American industry is and has been a world leader in many areas. But some International experts say we'd better start paying more attention to our educational system or will fall behind today speaker agrees Hedrick Smith is a Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times correspondent and best-selling author. He's produced several documentaries on public television including challenge to America in 1994. His new book is titled rethinking America a new game plan from American innovators schools business people work Smith says that our schools aren't doing enough to prepare students for what faces them after high school. He says there's a very strong connection between business and education. And in order to compete globally the US had better strength in that connection here is Hedrick Smith speaking recently in the Twin Cities at the Minnesota Business Roundtable.Like many of you I spent a lot of time on airplanes and I travel a lot. Chris vietravel and you spend any time with other Travelers why people have stories about the various trips and I remember flying on a wide-body jet from San Francisco back to Dulles to go home to Washington many months ago when I was doing some of my most intensive research for the booking for the television series The Challenge to America, which was on PBS and I was talking with a guy across the aisle and he had been on a very similar wide-body jet a couple of months before and he noticed told me this a story that he noticed a woman across the aisle young mother with a six-year-old son, and it was clearly the boy's first trip on an airplane and he was excited and he was into everything hands were trying the end of the tables. He was reclining the seats. He was down in the floor. He was up in the luggage been overhead. He was into everything that wonderful time.And just about the moment that the captain turned on the fasten seat belts. I need turn to his mother and his mama I got to weed but she still will not now dear. The captain is just turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. Let me show you how to buckle up. Your seat belt was he got all interested in buckling up a seat belt and then she pointed to the other planes I start to move across the tarmac. She pointed other planes out the window and the kid got absolutely fascinated with that and you forgot his problem until I got out to the end of the runway and then they were at the end of the runway. They finally the number one plane and you can feel the engines tugging away. He could feel them just itching to pull the plane down the runway and he said to his mother and a slightly more insistent tone of voice this time Mama. I got to wait what she said not now dear the place just about to take off and you're going to have a chance to be in the air for the first time in your life and you can look out the window and you can actually see the Earth fall away from the plane. So he got looking out the window and he got very interested in that true enough he could see they be felt the plane pull up.The ground and is a little scared but very excited that he saw that I saw the airport tower and see the airport falling away and then mother said, let's see if we can find a house out there and he got all interested in doing that and they were still, you know, well in the Steep part of the climb and he said to his mother very strong and mama I got to wait but she had to make one of those major executive decisions whether not to obey the rules of the airline are the laws of Mother Nature and she went with Mother Nature unbuckle her son unbuckled herself and went to the back of the plane pop them in the men's room pop them in one of the restrooms, but you that will while he's in there.I might as well just step across the way into the other one. So she did when she came out the door on her son's restroom was still closed. So she knocked on the door and she said don't forget the zip up deer. And went back to her seat while when she got to her seat. The boy was already sees it. Anemometer to later gentleman and a coat and tie could have been a member of this club. It was respectably dressed walked by and sat down across the aisle from the guy who told me the story and he leaned over and he said to the guy next to him. You won't believe what just happened to me. He said this sure is a full-service Airline. That's what we thought we had in America back in the seventies in the early 80s certainly in the sixties. We thought we had the full-service Airline of the world that that that are management style that are productive system that I work for us that our educational system that I Nobel prize-winning scientist and their Innovations and inventions were the best in the world and to a large extent unchallengeable impregnable that certainly was the feeling among the major corporations. So I don't think those of us were down at the level that I'm operating. It may be that what you're offering felt felt that I'm pregnant but as a country we did and so we went through one heck of a jolt in the 1980s one sector after another and I mean it started in shoes and textiles and went into children's toys and on through consumer electronics at an auto is and then it went to the, you know microchip industry and computer industry a minute. Just began Rippling through a lot of it came from Japan, but it wasn't just from Japan. That was very great quality stuff coming in from Europe. Was American consumers got very educated during the 1980s levels of productivity much greater capacity for responsiveness on the part of industry and things began to change in very fundamental ways. Now where I'm going is I want to talk about 3 kids. I want to talk about education and I want to talk about the connection between business and education because in my opinion there isn't any issue that is more important for all of us myself included in this room than that issue. Ultimately that's going to be a very important part of our bottom line. Is it certainly going to be very much a part of the world of our children and the kind of quality of life that our whole society is going to have and in some ways it's going to be somewhat different kids then you and I spend most of our time thinking about and worrying about that is the kids who go to college, but before I get to that I hope you'll let me digress a moment and talk for just a moment. What I discovered in my travels about the changing nature of work. I'm going to talk about manufacturing but it's true in the service Industries at what as well certainly true in my area which is hardly a manufacturing of that. The nature of work is changed and the relationship of people in work have changed and in some ways the simplest way for me to tell that story of his to talk about the Auto industry for a moment. We had this picture in America in the 1980s in the early eighties that the only reason to Japanese cars in the Korean cars in the other cars from age of a particular the Japanese cars. The only reason they were coming in and beating us was because it was cheap Japanese labor. And then after we kind of got over that and they're there their labor cost began to rise moment bet we began to say well it was really the exchange rate and it was interesting that I have to have had a review in the New York Times book review section last Sunday by a macroeconomist, and he said I didn't pay enough attention to exchange rates. Attention, I noticed exchange rates changed enormously and I noticed it didn't change the balance of trade. So that's what I thought about exchange rates and I'm going to leave it to the macroeconomist. We began to see those things change in 1985 radical change in the relationship between the dollar in the end and then it went on our way when I'm terribly while I was producing in Japan. Let me tell you is killing my bottom line cuz the dollar was going down like this and I was having to spend all kinds of yen to film in Japan. So I felt very directly even in the course of a relatively short period of them my television documentary production. We notice the difference 30% difference in the value of the Yen of the dollar during the. We were working on the project and that hurts to take that kind of a hit. And gradually some smart people in America began to say maybe there's something more to this and it'll be interesting. They weren't just in the Auto industry. I talked to Phil Condit the present and we were talking about Boeing's changes and I asked him where he got some of the ideas by this time. I've been to Japan several times and seen several places. And so I had some notion and he said well, I got them from the best manufacturing companies in the world. You know, I went to Japan and I said that there's no great Japanese aircraft manufacturer Mitsubishi and Kawasaki and some of the others produce components for you, but they're not going I said, no, I'm not talking about them. He said I'm talking about Toyota I'm talking about the best Manufacturing Company in the world. That's what you learn from them. And this is the kind of thing that he told me in the David Kerns at Xerox told me and it died on Peterson and red pulling at Ford told me. Go take a look at the factories and see what's going on. And the first thing that impressed me when I went into a Toyota factory was it wasn't very high-tech. Yeah, they were robots computers, but there weren't very many. I've been by that time. I've been in Mercedes plants. I've been in GM plants. I've been in Ford plants they want as high-tech the Toyota plants when does Hi-Tech is is any of the plants that I'd seen anywhere else in the world and they said we'll talk to the people and I began to talk the people I began to fight and I began to notice things around these plant. They're all kinds of jerry-rigged Contraptions. It's sort of a little Rube Goldberg. Is it work somewhere all over the lot of poltergeist at work there and there but they're making funny little dollies that ride along beside the assembly line You'll see somebody grabbing Parts out of them their little tilt with rollers on the shelves have tilt with Roseanne show the spare parts just slide gradually down towards the assembly worker there places where a tire will come rolling down from a place above and just as it hits. That was a war. Chris waste the car which is going on assembly line will raise right up to the waist for the work at simply takes it and swings around it and puts it on instead of having to lift it up where to crouch down to put it down or kind of little things have been done with other kinds of things any boss could do if they thought about it. They were kind of things engineers would do if they thought about the problem was a lot of times the bosses the engineer's didn't think about it. But the way the Toyota people had arranged it was they had encouraged the workers to come up with a whole lot of these suggestions and most of them had come from workers and we had a very interesting impact. Not only were these ideas more efficient. But they made the workers feel as though they were participating in the process and they also got the workers to think about their work. So that the workers were not only assembly-line workers were not only doing their job. They were constantly being challenged and then invited to meetings you've heard about him quality circles are all kinds of different names on them with this concept Kaizen continuous Improvement. The workers are being stimulated and asked all the time to keep thinking about their work to use their minds as well as their backs and their hands and that was absolutely critical. That was Central to what was going on in Toyota and white Toyota actually was more efficient and still is today more efficient than any of the auto manufacturers in America. The next thing was that they were taking a terrific rest for the workers. They have figured out that if they were going to get top-quality they going to have to get top-quality whatever it was. Insurance processing of papers production of cars quality of boards that go into computers what have you they going to get top-quality? They're going to have to get it from every single person down on the line who is doing the most immediate job of production or of relating to the customer and the case of the Auto industry what that meant was you said to the auto worker you cannot deliver a car which is anything less than 100% perfect to your customer. How the Intriguing thing that I found in Toyota the minute you say it sounds so obvious but it obviously was some genius Man by the name of patreon Owen Toyota who thought up this idea who's the customer customer and Hiroshima and Nagasaki the customer in Austin or Minnesota Minneapolis and Germany know the customer that you almost said to the Japanese workers at Toyota plant is the next worker on the line. It's your friend. Harika home. You see everyday, you cannot deliver a car whatever part of the car you working on to arica, which is anything less than a hundred percent. Perfect. That's called the internal customer in the lingo today right in the tqm system. It's a it's an internal customer, but it wasn't cuz it didn't have a name at that point, but just the next person down the line. and then they did the really daring thing and they said if you are about to deliver something that is less than 100% perfect to hireko stop the production on the American Auto industry up until very few years ago stopping production for anything less than the loss of life or limb or the end of a shift was absolutely for boat. I mean, I've talked all kinds of people will tell me what a heresy that was for what to eat you out on a date was the string a laundry line over the heads of the workers all the way along the assembly one. Any side pull on it once if there's a problem and we'll get a bunch of people to come running to see if we can help you. If it doesn't get fixed within 20 seconds full on it twice and the line stops. Stops. Actually, the real idea came from W Edwards Deming the American management girl who went over there and consulted with Toyota and a bunch of the other Japanese manufacturer. And what Deming a reason was that even though it cost you more at the moment to fix the problem to find out whether or not you had a defective part or would you had to work or who is installing something wrong or whether not you had a bad fit or something like that? It was going to cost you more stopping the line for 20 minutes 30 minutes 3 hours now, but guess what? If you did it, you didn't have to call back 200,000 cars for defective part sometime later, which cost you a lot more get it at the point. But getting its appointment that you had to give the worker the responsibility and also the sense of empowerment that encourage the worker to take that responsibility. I've been talking about the Auto industry, but it can apply to anything you're doing I just walked out on the television production for a three-week book tour and I left the television. Grab that is dear to my heart in the hands of an editor in a proof that I just got a trust to do it. Right and you all do that you do that all the time. The question is how far can your radius of trustgo the one person to persons three person to an organization or can you build an organization where that radius of trust is reaching out including everybody the further you can build a radius of trust the far more flexible and high quality organization. You can get interesting idea of the notion that trust has a radius connected to it and that's very important to getting people to to do high performance do that kind of high performance. I think I have different kind of people you can't do in high school education to focus on high school for Mommy can't do what we did for a lot of years that work. Just fine back in the sixties in the seventies. There was a mass production in American high schools. It was very comfortable to the mass production that may GM the dominant car maker in the world enormous volume standardized Parts basic repetition of task. Reliability showing up for the job don't think just do it and an education to match. We had a high school education. They did pretty well in the kids rolled out of the average high schools in America and they did just fine in that kind of industry, but if industry starts changing and you want team players and problem solvers and people are thinking about their jobs that kind of education is going to do it anymore. Now a couple of things came across to me that I didn't expect and it will really important learning experience for me. I don't know if you know a couple of these facts you may but they're very important facts 70% of the young people in America do not finish four years of college. We think of ourselves as a nation of college-educated people and I dare say most if not all the people in this room are college-educated and most of the people we talked to her college-educated so our conversation and our experience doesn't give us most of the time very much experience to know what the reality of that other 70s. that is like the other fact that's interesting is and you can get it from the labor secretary and get it from the US Chamber of Commerce and get it from people all across the Spectrum. 70% of the jobs in the year 2090 States of America will not require a four-year college degree. Okay, 70% of the kids aren't going to do it and 70% of the jobs don't require but guess what we are not preparing that 70% of the kids for that 70% of the jobs going to any high school in America and ask the principal the guidance counselor the teachers the PTA how they're doing and they will tell you all kinds of things about the kids were going to go to college the percentage of their graduates who are going on to good colleges nationally known colleges local colleges junior colleges you name it guidance counselor is always got a list of the start asking about the other kids who aren't headed for college and you sometimes get blank stares you sometimes get stutters you get if you get one or two stories, but it gets quiet real fast. Why because we're not focused on them? Bert Grover who used to be the state school superintendent in your next-door neighbor State in Wisconsin said America has two tracks Forest High School Kids, the college track and the track to know where the college track and the track to nowhere started looking into this. I got interested in what other countries do and what other people do and I went to Japan in German. I was looking at industry, but I also looked into education primary education high school education how people educate their kids and so far and I wanted around this country and got some help from some very knowledgeable Educators and I saw study in the Wall Street Journal I done by two very prominent Educators nitpick 20 top school districts in America, and one of them was blue Springs just outside of Kansas City. In Missouri Blue Springs High with single out as one of the 20 best high schools in America. So I went to Blue Springs High initially with a producer but then later on with a camera crew and we talked to them again about the college-bound kids and then on college-bound kits and then we ask their help in finding a pretty typical non college-bound kit. We found a kid named Jason Fuller and I don't know if you noticed a job at the book is dedicated to Jason Fuller and the kids were like him in America because I think we got a real problem for those kids and it's our problem is not their problem. But we're making it their problem. Jason Fuller was in a senior and 18 year old kids. Nice kid clean-cut polite speaks. Clearly. Both parents are working have jobs. They have a nice Suburban home The Lawns well-kept. There's no drug or alcohol problem. I can tell this is a good clean middle class American family. Nice kid attends school doesn't play hooky got a car is Grandfather helped him buy it and this is the education Jason for was getting in his senior year. He had completed three years of math and then Missouri that was enough high school math. It wasn't taking any more Matt. He was taking I'm looking only be described as a watered-down course in English General English ever hear about the snow supposed as my sister general education Lookout. That's a warning that something is it ain't honors and in college track. It ain't Vance placement. It isn't even regular it's General General ad those are often water down courses. In this case. It was clearly at Watertown course in English. He was taking a tech course in electricity, which was basically done in a shop room at the at the high school. He had a study hall and he was taking a course in marketing cuz Jason want to get out of the world in the in the school was going to try to help him build a career. But the real reason that Jason was taking marketing. Was because there was a co-op program which allowed him to get out of school at 11:15 in the morning. And so I went to the Sonic Drive-In where you work 35 hours a week. What about twice as much time as he was spending in school every week and he flipped hamburgers. And the school signed off on that I talk to mr. Keister, who is this teacher they signed off on that and I said, you know is actually he got in a fight with the with the after a while with the one of the assistant managers and he quit but just a qualified to get out of school. He took a job with his aunt who is a tax accountant and worked out of her home and he was doing clerical work filing for her while I went to mr. Keys to the marketing teacher who is kind of Jason's guidance counselor. There was another school guidance counselor, but he was in charge of the program. And I said do you think Jason is building a career? And he said yes, and I said, well what for what career he said well for police work I said for police work. I'm missing something here has worked as a short-order cook and he's now working in doing clerical work. He said yeah, but he's learning to go to work. He's learning to be responsible is learning how to the process his paycheck. He's learning how to relate to an employer, you know, and I hope when he when he finally gets a chance to be a policeman. He'll remember that was through the school. That he learned these important things. Okay change the frame we're going to Germany. We're outside is still got into town every single thing. We're looking for a kid who was a dead ringer for Jason Fuller. Both parents working middle-class Family actually turn out they're both Auto Workers both the fathers were out of work as both parents working doesn't have a separate home was in a row of Townhouses kid has a little car. His name is Roland Locker Jason instead of having a crew cut. He's got his hair up in the pompidou. But otherwise, he's a Dead Ringer didn't like school. Didn't want to go on a college didn't know what he wanted to do with his life at 16 in the German system. This kid gets a chance to but also has to and by the way 2/3 of the German kids high school kids do this High school-age kids do this to go into what is called a dual educational system half-time in school halftime on the job on the job. Us often means well auto mechanics industry in Germany there 400 different. Engel work in a bank and working Insurance Company of being a hospital. You can work at a newspaper York work in a law office trying to be a paralegal all these semi technical jobs that are now growing enormous play in any modern economy are the kinds of jobs that kids are trained for this program. And by the way, the ultimate career potential is jobs is unlimited. I met and know the chairman of the Deutsche Bank, which is the biggest bank in Germany indeed the biggest bank in Europe. He is a graduate of apprenticeship program. He never went to college. I'm at all kinds of other managers at lower levels to it had similar experience. In fact, you can take an apprenticeship in management and marketing and sales and advertising all kinds of stuff. And it's a quite sophisticated course, I went to the classes that rolling back and went to his electric electricity course was a college-level course in physics. And when she was taking electricity section, he wasn't just taking Matthew was taking calculus ladies and gentlemen in Germany 40% of high school age kids take calculus in America 6% and almost all of those are on a college in Japan 94% in modern industry. You need some calculus if you want to be good. So these are the kinds of things that are going on in 2 and 1/2 days of classes. Roland rocket was getting pumped into him a serious academic program. That was light years ahead of what rolling what Jason Fuller was getting and when I first met him he was in the apprenticeship Center at Mercedes-Benz. And he and two of his colleagues. We're trying to dope out a problem their instructor a master Craftsman had programmed in air into the computer for the $1000000 robot that they were operating and it was their job to find the air was a real life problem very similar what they would have found on the factory floor and I said to the master Craftsman $1000000 robot. What are you doing with this kind of a robot for kids? That's the same kind of robot. We just saw we were filming also in the in the Mercedes plant that we just saw it in the plant. He said, of course you said they got to have the latest equipment which I think tomorrow's workers. We can't give him old equipment how many Vo-Tech centers are vocational centers in America. Do you think have equipment that industry has gotten rid of and is passed on because it's old equipment and how contemporary do you think their training is if that's equipment they're learning on and we had it doesn't matter what kind of equipment you're talking about. It's an interesting additive German industry West German industry spends 15 billion. Dollars a year on its share the Dual education. If you took their population our population, it would be 60 billion dollars in America for American industry to spend if we did something comfortable that guess what is Lou gerstner CEO of IBM recently Reinventing education. I'm rethinking America. He's Reinventing education, you know, we're all into the real thing, right? In his book. He says American Business spends his estimate Thirty billion dollars a year on remedial education for high school kids who cannot do good enough mass communications another problem solving and by the way other estimates range is high as a hundred billion to 200 billion dollars. His estimate is low, but that's his number. He also cited a survey by the end of him. That's Association of Manufacturers, which says American industry loses 30 billion dollars worth of business is a year because it cannot upgrade its products and processes because the workers simply cannot handle the task because they're not well enough educated and trained just take his numbers 30030000000 comes out 60 billion. Want to do what the Deming suggested to the Toyota folks why not catch the defect at the beginning of the production line in the educational system instead of fixing it at the end of the production line. After the kids have graduated now. The interesting thing is people are starting to do that in America. You met Jason Fuller your metroland vaquer now meet Eric Bowman. Who's the kid from, Appleton, Wisconsin? Same kind of kit bored with school average grades not going to drop out no idea where he's going to go afterwards hates English hates math. Wish the school were over 1991. He signs up for the very beginning of one of Wisconsin's dual education program. They call it youth apprenticeship same kind of deal. I think it's 3 days in school than two days on the job or it's 2 and 1/2 minutes a half day. He stay awake. I forget what it is with just about 50-50. They they begin to sit down in the printing trays and say we can't compete globally if we don't have better kids. I talked to John terrenas a guy down in That's not Green Bay Wisconsin town just south of there and he said the high school diploma is worth what is written on the kids? We get out of high school. We can't use we got to do something about it. So terrenas and other businessmen down there got together with a local high school and they began to rewrite the curriculum for math for chemistry for other things that were related to that industry and they also divides a bunch of proficiency standards for their industry and they said all right, we'll combine this thing will make a dual education system the way the Germans have and what we'll do is we'll give the kid a high school diploma and a certificate of completion which will indicate a quality of a skill the same way the Germans do and the kids can take it wherever they want a John Traina suspending three thousand bucks a year to train the kids in his in his shop and he's now doing every year and he takes 9 or 10 kids and he has begun to be a happy employee in X in terms of the kids. You can find but go back to Eric Bauman. I made him a year-and-a-half into the program is in his senior year in high school After High. Done this for a year-and-a-half. I asked him what he thinks is it change cut his mother says you can't believe it even talks to us at the dinner table. He cut his hair. He's got to say he's related to the outworld and then I said Eric, how's it feel to you? And he says I said, you won't believe what I'm going to tell you and I said what he said I made the Dean's List I said, how can you make the dean's list? You don't even like the subject to take out the math. I'm taking that is completely different from the math. I was taking before I'm not so sure it was all that different. It was frame differently. He noticed it was relevant to the way he was running the prices. He was taking chemistry and he needed to understand the cameras do well in order to handle the inks and modern printing isn't just putting stuff on paper is putting stuff on Plastics and metals and in 29 different colors. It's a very complicated business is not simple stuff but the kid was turned on he was turned on by a couple of things. It was turned on by the fact that the adult world was taking him. Seriously. Just something he desperately wanted as a 17 or 18 year old sound familiar. And the second thing is you saw education being relevant to the world. He wanted to enter. He's Grey's went up in his performance when I can't tell you how many times that story is repeated John. Turina's the employer is delighted to get the employees that kid is turned on and the parents can't believe what's happening Wisconsin started in the printing trades. They wanted to healthcare there in the bank either into Insurance there into the tourist industry. Are there any Electronics there in the egg business there in the small business? I can't remember all of the time now in a 9 field. It started into communities. It's now in 30 Community starting to high school. Is it now in 80 high school has started in five businesses is now in 200 businesses and it's growing it's going on in Maine is going on in Pennsylvania to a lesser degree is going in Arkansas at starting at Oregon. It's an upper New York state. I'm not suggesting. This is a universal education system that you can use for everybody, but the college-bound of got a track And people know what to do and we've got standards are called SATs and we got entrance exams and we got a track record that we keep track of these other kids. We don't they are the backbone of our future were in fact, that's the precisely the workforce that is an able in the manufacturing area at least the Germans and the Japanese and others to gain a leg up on us. Now, we've come back we're resilient. We got great companies some of yours. I'm sure but Motorola Ford Boeing Xerox Levi Strauss Corning, you can name a bunch of almost all of them have a common characteristic of being willing to rethink of going back and saying what is it? We've always taken for granted that we do and how can we do it differently? And how do we Benchmark ourselves against the best in the world? And how do we stimulate learning in a one of the one of the phrase? I hear everywhere I go is high performance and it gets tacked onto the word workplace high-performance work place. I asked everybody I talk to when I'm doing research on this thing. What is a high-performance workplace and I got all kinds of answers. The best answer I've gotten from anybody in the world came from Ray Marshall former Secretary of Labor now a professor of Economics at the University of Texas and an author of some very good books on these subjects and cooling one called thinking for a living Ray. Marshall said to me a high-performance workplace is an efficient system for Learning and efficient system for learning. Nothing about cost. Nothing about quality. What are you saying is that ideas in the ability to rethink whatever it is you're doing is the most critical thing and the environment that generates that kind of safety and stimulus safety to know that if you come up with good ideas, you're going to work yourself out of a job and stimulus to share your ideas with other people because neither you nor they feel threatened by that sharing process. That's the key. That's why it's called rethinking America. Thanks very much. Author and New York Times correspondent Hedrick Smith speaking recently in the Twin Cities at the Minnesota Business Roundtable Smith also responded to questions from the audience. AutoZone expenditure for student compared with that of a German in Japan in high school America spends more per capita per student for kids were in college at the college level to get below the college level. We fall below them in our expenditure in particularly striking in primary grades. Now, what is also striking is that we tend to spend much more on on buildings on physical plant and if you particularly take instructional cost per student, then we lag and it's significant one of the other. I mean I mentioned to you the Toyota plant didn't look terribly modern. I've been to a bunch of Japanese schools and the buildings are adequate but they don't look for a jazzy. I mean, we got much better looking schools than I do. In fact, I've been in lots of schools in Japan where there is no Heating in the quarters and it's cold there in the winter time. They have Heating in the individual rooms, but they don't have it there. We would we would consider some of their physical facilities not Spartan but in a kind of bear, but they put the money into the teacher. Teachers by the way, in those two societies are better paid relatively speaking than they are in America and just think of the Japanese word Sensei. It's a term of great respect since I'm in most kids know what in America because the karate, you know, all the karate movies also the kids balling NSYNC Sensei Sensei Sensei. What is the term of respect that means teacher? I don't think teacher has the same kind of ring in America still do something. The question was it what level do the Japanese or German start the Dual education the Japanese don't do it. The Japanese. I have a system which is more like ours which is general education and they allow the industrial chain to take place in the in the job World afterwards, but the employer's take on a much greater job training responsibility both financially and morally to the society to the parents to the new employees then we do here and that's a big thing in Japan that happens immediately when you become a new employee management or otherwise, they start in Germany at at 16 they do about the same thing in Denmark and Australia is not just Germany. There's a whole area of Northern Europe that has this kind of a system you might be interested. That is a click. This is clearly tracking and one of the questions I often get is isn't that tracking and what you have to say about that one of the things that I didn't realize and and found the traveling around was it we track earlier than any advanced industrial country in the world. We begin tracking in the primary grades and in Germany the first couple years of school or grade free. I don't even give give kids grades. Let alone put them in reading group both Germany and Japan particular in the primary schools do a great deal of mixing of kids of different abilities. Deliberately. They put them together in order to keep everybody move in together in order to motivate everybody and they make very high demands on all kids of some kids start to fall behind. They put in normous extra teacher effort in Parental effort behind those kids to keep moving along then you get to around the sixth grade in in in Japan and begins to sort out and you begin to sense with kids are really going to go towards the best universities starts Mill universities and towards other job. So there is a stratification with which occurs but they tend to defer it longer than we do and then when they do it they do it quite openly say, okay now, we really got to give them the kind of training they need and the Germans tend to be the same way. They put it off longer than the Japanese they put it off until about twelve or thirteen and then you begin to see in a going to the junior high and under the high schools there different levels of high schools in their kind of quite open. Point was made that the American Business tents regard education is the business of Education what I've been talking about in Japan and Germany suggest a greater collaboration between the educational system in the world of Commerce. How can we hope to move in that kind of a direction given our past our values are institutions. Is that the question? Yeah. Well, I think I think you know an invention is the mother of mother necessity is the mother of invention and Innovation. I think we're going to feel the pressure to do that. We just simply not keeping up at all kinds of international test repeatedly show that the fourth grade 8th grade twelve grade in at the United States ranks about 12 13th repeatedly in math and science in particular compared to almost any country on the world of talking Hong Kong Korea Taiwan China, Japan Germany Denmark Sweden that kind of stuff and all kinds of four ways of going out to look at biology classes in the physics class is silver to actually see if it's true and it's true. The text books are just a different level, I think. Is going to take probably institutionally if you're looking for an institution to push it I would think business is going to push it, eventually people are going to have to stop saying a it's their job and we have customers are going to keep taking what they're turning out and and B I think educators are going to have to admit something this reluctantly that they're going to have to be more actively responsive to the marketplace. I mean what's going on? Is that the best business? I mean, there's all kinds of writing and talk. I don't need it till this group your ear all the professional reading you do talks about being customer-driven why can't schools be a little bit more customer Trevon customer-driven to the college's they prepare all kinds of advanced placement courses. They have no shame about that SAT scores. That's very customer-driven your customers the next stage along the line Y not be customer-driven there and I think a lot of it has to do with fear the fear that you're going to be found in a falling short. The fear that somebody else is going to invade your Province the fear that you're going to lose your job, but the truth the matter is if you recast your job. You rethink your job and you see it is a more collaborative job. You're not going to lose it. You're going to become all the more necessary people going to need that kind of teaching of that kind of education. I think I want it they going to want to pay for it. But I think I'm in the fact that Lou gerstner writes a book of the kind that he wrote. I mean is it is it a cry and I might have talked to Bob Galvin at Motorola and David currents MB. David friends went from zero to head the new America School Development Corporation. That's how passionately he believes. It's important and there are now and across America. Then I was several a very effective reform movements. The youth apprenticeship is just one of them. I describe another one that Coalition for essential schools. The new American School development program are there's a comer program run by a guy named Comer at who's a psychiatrist at Yale University directed toward primary schools in inner cities for minority kids. There are these are programs will not just one or two schools. There's another one called a Texas Interfaith educational Association, which has a remarkable track record now developing among Hispanic kids. In very poor areas of cities like San Antonio Houston Dallas, we we're not talking about it. We don't have a public dialogue which Embraces the information is out there back in the eighties. We didn't know what to do in a lot of ways. Now the models are out there the real question is how do we replicate? How do we bring it to scale? How do we learn from each other? And how do we understand how important it is? And you know, what I do is beat my tambourine Hedrick Smith was asked about the community's role in the school systems in Japan and Germany and of America system for Community involvement is part of the problem or part of the solution. Well, I eat both, you know, it is part of the problem. But one of the things are good things about dispersal is it when you get initiative if people do on do on the process the other systems are much more highly centralized. The Japanese is centralized nationally, the Ministry of Education sets a national curriculum. There is some flexibility with in that curriculum, but the standards are very clearly and set out and all Japanese teachers know, you know, right where they ought to be at the end of 4th grade or whatever. It is in Germany. It is more state-based. It's a much more federali's system. But once again, the state exercise has more Direction, I wouldn't say control but it's more Direction, you know, I think one of the critical things to deal with that question and believe you me I've asked that question many times one of the people I talked to his very interesting is Tom Kane the former Republican governor of New Jersey who tried to do some reform efforts in New Jersey and he kept getting individual things going but he couldn't any couldn't get it X I think benchmarking is terribly important image. Prius found benchmarking extremely useful in terms of how do you do your marketing your warehousing your advertising your production and break all your your functions down as nearly as possible. Then go find the best practice in the world. I think we desperately need to know that in the field of Education. We don't know that and I don't know that we can collect that kind of data. Anyway, effectively other than Ashley. I mean, I talked some people in Philadelphia and they send a group of physics teachers to Austria to find out what the kids and Austin were learning in physics. I met some people in New York and they send another team to Denmark to find out what the biology I mentioned it before the biology textbooks are about with every kind of every state every city. Every County can't be doing that. We need some way to go gather that information to my hunches if we could get that information. Federally collect it and make it available in their Council for education in the states there Council of Chief State School officers in that kind of stuff if we could get that information and spread it out through these organizations that already exist. It would give at least local school boards and local parents and local politicians and local teachers and principals some guidelines as to where it where they stand. I mean I go on communities and lots of people concerned about education but the minute you start talking about their own School unless they have a particular complaint about a particular teacher that hasn't been nice to their Johnny or isn't doing a good enough job for their Susie tell tell you what high school is pretty good with schools in America are so good. But our schools. Okay. Well, how do they know they may be right there may not be right. So I think one of the things we need as a stimulus and as a yardstick is some kind of benchmarking that that can at least help that spread out 15,000 School District system of ours to understand where the heck it stands and will allow me. How to say hey we're not up to Snuff have a feeling time is running out on what to do. If I don't questions dealt with worker participation in decision-making and improving quality. Well, what's interesting is at least some significant American corporations have decided it's important for them to do something. I was asked to testify up in Capitol Hill just shortly ago on this on some of things that I'd found and I was interested to see that several Executives for Boeing where they're talkin about what they were trying to help do in the Seattle area in the Puget Sound area in the school cuz I thought it was so critical. I know I've talked to Bob Galvin and George Fisher when he was at Xerox before he went over to web to Eastman Kodak and they're now moving outside of their internal education program to try to reach out to him to the schools. And Xerox is doing it down around the area around Austin, Texas. I mean, I think part of what happens is John Clendenin that had a BellSouth is an absolute bear on the subject in the head of TRW and the Business Roundtable. Let me know what's happening is more and more prominent people in the business Community are coming. Understand that this is not altruism. This is long-term enlightened self-interest and it seems to me that's the kind of conviction that you need or things aren't going to move and then there has to be willing to stay to roll up the sleeves and go go do the job but you're actually writing me implementation is tough a resistance is strong. We love to talk about change and we always have a hard time changing and the best evidence of that in the world is is is how many best-sellers there are that are diet books if going on one diet was easy there wouldn't be any need to write all those additional books with suggest that the minute you try to change human behavior. It gets very difficult, but it can be. I have a feeling that should I stop at take one more? Hope they're right over here. Class sizes in Japan by a larger about 10 students larger than in America there about 34 pain the average in Japan and 24 on the average income in you know cross. The board is at my statistics. He's come from from a very good book that perhaps the former question and it was called The Learning Gap by Stigler and Stevenson which Compares a lot of stuff in the Japanese Chinese and American school systems performance and then cultural habits in that kind of stuff in Germany. I don't know the number but I think it's about the same as the American number school size is enormously important and we tend to focus on class size. And the reason why school size is important is not just because of the ability to have direct relationships with the students, but the ability of the faculty and the teachers to be able to interact with each other because what some educational Studies have found as the more interaction there is a Teachers particular at the high school level the better chance there is that they will deliver a unified instructional ethical and General Life message to their kids and that in the larger high schools. The faculties are so dispersed that the kids are really having very different experience of the different teachers and the principal can hardly get control of the school back some of the most effective before models in America today involve just breaking up a school of 2000 kids and a high school in the five schools not changing the faculty much at all, but just breaking it up and making it a manageable size not unlike what's going on in Industry with decentralisation. The interesting thing is what begins to happen when people are willing to rethink and change the mindset. You're right. That's the difficulty with implementation. That's the biggest hurdle. Thank you for your attention. I appreciate being here. It was nice to be with you. That was Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times correspondent and best-selling author Hedrick Smith. His new book is titled rethinking America. He spoke recently in the Twin Cities at the Minnesota Business Roundtable at a small Rural High School in New Hampshire and English teacher may lose her job because she included books about gay and lesbian characters in her literature class has the controversy is not just about censorship but also the role of Educators and teaching social values lie Department reports. Mascenic High seems like a nice place to go to school. It's small friendly and nestled in a bucolic corner of Southwestern New Hampshire people here contribute both time and money to the school and School board chairman. Steve lizotte says the community has a lot to be proud of in the state. We have baseball softball teams going to playoffs. We have some very good things in the school district / English teacher Penny culleton and the books about gay people her students were reading call. It has been teaching for 11 years. She says she chose the books to counteract negative stereotypes about gay people in other literary Works including Classics like Holden Caulfield Catcher in the Rye Covington says she applied for a special Grant to buy the books with the full knowledge of the school administration and the school board. That wasn't as if I were building up, Speak program in secret and then spring it on the school or the community. I just do not do anything really covertly in any way. You really can't win. Anyway, keep anything secret if you wanted to it's just not possible. We have one hallway in the school, you know, the books in question are Maurice by em Forster the education of Harriet Hatfield by May sarton and the drowning of Stephan Jones by Betty Green. They don't contain sexually explicit scenes, but they do portray gay characters in a positive light and examine the social stigmas. They have to overcome cullitons decision to include these books in her curriculum upset many of the conservative residents in the school district teacher said that kind of an example then they destroy the moral fiber of the children in the country and they have no business doing that like Manning in the community Walter araujo is a Finnish descent a Lutheran who puts the church at the center of his life. He says his fourteen children learn. Values at home people who are exposed to certain lifestyle certain Temptations are going to be more subject to those Temptations than people who aren't and I don't want that to happen, especially with my own children who is married dismisses. This point of view is bigotry. She says that she's exposing her students to anything. It's tolerance. I don't really think anyone has the right to exclude a group of people like that. I think that is extremely arrogant to say that well, I haven't be heterosexual and so I'm in the 90% And I'm the majority and I can always say what goes that is in and you know, my sexual orientation is the right one. That's extremely arrogant but apparently culliton superiors disagree in January the school principal told her to take the books off the shelves, even though he himself had signed a purchase order for them earlier culliton says she was told the school board didn't like the books. Colton says she asked school officials why the books had to be removed but got no answers. So she went ahead and handed out Morris to our seniors and Harriet Hatfield to her Juniors. Her students had just started reading the books in early May when the principal had them collected in the middle of class shortly after the superintendent sent culleton a letter recommending her dismissal both the principal and the superintendent have refused to make any public statements about the case, but the superintendent's letter charged Peloton would willfully and maliciously violating instructions not to distribute. The books is Colton is fired. Some of her students will be upset Junior Jaclyn broadhurst says culleton is the best teacher she's had it mascenic because Colleton is taught her to discover her own values the school board, I think. Doesn't like his cousin because they think she she am upstairs trouble or something. I guess which I mean, I guess you could look at it that way, but I don't see it as Rancho. I think it's bringing reality into town. You know, I think you need to face culliton says she plans to fight for her job. She's being represented by the National Education Association. The state's largest teachers union the school board meanwhile refuses to discuss the case. It's scheduled to hold a hearing on cullitons dismissal on June 27th after school lets out for the year for National Public Radio. I'm leaving Hartman reporting.