Efficiency experts, people being valued for their ability to "think outside the box" rather than actual results, focus on forms over substance, everthing in that movie is echoed in how I need to deal with being a teacher.

Some of my real world corporate experiences were much better. Ever try to get teachers together for lunchtime planning meetings? Half of them will cry "union rules". In the real world, on the other hand, the department secretary would book us a conference room, order us a decent lunch, and we'd spend two+ hours hashing out a problem until it was done. You never heard anyone whining about being treated professionally - we were all to busy trying to make our products better.

There are plenty of companies that follow the Initech model. We don't need to emulate those. But there are also plenty who break that mold, who not only provide an improved product, but who have a process that directly leads to that improved product.

The problem is that the financial incentives for that kind of success aren't available in education.