[Vision2020] The Blueberry Story

Tom Hansen thansen at moscow.com
Thu Mar 31 12:32:22 PDT 2011


With thanks to a loyal Viz subscriber . . .

Courtesy of Jamie Vollmer's "Blueberries" at:

http://www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries.html

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The Blueberry Story:
The teacher gives the businessman a lesson
By Jamie Vollmer

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t
be in business very long!”

I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were
becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their
precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to
restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public
schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that had become famous
in the middle1980s when People magazine chose our blueberry as the “Best
Ice Cream in America.”

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change;
they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the
industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge
society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they
resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by
tenure, and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to
business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous
improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced — equal parts ignorance
and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up. She appeared polite,
pleasant. She was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English
teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes
good ice cream.”

I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”

“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”

“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.

“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.

“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the
next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to
the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an
inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?”

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap
. I was dead meat,
but I wasn’t going to lie.

“I send them back.”

She jumped to her feet. “That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send
back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted,
exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant.
We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their
second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is
why it’s not a business. It’s school!”

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides,
custodians, and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah!
Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a
school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of
their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a
reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde
of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO
screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and
how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a
post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes
can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission, and active
support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have
learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the
communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means
more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown




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