The Blueberry Story

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 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 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.