down many offers to enter the management chain over the years and will continue to do so. I love the creative process and wouldn't be anything other than an engineer.
Kevin commented:
When are we going to realize that education begins in the home. It is the parents that are responsible for the education of their children. Schools are just one of the (community) tools at their disposal. The emphasis and effort that parents put into developing the creativity and discipline of their children makes all the difference. Let's stop passing the buck onto teachers who typically do the best they can (often with their hands tied) in unruly and undisciplined classrooms!
Lee Hart commented:
Jobs has it right! The system *is* broken for so many creative individual. But how do you fix it?
For 15 years, I and some friends have been mentoring kids in 4th-6th grade classrooms to invent their own vehicles. The program is called BEST (Bridging Engineering Science and Teaching -- www.bestoutreach.com. The kids love it!
John commented:
As the son of Woz's high school electronics teacher (who BTW, thought a lot of Woz and his creativity) I must agree with Woz. Schools do not teach independant or critical thinking, and a lot of teachers will not accept it the classroom. The exceptional individual like Woz gets there on his own. The more typical student never gets it and we are all the worse for it, because they vote and form the backbone of society.
jack Cunningham commented:
I have often thought that the "leave no child behind" mentality is unfair to the most gifted student and the less gifted student
Wes commented:
Reality check:
Some things are digital like 2+3.
Some things are more shades of gray. That needs to be taught and students need to be encouraged to explore in these areas. I think that is the point that Woz is trying to make
Coming from R&D and avoiding management, like a root canal, I've worked with a lot of creative folks and engineering managers that either encourage that or, in some cases try to force you into a mold. Perhaps if they had been taught that creativity was a good thing . . .
Joe commented:
If you state that 2+3=7 you are wrong here and anywhere else in the known universe.
Henry Ford was at least as creative as you are and he was schooled in a far more authoritarian system than kids are today. He got over it and moved on.
Woz grow up. You made some (allot of) money and I'm happy for you. You deserved it. Now move one and go to the next thing.
