Harvard Graduate School of Education; WGBH Forum Network; The Media: Driving Education Policy?

You can get them to ask for them. The Harvard grad school of education and it's my pleasure to welcome you to tonight's event. Type of the media driving education policy as many of us are. We are the professional people. Education is greatly influenced by the media especially by products like our guest. Tonight. What gets covered and maybe more importantly what doesn't get covered. Often sets the agenda for public policy discussions. Columnists have a funny voice in debates that we care about here. At our school and no child left behind to college athletics to the TV. It's my great pleasure to introduce you to two of the country's most outspoken and widely read columnist Bob Herbert and Derrick Jackson. What we're going to do tonight. First I'm going to introduce them both and then I'm going to ask them a few questions and I'm going to encourage them to answer. On the quick side so that we can get many of your questions. And I think it's going to be fun for us to turn the tables on them and ask them

questions it's usually of course the reverse. So to my right is far from perfect joy. The New York Times has an op ed columnist in 1993. I suspect many of you remember him as I do from his reporting as a national correspondent on The Today Show and NBC Nightly News. He was a founding panelist of Sunday edition. A weekly discussion program on WCBS TV in New York and he was also the host of mine. He's won numerous awards including the Meyer Berger award for coverage of New York City and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for distinguished newspaper writing. My buddy Derrick Jackson has been a columnist for The Boston Globe since 1980. In 2001 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary. He's been the winner of commentary awards from the National Education Writers Association and the unity awards in media from Lincoln University of Missouri. He's a five time winner and 10 time finalist for political and sports commentary from the

National Association of Black Journalists. And in 1984 he was in. The. Race. So everyone please join me in welcoming back or. Thinking about your questions. But first though this is really just a softball to get it all started. Those are the ones we like. It won't surprise you to learn that many of the people in this room believe that education is the most important public policy issue of our time because it provides a foundation for a just society. I thought you might want to just talk a little bit about. What interests and excites you in general about writing your education. The thing that strikes me about education is how important it is because I used to a long long time ago in another life for the Daily News in New York. I was the education

reporter for a while and I really became interested in the topic then but it was tough getting stories into the newspaper and especially in a big city tabloid so they would tell you that a blonde was murdered downtown last night. And you would ask how do you know she was a bullhorn and they would tell you there were also a lot of them told otherwise identified in that kind of an atmosphere it's hard to get her supporters into the paper. But. Now as more and more people are coming to understand education is becoming so important just as a basis for for establishing or maintaining a middle class lifestyle. So the kids who don't go on to get a four year college degree who want to have a high school education or who drop out of high school actually have a terrific hard time just maintaining a basic standard of living.

Able to raise a family in circumstances that we think of. As as optimal. And so I think that given the importance of education but giving the short shrift that I think it gets even though politicians talk about it and people in the media will bring it up it doesn't get the kind of intense coverage of I think it deserves. So I think that this is really one of the most. Important topics but one of the topics that does not get the kind of coverage that it really wants. Well. I would love how you answer your question but one of the things that's fascinating fascinate fascinates me over the years about education and obviously we can talk about the impact meet and media has it that is the notion like a lot of issues in this country. People say it's a prime issue the defining

issue of our time critical issue. And then when push comes to shove a lot of these issues. And education is is right it is number one to number one and to get shoved to the side and protecting public education. And. If I might. Just I can be more succinct than just wandering in my brain. When Patrick was running for governor. There was a poll that UMass Boston's McCormick graduate school of policy studies put out and. When asked when voters were asked what were the three top issues of our day African-Americans responded crime education and jobs as the three top priorities Latino's education crime and jobs. White residents. Education taxes and health care. And. My short view is that the showstopper is taxes.

And in fact I think unfortunately taxes has become a code word for we got ours. And forget the rest of it. And I mean just today if you read The Boston Globe three out of four towns in Massachusetts turned down voter override. Nevada is about to cut. Millions from public education because of their shortfall. Indiana is preparing to cut millions because of the shortfall. Florida voters are preparing to think about a. Amendment. That eliminates property mandatory property tax. So I think I'm. It's a newspaper editorials. Everybody waxes eloquently romantically about education but when push comes to shove. In the town hall in the voting booth and referendums if it has to involve raising taxes.

Forget politics. Are the candidates for president. Talk about their priorities improving education. Is it time to be near the top of your list. But when you listen to the media coverage for when you listen to the debates in particular. Education has this very morning you feel like it's been virtually from the debates. Well Derek started telling us why. The candidates always mention education but the candidates really don't do anything about education except George W. Bush. No Child Left Behind which would have been better if he'd left it alone. The truth is that the the people who hold power and who set policy in this country for the most part don't care about the kids who are in the public schools in this

country. Derrick is talking about taxes and that of course gets you to the issues of resources. And if you want to really improve education in this country if you want to put together a public school system for the 21st century which is which means that you're going to have to have a public school system that's is different from the 20th century as the 20th century was from the 19th century if you're going to do that and I think it's essential because in the age of globalization the only way this country is going to be able to remain competitive. You're going to have to fund it. You're going to have to provide the resources and that means a tremendous amount of resources. And at the moment the people who hold power in this country do not feel that the kids for the most part who are in public schools in this country are deserving of those resources that we are going to take those resources and spend it on those kids those are seen as somebody else's kids. Now the Times had an editorial very recently within

the past week or two that wasn't talking specifically about education but was talking generally about spending public dollars on the common good. And many surveys over a very long period of time decades have shown that the more diverse a community is the more reluctant the population is to spend money on what is known as the public good whether it's whether it's education or whether it's hospital or hospitals or anything along those lines. The idea being it goes back to what Derek said about we've got ours. So if you can afford to pay for your kid's education a quality education if you can afford to pay for your health care if you can afford to pay for a nice home where you want to keep the property taxes low

and on and. Then that's what the tendency has been to pay for yourself and to leave the others which are essentially folks who don't look like you to fend for themselves. And I think a lot of those chickens are coming home to roost because the fact of the matter is that we get a skewed picture of how well the United States is doing from the politicians and from the media. This country is viewed as a very well-off essentially middle class if not upper middle class country. It's viewed as a country that where in mass in the aggregate that is viewed as well educated and it is still viewed as a land where there is tremendous opportunity. The fact of the matter is that there are 37 million people who are living in poverty in the United States right now out of a

population of just shy of 300 million. I think there are. See if I get this correct. There's something like 60 some million I believe who are just one notch above poverty. These are folks who are have a family income of 20000 to $40000 a year for a family of four. So if you you try raising a family with two children on 30 or 35 dollars a year in this country. We know dropout rates have been in the news recently. So all those kids are growing up without even a high school diploma. And I just saw a story I think this was in the past week as well that said essentially nearly 10 percent of the population in this country are actually using food stamps which is to me a shocking percentage. So the fact is the U.S. is not doing as well as most Americans think we're doing.

Beyond that I'll wrap this up in a moment. But beyond that we have. The statistics are skewed in the sense that the people who are doing really well are just a small percentage of the population are taking you know most of the marbles. So when you start using the averages you don't you don't get a sense of the disparities that are at work in the population. And in order just to in order to remain competitive moving forward in order to keep up the idea of social mobility which is what you need to have if the American dream is to be kept alive you are going to have to have a better educated more talented population than we have now. I think that we're going backwards rather than them. We.

Had the good fortune of. Giving a talk last week in Toronto Ryerson University and I was asked about very general state of the election. One thing that I think plays into education as just a general priority is. It just seems to me that my favorite passage from James Baldwin is when he's writing about he's writing about a dead boy in Harlem. Who died of an overdose. And and as Baldwin does he writes very eloquently said. I'm going to be really brutalized it make it very short. He says you know the dead boy laying there. I didn't do it to him. You didn't do it to yet that boy is my responsibility and yours.

And as long as there remain boys menaced like this one your future is menaced too. But. America at this current moment doesn't care about them. And one of the overarching reasons is I think we're at I don't know who would measure the selfish quotient of American history but it's still clear to me that we're living in arguably the most selfish period of Americans of the United States history. For example 9/11 happened and we have bigger houses still. No one not a single lesson was learned about 9/11 in our place in the world. Houses bigger we're still consuming oil we're still consuming all of the resources globally. You know forget home. And so but I think that comes home. That's a

chicken coming home to roost and we're going to be a dangerous phrase lately. Where's the U2 quip about. But I really do think that comes home to roost in whether it's suburbanites in big houses who have developed a whole a whole cocoon of imagery and feelings and whatnot to separate from caring about the cities even in the cities. You have the situation you know where we are. No no no fault of Dr. Poussaint But these odds. But you know it's incredible that you have a Boston Latin for just a handful of kids. And even though the Boston Public Schools are arguably one of the most improved the bubble Boston public school systems in the country you still have

obvious disparities that he's addressing that have tried to address. So I guess the really difficult part about this discussion is he gets the reason that gets always shuffled off as a priority is because deep down Americans in the collective don't want to give up the privileges and access to resources that by their usage and by very nature end up as separators because the great biologist here Harvard E.O. Wilson said that for the rest of the world to consume at the rate that Americans do it will take four planet Earths. And so with that level of unsustainability it kills education because we're spending on all kinds of things

consuming consuming consuming and then we're asked to pay for public education. I've spent my whole life trying to. Think. By asking you to talk about what you've written. Can I can. But the reason I think we talk about it. I mean it's a downer to talk about it but I want to be made to take exactly what you have to say. I am pretty sure that the reason I do write about it and think of I like this is precisely because I benefited from the best of public education in Milwaukee Wisconsin. I mean I went to the public schools at a time that they were rated very highly on a national scale. I had teachers who cared I had a teacher who I mean all those steps along the way a teacher saw that I liked to write she put me on a middle school newspaper

of teachers so I like to write in high school she told me about the inner city model cities. Federal fed model cities federal workshop in downtown Milwaukee. So step along the way I benefited from the best of public education and I think some of us were right the way we do precisely because we can't stand the way it is and it doesn't have to be that. I've tried to say that I grew up in New Jersey in a suburb of New York. For those who don't know and I went to parochial school but my flair at the time had a very good public school system and my mother went through the public schools in Montclair and my sister went through the public schools in my Clair. And I think this and I'm going to agree with you on everything tonight so far.

And I think that point is really well taken because my clear support of the public school system over a good public school system over many decades it remains the thriving suburban community 12 miles outside of New York in Montclair. Now what one of the problems is the town that I grew up in which was a great town to grow up in is now a hot town a very fashionable town. So all these new Yorkers who are you know have done well professionally are raising their families looking for a suburban place to move to have moved from the Upper West Side or the Upper East Side of Manhattan to Tamar. My home town it's really weird to see the town that you grew up in is fashionable. My wife and I went to a restaurant there it was almost like a restaurant in Soho in Manhattan. But the point is they didn't neglect education in that town in the public school system. I think became a cornerstone that allowed the town to

thrive. And we've seen so many towns in many big cities where the public education system was allowed to rot. And I think that that was also obviously a major contributing factor to the writing of those communities. I would be interested in hearing about common education. The debate a debate over actually they're going to give you. Please give me your mind. Well given that we're in the middle of it definitely basketball. Every year you write a column where. You show the bracket rather than. You were going to lose. Maybe you could say I'm a bit more about that. What kind of response. Yes.

For those who don't know it for about 12 years both during the football bowl games and the NCAA March Madness I do a thing where I take the brackets and rearrange the teams by the graduation rates in particular the black male black male black graduation race because I feel they that because they are so vastly and frankly grossly overrepresented in sports they are the canary in the coal mine of whether a college is serious about both the student athlete ideal and invariably with the Division 1 teams. And it happened this year after North Carolina top ranked North Carolina which does graduate about eighty five percent of their players including 79 percent of the black players. That's great for them. Legacy of Dean Smith really the legacy of Dean Smith

the not the team's two through seven. All had black male graduation rates of 40 percent and under. And the three of three of the four teams that are in the Memphis Memphis UCLA and Kansas all have black male graduation rates of between 33 and 25 percent. And so it's been a kind of a shtick but it really gets a tremendous readership and I've been told that the colleges that do will. Get like or have 100 percent grants they've actually put the column in there in the welcome materials or for athletes that they're recruiting so that's cool to hear. I've also been fortunate enough that that those columns were part of the night. Commissions were quoted by the Knight Commission when they recommended that teams that don't have

a 50 percent graduation rate be banned from postseason play. And I've amended that to say not only should teams be banned 50 percent postseason play but it also should include make sure that it's also by race because you have many many teams of unbelief particularly football teams are egregious about this. You may say you look at it say Alabama. Alabama and Georgia. They might say 56 percent football graduation rate but when you look when you look at the numbers it's the white players are graduating it's 85 percent of the black players are graduating at 27 percent. So the reason I did it I'm a former sports writer I like to say I'm a recovering sports writer actually it is. Is that. This whole because of the way our culture is structured there are very few avenues at least until the presidential election where

more black men are seen in a positive way in the media. And it's either basically the military i.e. Colin Powell or athletes and I after that I would challenge you what mass do you see black males in a positive context. So it seems to me that if the colleges and I get letter all the letter one letter I get all the time from alumni of colleges that I've cited with bad graduation rates as well it's better that they went to school for wilder than nothing. Yeah you know I mean if they still they still get something out of it. My point is this. We have colleges I think because we know that these people who go there are not fully formed people. We send them there because they need finishing to be adults and therefore it's incumbent on the universe. The prime response. Yes of course once the students there they had like all of it. All of you students

here you have an obligation to crack your books. But. If you're getting a message from your boss your your coach your athletic director and the president of the university and the booster clubs that your primary purpose on this campus is to play ball you're going to play ball to the exclusion of everything else. So yeah it's been in I've been told that it's. It's been helpful and would be you know but not by Ohio State. Now I know in the. Two columns of messages here I assume that they just had enormous impact and you got. Actually. To. Tell us about. With respect to education. Why. Well one was one of those columns and it was Dan carets. Oh I'm staring at you but you've got to. Is it out yet.

I got galleys. It's been published. OK. I'm talking about test scores and the abuse of standardized test scores in this country. And a lot of the shenanigans that go on and one of the fundamental questions that he raised during an interview in which I put in the column was you know can you really trust. Test scores. When the people responsible for those students are going to be are going to be held accountable. For the results whether they go up or down. So if I'm sitting there and I'm going to get a raise have test scores go up I'm going to get fired if test scores go down and I'm in charge of putting together these test scores. What do we think is going to happen. And in many cases as he is documented

you really cannot trust these test scores that they've they've been inflated that all kinds of flimflam goes on. And I was surprised at the response of the readership. To that to that particular call. And I think that they're I don't know if there's a trend now or not. I mean you would you know better than I. But I think that a lot of people have been enlightened about about the over emphasis and standardized tests in this country. But there's another few columns that I did that's only peripherally has to do with education. Sort of an impact in terms of response. I don't think it had an impact in terms of results but that has to do with and that that gets us into the area of what's happening with the kids who are in the schools who are in poor areas.

And so over the course of the public school year not this one but last public school year in Chicago and it was 34 public school kids were murdered most of them by guns. Now it just seems to me that if in the course of a school year you have dozens of school kids murdered that that should be an enormous story that that should be an astounding story. But it was it. I mean it didn't get much national coverage at all. Anderson Cooper did do his piece on CNN. Like I mentioned him in my column and I was thinking why is it only Anderson Cooper who thinks that this is a big deal going after I did the column. I don't know if this was as a result of the column but Barack Obama went and went to a church in Chicago and spoke about these murders and then sent me an e-mail indicating that he went to church. So there was some

relationship to the column but. Now I'm getting calls from Chicago saying Do you remember those stories you did last year. Of course I do. Same thing is happening now. And you know I don't know with the numbers I'm going to go out to Chicago and cover it but the number 20 comes into my head. I don't know if that's 20 kids shot or 20 kids killed but I'm going to find out what the heck it was. But the point is that if that's what's happening to these kids that it should be a big story. I'm telling you that if this were happening the public school kids in a predominantly white upscale suburban district in this country that story would be huge it wouldn't be limited to my columns. And one of the two references on Anderson Cooper. I mean I think actually that goes right into something that has been on my mind for many years and I think one of the reasons

because you've been doing an artful job of winning the question of the media's responsibility. It's I think what few studies have been done and unfortunate is few. Show that the media in the collective has really made people numb to kids who go to public schools and the like I said there's few but there was a study done. 11 years ago by the Berkeley Berkeley Media Studies Group that showed that the vast majority of coverage of youth in California television stations was. Violence and it was Laurie Dorfman said quote I quoted her she. Was the director the director of the place she said you had the occasional science fair winner

and the high school sports score but the rest of them were of kids being injured such as in a capsized canoe a girl bitten by a mountain lion or an Amtrak crash. When you look at you through the lens of television you're likely to conclude that the world is a meaner place than it is if you believe that you're going to behave accordingly when you vote or when you meet a stranger. What in preparation for this I try to find media studies of coverage of education. And you can hardly find anything and what little there was out there. NIEMANN reports here at Harvard did something 10 years ago book review of a book that attempted to put together several offers a look at media coverage and the just quote directly from the book review. The public at large does not appear to demand in-depth coverage of education or read

or look at such coverage when it does appear. And second because of this lack of interest the media find it difficult to devote large quantities of newsprint or television time to the subject even if these media views of the public are true. They cannot as the educators are quick to point out be used as excuses for the fact that the media coverage that does appear is all too often slipshod superficial and worst of all overly susceptible to promoting the bad news and ignoring anything good. The test score debacle is only one instance say the educator's of the fact that few newspapers have staffed reporters and editors who are savvy enough about social science research to interpret such data properly with the result that a distorted picture is given of how well our students are doing or not doing. And that's kind of no one can argue. That's kind of the state of things. I think that what happens to me I think the media is almost completely shirking its irresponsibility Antro the coverage of education in the first

place especially print journalists and editors and publishers should not be succumbing to this whole idea of television where you know you're you're you're doing news in terms of ratings so if the story doesn't sell you don't cover it. You don't start from the idea of what is it that my readers want to read. You start from the idea of what you perceive honestly news to be and what the public needs to be made aware of complex stories like many of the education stories. Part of the job of people in the press should be to make these stories interesting and compelling. So it used to be that way with the with economic stories many people would just yawn you know you wouldn't cover the economy and then somehow

figure out a way to cover economic issues and to make those issues important I think we still do it well enough that we do it a heck of a lot better than we do with education. We need to go in and make the case for Americans as to why public education is important for society as a whole what our stakes are in it and we should be showing in a compelling way what's working and what's not working. I agree that they should not be all negative stories. We need to show positive stories which show that some things can be achieved and then try and figure out ways to make that achievement. Happen. We don't do it. And I think that fundamentally. But part of the reason we don't do it is laziness but I think that the real reason we don't do it is because the people who have the power in the press are like the people who have power in all the other areas of our

society. They come out of an upscale background most are white. Most are men and most do not have any kind of sustained or in depth interest either in public education as a whole or in the kids who are going through our public schools. I would add to that. That I think one of the huge difficulties covering typically taken 12 into a is it takes a long time for a reporter to understand a single school let alone a system. If you go a friend of mine. From Washington Post the filia night remember her she was she was granted the was 10 years ago and so she was granted the chance by the Washington Post to be in one school for an article after article four. For a whole year.

And. And some terrific reporting you know came out of it. But. I think there's a hurdle that has to be crossed and that hurdle is is humanizing the kid. And because because of media stereotypes because of the that that leads to the categorization of those kids as those kids it takes it takes a media organization with some resources and commitment to put a little report of really mine the territory of his or her school district and get out there. And obviously in our business that's become a tough one to research. One of the things that happens is and this happens especially in television but it also happens in the print media.

Inevitable good idea. All right we're going to do the schools. And we're giving short shrift to public schools and we're getting short shrift to the kids who are going into public schools. Maybe they'll listen to They'll see a panel like this one tonight or they'll they'll read something and they'll say you know what we have an obligation to do it but they are going to give short shrift even when they're trying not to. And so what they'll do is they'll go out to Los Angeles or they'll go to Chicago or New York or Miami or somewhere and they'll try and find the worst school they'll try to find the kids in the worst circumstances circumstances. They'll try to find the most situations and cover that you know and then not go any farther. Or further the Times correct me on that or. Any further. And so what happens is maybe with the best of intentions I question whether those intentions were the best of intentions but they think they have

good intentions what happens is you. You've solidified the stereotypes and you've created the impression that there's nothing to be done about this that this is that this is the way of the world. And then you started having people in the editorial on the editorial board saying you know what if if we if we can't really solve this problem then they haven't been able to solve it in a hundred years. What is the sense of throwing all this additional money at it. You know we've watched all this other money go down the tubes. Why why should we watch more money go down the tubes. And so it ends up that that kind of coverage does more harm than good. You really need to have sophisticated coverage and you need to you need to really have a commitment and you need to have the kind of intention that is constructive rather than just superficial. We would in some sense the media has to become like the best of our public school teachers

because we know that the best of our public school teachers the job doesn't begin at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 2:30 or 3:30. These are people who are burning the midnight oil spending money out of their own pockets to afford. The materials and field trips and really devoting. Almost 24/7. So. Both of you and your have. Talked about it is statistics. Your cards are by definition. Maybe you could talk a little bit about. How education is. Also maybe the fact that it often evidence from both sides to support both sides. I mean no child left behind is a great example there are some studies show that it's working. Some studies show that. So how do you like using it to make a point

here. One point or. At. Least. This on. What you know the dropout rates are very good exam. And in fact it was a new organization that's Colin Powell has name affixed to a just released the big drop out study this week. And you know it's hard to know when you see these drop out studies. If they mean what they say they do. So like you poor Detroit you know if you if you're waking up at the superintendent schools in Detroit is more like oh my god the national media things we have like you know you know the president of public schools and and yet when we we've had a debate on it. A guy in northeastern I know many of you probably know Andrew Some who's done done some nice work that actually challenges

exactly how much the dropout rate really is. So I know I've been challenged. You know it's easy to go for as Bob was alluding to it's easy to go for the worst it's just because and. And you get into fall into that mediocre dope. Well those kids don't deserve anything because they're dropping out and their families are irresponsible you know and it's easy to just wash them off. But then an aneurysm comes along and says well it might not be as bad as it seems. But then I remember I had a discussion about it by half a year ago so and then on a sort of another topic let's say Governor Patrick can propose free tuition in our community colleges. I got that right. And and then some. But wait a minute.

You know even though I say the drug rates are not necessarily as bad as they are the educational level of students you know might make it so that free tuition isn't going to help. This is not necessarily going to help people that much because by the time they get there ill prepared to take advantage of the free tuition. So the. Statistics play a critical role. I mean when they play a critical role in having any credibility of trying to move a public that is current in its current politics is reluctant to fund public education either at the K through 12 level and at the public college level but precisely because there's so much ideology behind who puts out what's what's that. You know if a charter school you know kind of puts out stuff this is there you know you

have to really try to look at it with a fine tooth comb and statistics and other other kinds of research that are obviously important if you're if you're going to do journalism. But I think all reporters should try and get behind or beyond the statistics or the easily available data and opinion reporters writers columnists have to go even farther. So what I try to do is just you never have enough time because you know you get two calls a week your deadlines like that Lucy show with the cakes coming by God available. But you know I try to immerse myself in learning as much about the topic as I can whatever whatever I'm covering. And then you know I trust

my instincts so I don't really question my opinion but my opinion doesn't just pop off the top of my head and my opinion comes after I've immersed myself so that's why. I came up. Here and everybody was so gracious at me and I talked to a lot of people I've read a lot of material. I remember going down to kip school in North Carolina. You know you just you. Whatever the topic is talk to as many people as possible you read as much as possible and then then you know you go for it. And you know you don't you don't think at that point that you're going to make a fool of yourself whereas if you start writing first and not doing your research later with a lot of people I know actually do you do make it for yourself but it doesn't matter whether it's education it would be the same thing with politics it would be the same thing before things got so serious after September 11th I would even take a crack at a sports car in my op ed page or stuff like

that. But you have to do more than just statistics and and a point you made is try and get to the personal aspect. Of the story and humanize the people who are involved in it whether it's public school kids or whatever. But I do think and I just want to make this one point. I do think that the press in general focuses too much on personalities. I just made myself a note. So we're trying to get this correct it the press focuses too much on personalities and process and it should be focused I think much more of what's happening to real people and why it's happening. And if you approach a story in that sense it doesn't matter who you're covering you could be covering teachers or principals and say well what's happening with these folks as human beings. And why is it happening and then if you do want this report you will get the story right.

You focus on the kids what's happening to them. And why is it happening. And you will get somewhere if you if you were doing criminal justice it's the same thing. But what we do is we get caught up in the personalities. Who's up who's down who made the wise crack who lost you know who's trailing in the polls the focus on polls is really insanity and we focus on the process. So this is the process of steroids when there's a presidential election but it doesn't matter. I mean you would look at school boards what's going on at the school board meeting in that sort of thing enough already with the process enough with the personalities and go to the real people find out what's happening to them and why it's happening. And you'll get the story straight. You both talk a little bit about your own schooling. How do you think you own experiences as a student

entered into education. If I don't. Get it I think it did but. I don't think it's peculiar education I mean I think that it affects all your writing about about everything. But I agree with Derek that if you go back all the way to grammar school you're grounded in a situation where you're reading all the time and you know I was obsessive about reading a book and one of the great days of my life was when my mother introduced me to a brick wall I believe there was there was such a place as this. And then you know you write your little childish whatever it is and you get encouraged to write it so that you're not you're not intimidated you're not afraid to put a sentence or paragraph on paper. And then I think you know if you start there then it becomes much easier as it unfolds year after year decade after decade until you get to a

point where you're looking back over too many decades to count. But I think that that early education where you're comfortable with the idea of reading and writing opens the door for you and it makes it much easier. I think of it I think if it comes out don't know the educators would have to tell me where the cut off point might be. But I think if it comes to you in high school or certainly if it comes to you as late as college you're really going to be handicapped because I think that the tendency is to sort of freeze up and not let it flow. My dad always told me he said he said straight days don't mean a thing if you don't have common sense. So I took him literally. I graduated from college with about the same grade point is George Bush. And but I tried to. I was very very fortunate. I work at the black newspaper in Milwaukee and

got hired as did my freshman year in college. Milwaukee Geraldine High school sports and had these wonderful mentors and mentors guiding me and telling me you know the five there is an age of journalism. Stick to that and you'll be fine. And. I think that's what it really comes down to is. You know the newspaper is is merely the first draft of history and many of you out there take the first draft and you make something much more out. And they call it books and. But it's our obligation to use their common sense to not go for the easy you know the easy story. You know such and such city has a 50 percent dropout rate.

You know and just hammer that hammer that you know covered with 42 percent that are graduating and see what it is why they graduated why they made it why this is one of the things when we were making some of your remarks probably not only are we not only does the media get caught in this celebrity and that sort of thing in process it's also about plays a much too much in under the American notion of. You know praising the individual almost to the exclusion of you every every newspaper every media every new television station does a story on the exceptional scholar or the exceptional person her mother is on crack and then her brothers are all in jail and look at her. She's not a graduate at Stanford you know. And then of course then you get all the lead if you were as good as you could be you write about that person right. The bad news people like Bob Murray you get all these e-mails saying why can't the rest of you all.

Exactly. And so this is sort of. Part of it is an issue of Time. Part of it is a lack of really thinking deep. This notion of getting beyond exceptionalism in our coverage that that you that getting past the bootstrap theory because the public schools in their whole are not going to make it a bootstrap theory. I like to open up questions to the audience. Tom just shouted down or. You. Might have some minds coming around. All right. They. Say. Things. That. We thought were being depressing and. Where. Were

they to go. To. Work. So where is. This. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's an enormous problem. Newspapers or whatever the opposite of a growth industry is that's what newspapers are. And I'm very concerned about I know people were saying there are so many other outlets and that you know the wonders of the Internet and that sort of thing.

But one of the big problems that strikes me is that I think that I feel the society is not. Literate enough. And if you started out not being literate enough and then you know you're introduced to the vast world of the Internet. How do you start making decisions. I mean how do you know what outlets are the outlets that you can trust. How do you know what you're reading online. How do you know what's so and what's not so I mean when I boot up know I don't know what the different pages are but I have an e-mail on Yahoo. So you go to Yahoo home page you know and you just get this massive information on the screen in front of you and me and I know somebody was assassinated and five tips to a healthier love life and then you know that was something obscene this week you know how can you make your way through that. So I think that that's I think that that's a real problem. And that's

another reason why education becomes so important. What you want to do is get your kids through grammar school and high school have them with a well-rounded education and then move into college so that the kids who start out right I mean it's that schooling that makes the kids bright and it's the schooling that educates the kids. And then by the time they're they're in college then they can start making these kinds of decisions for themselves. They getting more and more sophisticated. I think it's a point mean that I think that the decline of newspapers and I think the deterioration of news of television makes your jobs as educators all the more. Important. We've done and what we've done and we didn't do it that well and now like some alternatives are going to have to be fashion. This is.

The one piece of optimism that I have is that people are still reading the newspaper online. And. The question of course you know are probably true in societies like Canada newspapers figure out a way to ultimately make this electronic reading problem. So far it's been difficult. And the other reason I'm optimistic about I don't know I really I'm not smart enough and I'm not in the boardroom. Just the Murray camp and the great late New York City columnist once said columnists are there's very very variations of this. Metaphor but. We were the hyenas that come out of the hills to loot the bones after the Lions made be kill or. And so I'm a variation of those that came down from the about to shoot the bull.

But none of it sounds very courageous. And so the newspapers that were were kind of trying to without the benefit of being in these number cruncher meetings where the future newspapers are. Your own by the New York Times and most you know that and New York Times people have come to Boston to show us what they think the future of the newspaper is and. And it's you know a lot of it is electronic electronic. And what I do know when I taught. College journalism and my observation and it's only an observation is not an empirical study is that students still hunger. And I think people they

hunger for information they can trust. And if you look at the sort of. Like that was maybe 8 billion years ago. Is this going to happen. Well I have to. Be. The. I think we're living in a. Sort of if you can step back and think of this as an era we're living in an era that's still very young. Most of us with gray here you know grew up at a time when it was three networks and competing newspapers in your town and maybe there was public television and a few UHF.

Alternative to this era of all these cables you know cable choice is still a relatively young one. It's also part of being young as we all know from being babies and having. A lot of screaming. So I don't think that's that makes it not an accident of why so much of cable news is really talk shows. Where you really can't trust the information left right center up or down. And I think that era is going to change as people seek and people who are I think people at some point I would like to believe in my. Full version of the world tire of the what I call barking dogs delivery

of talk shows and actually I think that some of that might be a reason that. That underlies the appeal of Obama at the moment. That part of what he is claiming to want to deliver is civil discourse in our politics. Now. Whether that ends up being a successful campaign thing I don't know but it certainly fascinates me that as I travel I'm traveling many the primary thing that people of all colors many Republicans and independents say they were sick of the bickering. It's another form of saying we're tired of the screaming talk shows are tired of media that sort of screams at us without full confirmation that what I'm hearing with you're barking at

me is fat. So I think. Newspapers if we're smart enough to figure out this electronic and just understand it embrace the fact. That all the kids we're raising today their media is it's it's all electronic and figure out a way to embrace it and figure out a way to remind them that we still are the first draft of history the most. We're not perfect. We're you know we have our slants. We have you know we're still a human enterprise but. People still want me I think still hunger for who's going to be my first set of facts and who can I trust the most. And if newspapers can figure out a way to remember that the probably the best way to stay viable is we are going to be the first source of trust. And I think there's some kind of you.

Hi my name is David. I'm a citizen of this caissons go here and I'd not be too much of a hack for the school but I had some pretty great ideas from some of my professors and some of the readings that I've done during my time here about how to reform some of the challenges you discussed earlier in the educational system. It seems like sometimes what's needed to happen in order to put these into practice is the political will and mobilizing people to do so. So it seems like the media plays a role there. But as I can also testy sometimes these ratings are pretty hard to get through. And so I wonder if you could talk about how someone like me who is an aspiring researcher may make the the research that's done in academia relevant outside of the walls of the Academy and how it can be presented in a way that people and the print media can translate those ideas to an even larger audience.

The that's a hard one for me if I'm on the other side of. The divide. But I can tell you what we're looking for it's also hard. If you're talking about newspapers for example because so much of scholarly research warrants more than 700 work. Or even you know one article in the newspaper so it's it's difficult. There are other outlets besides newspapers that could do more justice than scholarly research. But what we're looking for are things that are in a newspaper or things that are timely and compelling and that can be graphs.

And explained pretty quickly. That's a tall order for anybody who is doing serious research. And I don't know if I mean I'm reluctant even to make recommendations since the whole point of research is to get to you to get it get it right. Ask what research is done if you're trying to promote it and you're trying to get newspaper coverage. That's one thing. I'd be very reluctant to start thinking about that why you're actually doing that research that's satisfactory. But the best answer I can come up with off the cuff. OK. Thank you. Very much. Great admire both of you. I'm a native New Yorker where. I have all my names that I dying. I'm an alum of the MIT's

Sloan School and also graduate school of education here. There were some observations using the media question I subscribe to an RSS feed for the Wall Street Journal called The Wealth Report by a gentleman who wrote the book just stands about dealing with the people who live in this country but are in a country unto themselves because they are so far removed from anything that's going on. I've been watching the NCAA. Yes. You know I like Stefan Curry. He's great and Davidson and it's wonderful to see the boys playing young men playing but I've also noticed how they finally tailored suits are from the what the coaches and sort of like in keeping with what you said of the high dropout rates I kind of know the answer of why it's OK. Then I read articles regularly in financial times and also in the New York Times about how they are desperately trying to increase the

H-1B visa cap because there are just not enough scientists and not enough engineers and not enough good Americans were trained. And. I'm trying not I'm very pessimistic and very despairing right now as an American citizen and I was wondering whether writing an op ed piece or. What can one do too. Can you appeal to Americans pride. We are going down in the rankings and innovation were going down in the rankings in math. We're going down the rankings. The whole world knows that we are devolving. Is is it a matter of you. If you can't appeal to people's morals can you appeal to something else. What can one thing you know sort of cracking them in the bat. How can you make Americans care about other Americans because they obviously don't make that sweeping statement. I don't think that's true. I don't think you can say Americans

obviously don't care about other Americans but I think that there's a fair number and I'm agreeing with them again that this is just seems to be a particularly selfless a selfish age. But there are a lot of people who care about other people and there are a lot of people who sort of get up every morning and put their shoulder to whatever it is that we are. Whatever you put your shoulder to Britain every morning here and work hard at trying to build a better society and trying to help others. But what you can do I think I've been giving a speech at various colleges that can be subtitled A call to civic engagement. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you do something that's constructive that's going to vary from person to person. But it might be as you suggested writing an op ed piece it might be joining a local civic

organization or starting one. It might be participating in a political campaign. For some people it might be running for office. But the point is to actually do something sit there on the sofa or behind the wheel of a traffic jam just lamenting the state of things in the state of the universe and that sort of thing. I too am very pessimistic. I agree with you about that. There's a lot of bad stuff going on and I remember one youngster said to me in a class. Are there any reasons at all to be optimistic in the end that really threw me in the answer is yes the answer is a quick yes I'm pessimistic but that's my quick answer is as bad as some things seem.

This is not the depression. This is not World War 2. This is not slavery. This is not the Holocaust. You know we're going through tough times in the richest country in the history of the world. We're talking about tough times on the campus of one of the great universities that ever existed. So the thing is to me the reason to be optimistic is we still have the opportunity to work really hard to turn around those things that we're not satisfied with. I'm pessimistic but I'm pessimistic in the short term. I'm not pessimistic in the long term. There's something about the human condition and there's still something about the United States of America is peculiar that might sound. That leads me to believe that you know we're not quite pulling down the curtain no.

All should be dealt with is that my son is finishing up my second last one. He's finishing up here. You came through that high school. And what I what I have seen and that's this amazing set of teachers guidance counselors working with a very diverse population. And the kids who are able to respond to it is just an amazing thing. Too. With Bob saying get you know do something. I've been Scout-Master my son's scout troop and we had our last two.

I mean it's just really wonderful to see. It makes you want to keep writing and it has an effect on everything else. We had one our last our two oldest ones got accepted to Harvard. One took a deferment and is back on in Spain right now. The other is a freshman here and he just got that he just came back. He just sent me photos email today. He spent spring break doing alternative spring break in Dallas rebuilding one of the churches burned out in the arson. Thing. And this is a white kid. We call him here. He's he's got a red hair flaming red hair and he cares. So we brought him to brought that out I think Hurricane Katrina showed that people care. People might have been shocked at the disparity and all that. I think people were mostly touch

although the repair of the repair of the coast has been very fun. And but I do think that it's going to take a lot more particularly since the top of education education really will be at some point. It is the defining issue of whether the society cares about each other as a whole because it's the single most important thing that makes this democracy that makes people feel like they have ownership. I'll just quote My comment on this one particular point. I had a really great privilege years ago of mentoring for two years. I was a matter of time and Jeremiah for newspaper school newspaper and I told them I would mentor you. I told him I would bend to you if you do me one

favor. So with that said I want all of you to go visit a time and get the print edition. I want you to go. All of you to go to out of town news read and buy a non northeastern newspaper and bring it in. And we'll discuss. It took three months passed and only half the class had brought in this newspaper. So I said well let me tell you something. Why is this so sad. Come every week when I said other than when I had to travel and one kid was sick because I don't feel like I belong in Harvard Square. And then we went through the whole thing. The answer probably is you know it was predictable. He felt like he didn't have any ownership and then then I had this all discussion about this and you know that's a public place. You only know that. By the fact that this is a cover.

It's just when they finally they finally all got the people brought in newspaper Chicago L.A. actually and then by the end of the semester. By the end of the year they were putting out a school newspaper that was as good as anything that you'd get at. Phillips Exeter. And why. Because at the end of the day the kids were not just me. They had a great teacher. They were convinced of their ownership that they belonged. They were not the other they were they were American citizens. And as maybe as quaint does that might sound. That's why so many kids are fact alienated those who do drop out of power. So I call it like title.

Yes. Chris. It. You. Know you're. Great. Great. Right.

Right. It's funny you mention that because when I am writing this column my first thing I do is I have these I make them have to do a particular hot topic and I have them pull three columns from common dreams and three from town hall and then I a debate. I said which ones made the point the best which ones use the most facts which ones use the most. And this gets surprised themselves because the classes tend to be liberal. You know. And most of them are surprised that sometimes the conservative columns made the points better than the so-called liberal.

And I guess you know that's that's one of the tough things I mean that's one of the things that has made newspapers special is that in fact on a daily basis assuming you have a balanced leadership at the top you can look at the on the editorial page. That's why I can speak to. You can look at editorial page you know you're going to get a range of opinions on a topic even if it might seem to be weighted to one part of the political spectrum or another that you know you know somewhere in even like in the Boston Globe you're going to get someone that's why they criticize Clinton Obama. You're going to get someone is going to criticize McCain and so forth. And again that gets back to Tom's point. Yeah it is it is it's a tough time in newspaper. But there are people smarter than me can figure out keeping that core mission of being the place you go to to have

intelligent to read intelligent discourse. You know been there both. I think that we tend to self-select in terms of information anyway. I mean. I describe the troubles that newspapers are going through. My big problem is it's not so much the self-selection aspect of it as there's been just generally a sense of which newspapers are reasonably trustworthy in this country. You know so people tend to believe that if they go to the Globe or they go to the times or if they go to the Washington Post. The many other papers as a matter of fact that they're looking at responsible coverage you could agree or disagree with the

editorial content or whatever but they believe that essentially that news is real. But you know people are still choosing between the New York Times or in New York you know The Daily News or The Post or Newsday or whatever. People tend to self-select and they especially to self-select in terms of opinions. So people who are hard core conservatives are not getting a lot of liberal columnists and people who listen to the right wingers on the radio the same thing and vice versa. So I'm not so concerned about that as as I said before that I'm concerned about people going to the Internet and not being able to distinguish between what is a responsible outlet and what's not a responsible outlet. What is pure propaganda as opposed to what is legitimate. Well I don't know how many you like me but when I pick up a newspaper I start thinking

about things. Mean that's a real thrill for me to be able to have both of you here tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you.