THE BLUEBERRY STORY
A Businessman Learns a Lesson
by Jamie Robert 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 in-service. 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 became famous in the middle
1980s 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."
"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 all: GT, ADHD, ADD, SLD,
EI, MMR, OHI, TBI, DD, Autistic, junior rheumatoid arthritis, English as their
second language, etc. We take them all! Everyone!
And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why education is 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 postindustrial
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.
Please forward THE BLUEBERRY STORY to teachers, parents, politicians and
everyone interested in education.
( Charter Schools & Vouchers are the concepts of businessmen & politicians )
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