well i guess um i'll start out and that is um i don't know what section of the public school system they're talking about whether it's the first eight grades the high school or colleges i have mixed views on all three of them
um-hum what do you think about what do you think about the the lower grades you know K through seven
well i i i should imagine the lower grades what would what what's what's certainly drawn everyone's attention to that
is the fact that uh many of the inner city and uh i guess what we'd call uh ghetto or poorer districts including rural districts
um-hum
don't seem to be able to produce the students that indeed indeed many uh manufacturing and other enterprises want they can't seem to they can't seem to read properly do math properly and conform to what employers want
right
um-hum
yep i uh
so that's got everybody excited high schools i'm not too sure it seems that high schools at least produce candidates uh although although i have great misgivings about the SATs
that go on to a variety of colleges it seems a great deal of our public colleges
have foreign students in them uh from um a myriad of nations and uh and also um uh i think that
uh a certain percentage of uh the colleges produce a fairly decent uh public colleges produce a fairly decent student or fairly decent graduate
um-hum
yeah i i i just read some things recently where um
uh
colleges now uh graduate programs in general now train basically they're fifty percent foreign
oh i didn't realize it was that high
uh all just about fifty when you consider um when you consider uh
wow
especially in technical areas science engineering and computers yeah especially in those areas it's um i know it's it's almost fifty per cent foreign like forty eight percent and that involves both Canadian
yeah well that's what i was going to point out i think it mostly is that technical
yeah
and uh uh European Middle Eastern and and Far Eastern yeah i i think um i i think i have similar views that's you know where our elementary grades um
wow
it it's amazing i have a friend who's an elementary who's an elementary school teacher and she said that they recently
yeah
you know they have to go through they have to they have to pat the kids down because they bring guns to school she teaches in the city of Baltimore and that
yeah yeah that yeah that must be an inner school i just read a an amazing article i guess in this month's New this week's New Yorker about Baltimore
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yeah
um-hum
uh which uh went on to talk about i don't know i thought it was rather slanted in favor of the mayor or or or the politicians in the in there i do i do i do know a few people and have been have done some business up in Baltimore
um-hum
but it seemed to me that the inner school system there was the one thing that didn't system the inner city school system was the one thing that didn't flower too well they talked about individual cases of people trying hard but it was very difficult
um-hum
i i i i think if i was going to fault it now if i'm i'm looking to carry on a conversation
yeah
that way i think there's a couple of things that really bother me i think when i learned the other day uh uh that uh the average American the average American now watches seven point two hours of television a day
um-hum
and that school children uh are are not far off that mark with six point eight now i don't know what school children what year that is i mean that's a hell of a lot time to be sitting in front of the tube
right
yeah and and it's uh uh it's really you know kids can't read um
it's really sad they you know by the time they my wife teaches uh middle school yeah and and they can't yeah by the time they get there they can't read they they they can't read anything
well i
yeah
really oh so you're close to the subject
and yet you know i have grandchildren i have ten uh nine grandchildren uh in various parts of the country and of course you know i can't speak to the
um-hum
rural or poorer inner city schools these kids go to a fairly they live in a fairly nice upper scale neighborhood and they seem to be doing extraordinarily well i i i mean i quiz them and i talk to them and they
yeah
yeah
um-hum
they read well they do everything well but i i i mean i think that's a
that's part of the environment
yeah i think it's it's probably the work that your your children your children are doing uh um
yeah that that that that could be very well true
she she's yeah she can tell
yeah
she can tell you know when they have kids come in for they meet with all of the parents and she can tell before a parent comes in normally you know give or take eighty ninety percent
right
yes
really
yeah
you know what the parents are going to be like when they come in and the responses the parents will give back oh yeah
no kidding oh i i i yeah i guess i could i can understand that oh i'm a product of the New York City public school system from fifty years ago uh maybe not that long ago but and um and so i i
um-hum
yeah
always felt i didn't get a real good education in the public in the grammar schools and part of high school
um-hum
so i lived in New England at the time i sent all my children to prep school i was i well i didn't have that much money but we struggled and we did it and i thought it
right
i thought a great deal of it was a great deal of the success that they had in their education was due to the low student teacher ratio
i think i think it's probably very true
and i i i think that could that's a formula that could be applied everywhere except it must cost a heck of a lot of money if you do it in public school
um-hum
um-hum
but you know surprisingly i i because you put such a commitment on education um your children probably could have gone to schools with uh uh a higher
yeah
student teacher ratio and still done well because when they would come home you and your wife would say you know what did you do today if we let's sit down and read together yeah um-hum
yeah
yeah
yeah
well that that that's that that must be then then if that's uh i think we both agree on that then then then then a parent parental involvement has to be there and i guess you got to take them away from the tube also another thing that i have another
yeah oh it's parental
yep um-hum yeah
problem i have is uh i don't really know how to resolve this but is the
incredible at least in the high school and college level emphasis on sports where enormous amounts of money are spent and it seems to me that money money could be more well well spent somewhere else
but you know you know what's really funny is that they there's been some research because i'm a i'm a college professor and um uh and and
yeah
oh yeah
well a lot of the research shows that like Georgetown while Ewing was playing at Georgetown basketball Georgetown
yeah
right
right right right
and they were winning
yeah
endowment to the university in other words money that could to everything
everything and normally gets directed away from sports realistically a lot of the was uh was probably two thirds i guess it's now two thirds of what it was
when they were national champions in other words while they're national champions people donate more money
yeah yeah
right
average human beings like you and i average Joes that make a decent salary that are a graduate of the school send big bucks like couple hundreds of dollars but thousands of people
right but i mean it
right
to to what uh to sports you say other things than sports though
because no because normally it's because of the sports
yeah i know but i mean they don't just send it to the new stadium or
right right but see the sports brings in the money
really i well i guess they're
because when Georgetown was number one their their their money money that was donated to them from companies from from local from business people from graduates whatever was up into you know like twenty million dollars and now it's down to like fourteen million
right right right
yeah
during that time period in other other words
well i never thought of that benefit
their income has slowly their their alumni alumni giving and other funds have slowly dropped since then
yeah
well i i never thought of that benefit but the consequence then i my i guess what i'd have to say about that is there can only be one champion
um-hum
yeah
yeah
that's yeah it's it's amazing the way but now that's big time yeah but but uh smaller schools aren't like that uh only only the big time schools show that but you're right i i think the emphasis on sports and as a see i'm a i'm a i'm a former athlete in a sense i swam
isn't that something though i didn't realize that
no
yeah
yeah yeah
but swimming never gets much glory so it really doesn't matter but
well Mark Spitz made a lot of money out of it and he didn't and he came back this year didn't he but he didn't make it ah
that's true that's true but you know they still
he didn't make it no i i would have liked it if he if he would have though but i think uh realistically you know you read the the research studies and uh i don't think he would have made it simply because
yeah
yeah
the well the event he was trying to swim they even the research shows that distance running
yeah
so i would assume distance swimming might be similar that and he was good at distance splits as a swimmer you know at i can remember that but the distance um
well
the the distance strength and endurance or whatever sort of starts to peak at about twenty eight twenty nine thirty that's why some of your long distance runners were in their late early thirties
right right
and but he's was trying to make it in the sprinter's event and most of them are under twenty five
right well
i read i i also read i we're getting off the subject here a bit but i i do want to add this to that because i i was quite interested in that myself but i read where the reason that he had to do this in the sprint events is that national television wouldn't pay
um-hum yeah
uh-huh
for the long distance events and they didn't think they could capture the excitement to get sponsors if you brought just the finish here he comes down the finish line right
oh you're kidding
so it had to be it had to be where they could put it in one segment and get and and i guess capture the whole thing for some sponsor
jeez
and that's
let me ask you another question
as as an athlete i just hate that go head yeah what were saying what were you saying
yeah well if if you teach college uh college and and i know when i went to college i i went to summer school and i thought that uh in fact that uh my my idea of it was uh rather than
yeah
um-hum
rather than finish early i just enjoyed some of the subjects that i was taking and i had the ability to to go in summer school and i
i didn't take those subjects so what that leads me my next thought is i understand there's a lot of talk now about extending the school year which seems inordinately short anyway compared to the Japanese or the Germans
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um-hum
right
yeah i think i think
well how do you think that would work in grammar schools and
i think uh in in some sense um what i would do before i would extend a school year is i would make it better before i would continue the agony
yeah yeah that's right yeah
and something you have to consider too um because i know as as a as a as a former high school teacher i know that from right now
