let's look at our top stories. police in boston put an end to the naon's longest on going occupy encampment. just before dawn, officers began forcibly evicting squatters who set up cam notary public dp in . three socially progressive women are sharing this year's nobel peace prize. we'll show you more in just a moment. stay close with us. preparing women and minorities for the jobs of the future is what we're talking about. your bottom line starts right now. >> we tackle overcrowded schools and show where you undercrowding is the worry. good morning, everyone. i'm christine romans. also engineering and math, they're the careers of the future, careers that pay. we'll talk to an astronaut whose mission it is to get girls and minorities engaged in stem. and then we'll tell you how to save for college for that

budding rocket scientists. first, blame the banks, blame consumers, blame capitalism, blame government. but who is blaming they willselves? did a prosperous america lose the ethical way and how do we get it back? i'm thrilled this morning to have three very special guests to help us do some soul searching about the economy and our values and how they feed on each other. rabbi boti, author of "the blessing of enough ": rejecting material greed and embracing spiritual hunger" and author david callahan, and a frequent guest on this program, the author of "the soul of leadership." you said to me something that resonated. first in the consumer should do is learn to stop spending money that they haven't earned to buy things that they don't need to impress people they don't like. you went on to tell me that buying if you have f stuff we doend need with money we don't have, it's to keep up with the joneses. america got selfish. and america is paying. is it as simple as that?

>> americans are selfish, greedy, complaisant and has a sense of entitlement. we only have basics here. >> we have a government that is divided quite frankly right now about what it's role should be. what is the ethical, the moral role, i guess, for government to help us out of this mess we're in? >> i personal ly and i think modern self righteousness is jealouscy with a halo. you can't impose morality, i think. it's a natural expression of our emotional and spiritual maturity. and by and large, we are at a very early stage of development. >> let me bring in another one of our colleagues.

i know you say this isn't a religious problem but a spiritual deficiency. i want to show you a chart that illustrates younger eer generat are less affiliated. if we practice soulless capitalism, how do we get back to soulful capitalism in a world where people are embracing fewer religious and spiritual values? >> let's gun with a problem. the united states uses money with a occur enstoi purchase self-esteem. we perverted it. i think it is no longer i think i am, i have therefore i am. the more i have, the more i am. this is a basic erosion of not just morality and ethics but a basic identity. the fact is that we believe that accumulation is why we're here. these hedge fund managers running billions a year, they can never spend it. it's just about being listed on some number that grants them

self-esteem. we all feel a deep sense of inadequacy. essentially, we're using material objects to fill gaping holes of our soul that are supposed to be filled with family, community, relationship with god. the united states even has god on its money. we don't have god on all thee consumer products that we're desperate for. there is a spiritual deficit in america. >> think about it. we have every blessing in america. we have a very high standard of living. but we don't have the blessing of enough. enough is never enough. super size me. bigger is better. this is what directly collapsed our economy. our houses are big enough but they weren't ultimately large enough. the cars were never new enough. people trade cars after three years that are in perfect working order. our clothing designer labels were never fancy enough. it really betrays a feeling of

anonymity. i'm a nobody but if i have someone's name on my rear, it makes me feel special. it is true of our children and teenagers. they lack identity. they submit to peer pressure. >> i want you to listen to something the president said earlier in a speech in kansas talking about opportunity decline in america. >> long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. >> have we lost the connection between hard work and merit and reward? and does that feed into your book as about the cheating culture, does that feed into the cheating? is there a cheating culture here, too? >> i want to figure another culprit in this story which is rising economic inee quality. >> which is what the president is talking about. >> we heard about the 1% getting so much richer. they have. they tripled their incomes over the past 30 years even as many middle class people have -- are just treading water. inequality brings the worst out

in americans. i think the outsized rewards can make people feel like it's worth cutting corners. it's worth taking big risks to grasp the big rewards. look at all the stuff that happened on wall street. some of those people who were bundling the subprime mortgages, they made hundreds of millions of dollars while kind of, you know, screwing over the rest of americans. >> money is what makes it all move. and i guess there's money that can make your life better. and it can make you comfortable. then there is money that can distort and that can corrupt. >> one last thought. >> i can just point out, the reason why we're not making any progress in this conversation is we're scapegoating. it's not the super rich who are soully at fault. all they are is us on steroids. they may have sold us subprime junk but it was us that wanted the bigger homes. i would even say -- excuse me for just a moment -- it's also a

religious problem. religion is supposed to convey values. for 20 years in america, the only thing that religion talked about is marriage and abortion. i want to hear about materialism and corruption. and soullessness. but just to blame the government and to blame the super rich absolves us of all responsibility. >> i that i there is a lot to what you said. i also think that we have a political system which is dominated by the rich, that has produced this high level of inequality and that inequality is a poisonous thing, brings out the worst in us. brings out the worst in ordinary americans who feel the system is stacked against them. it brings out the worst in the rich who feel they can get away with anything. >> i'm glad we're talking about it. i'm glad we're talking about what led us here and i'm so glad we're having this conversation. thanks, everyone.

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and trailers and attics and halls. overcrowding is overwhelming and angering parents. but in the cow patches of vermont, class sizes are at an all time low. so small at this elementary school that 5-year-old dylan is the only child in kindergarten this year. >> i really like that they get a lot of attention and individual attention. teaching can be specific to where they're at. the teacher can really meet them where their need is. they feel very safe and also very confident in asking questions. >> vermont has the smallest class sizes in the country. the product of an aging population and a low birthrate. they get home cooked meals. >> an extraordinary part of teaching is being able to listen to children, understand how

they're thinking and constructing information. ♪ >> the state of vermont asked all of its communities, whether they can afford all these small schools and the hefty tax bill that comes with them. waybridge, a town of dairy farmers spends $17,000 per child when the national average is under $10,000. but the residents say they're school is more than just a costly building. >> once the school closes, there really isn't a center. there is no commercial district in waybridge. very few businesses at all. and so the center of activity is the school. >> they combined classes to create a critical mass. but a quarter of the students graduate this spring. dylan's teacher worries too few students limits learning. >> sometimes having a smaller class is harder. the number of children as that decreases also decreases then the amount of i describe it as firepower or brain power in the

classroom. >> dylan likes all the attention. but still would like to see a fuhr more kids his age. >> me here and another kindergarten. >> he's so cute. communities in vermont are offering up solutions and trying to tract more young families to the state. they're even importing students, i'm not kidding, importing students from china who's parents are willing to get an american, rural education. how important is class size? lany handson joins us and justin snyder is also an advising dean at columbia university. we saw a classroom with one student. this is an extreme example of undercrowding, quite frankly. this is rare. my colleague recently visited a new york high school right there that was built for 1400 students and has 3900 students. they're putting kids in the

attic in the basement. that's what you're seeing in the big cities. you get away from the rural schools, that's what you're seeing. do the big class sizes hurt education? >> they absolutely hurt the kids in those schools. even the best schools, for example, the one that you talked about yesterday only 37% of the high school graduates are college ready when they graduate. and that means they have to take remedial courses and often don't get through college because they're not accumulating credits along the way. for younger kids, the costs are even much more damaging. and economists such as allen kruger who is the head of the council for economic advisors has estimated that the economic benefits of class size reduction are worth twice the costs. >> i want to bring you in. a lot of states, most states, actually, have some policy or another on the books to limit or have guidelines for class size. i mean you look at our map here. you can see it is almost every state has some kind of a class size limit. most parents don't want too many

kids in a class. but it's hard to say we're going to put that limit at 29 kids because that is the best for our school. >> the brob class side reduction talks is people think there is a magic number. in california in 1996, they had a surplus of money. they didn't know how to spend it. they basically picked the number 20 out of thin air. they said 20 is the maximum we can have in kindergarten, first, second and third grade. but there is no research to back that up. the research -- >> did it help? >> no. the studies show that actually this is a $20 billion investment when we had the money that didn't lead to improved achievement. >> isn't it common sense though if you have a teacher and two aides or other adults in the classroom that the fewer kids they have, the more that teacher can attend to that child? >> that's definitely true. and what you look at over time, you can see in the united states that we have been increasing the number of people in the classroom in the last 30 years. and so, therefore, the student to teacher ratio dropped. we have in the united states one

of the lowest student teacher ratios in the world. >> and that is counting in professionals and other people in the classrooms. >> when you look at class size, our class sizes are somewhere in the middle or the top of the other industrialized countries. >> china, korea, not necessarily japan, but some of the other place that's are really eeing our lunch eating our lunch on the international tests, they have very big classes. >> the vast majority of korean students go to after school tutoring programs and the average family spends 40% of their disposable income on private tutoring because they know that the class sizes are too large there. china over and over, the experts on the chinese educational system say their system is undermining the kind of critical thinking and creativity that they need for their country to move forward. they want tomorrow late us more which is why they're sending some kids here. >> let me let you have the last word on class size and the whole debate. it is a very big debate. >> right. well, i think that evidence would show that class size

matters but only at the extremes. and when we're talking in the policy world, what happens is we have reductions from 28 to 26. or from 32 to 30. and that's where there is actually no research to say that that's going to do anything. >> all right. lany and justin, i have to leave you there. thank you both. you'll never been able to agree on this. >> there is plenty of research that shows for every single kid you reduce the class size by, there is more learning for the rest of the kids. plenty of research. >> we have to leave it. there thank you both. come back again soon. all right, astronaut, doctor, lawyer, cnn anchor, every kid has a dream of what they want to be whether they grow up. but one woman's dream is with the stars. find out how she got there next. you rule! and my kids would be like, you rule! oh, load up the sleigh; this is going to be a great christmas. [ male announcer ] more christmas for your money, guaranteed. [ male announcer ] more christmas for your money, usa prime credit... this peggy... hi, i'm cashing in my points... peggy?

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s.t.e.m., there's that acronym again. it's science, technology, engineering and math. they're the careers, the fields of the future and the careers that pay. my next guest took her s.t.e.m. degree all the way to space.

dr. jade namison flew above the space shuttle "endeavour" in 1992. she's now working with the baer corporation and their making science make sense program. we all want the make science make sense especially for girls, for minorities, for people who feel like it's not for them, it's too hard, too daunty or they don't have a role model already. why did you get excited about this? >> here is the thing. i think all children are excited about science. we look at the bugs, the snals, we're trying to figure out why do bubbles work, all those kinds of things. that's what's party of children. what happens is they get into school and we beat it out of them, right? so we make it all of a sudden much more difficult, much more mysterious. rather than using that hands on, hearts on, minds on approach. and that's what we have to pay attention to. what are we doing that is discouraging students from going into s.t.e.m., that's keeping

students from understanding the opportunities that are there. >> and the older you get, when you look at kids when they start an engineering degree, for example, it's hard and they can take their smarts and make more money with less work. well, let me tell you this. yes, it's harder. you can take your smarts to make money with less work. it's not harder in the sense that it's not funny more. we take the fun off. so baer corporation d e e bayer survey of department shares. asking women and minorities what happens to them. interesting enough, we know that statistically overall 40% to 60% of students who go into engineering and science fields won't continue on into a major. but girls who come in, department chairs say they are

the best prepared. they fall out at higher levels. people talk about weeding out courses. what those courses do, they don't encourage you to stay in s.t.e.m. they weed you out. not because you don't have the capability or the capacity, but because we have this miysteriou thing that we're supposed to drop that many kids on the out. we don't make it engaging. why do kids go into certain things? because they're engaged with it. and auto good job or career coming down the pike. so you have to expose them to different works. >> and we know that it pays. eight of the top ten majors are all engineering majors. when you look at how engineering compares to the liberal arts majors, we have 75% to 25% percentile. the lowest part of that is 35,000. but any of the engineerings,

computer, mat mathematics. you have to love it to be good at it. >> you have to love it in order to get through the course work. but the way you love it, the way colleges should have kids loving it is by having them, first of all, seeing the range of things you can do with computer science. you can actually understand and make people communicate more clearly. there are lots of things you can do. i want to throw one other thing out. >> sure. >> so we're talking about colleges. but there's another piece that's interesting. jobs that are in science fields that don't require a two-year college degree. >> like? >> a four-year college degree. machinist, right? on shop floors. they require science literacy, biotechnicians retire technology. in fact, there are lots of jobs like that that go unfilled in this country because we don't do an adequate job with science literacy. >> mind me, we have some amazing shots of you on the space

shuttle. i'm amazed. i think this is you working here with all of those things. when you see those pictures, that must have been such an amazing time. that is all that you loved to do, all you studied for right there and practice at work. >> so all of those things that you study for, i did chemical engineering and medicine. that's in there. but the other thing that's in there is that critical thinking, that problem solving, so we're doing experiments. but in order to get up there, you have to work with the engineers. we see the astronauts up there, but all of that was developed by engineers, the shuttle was put together by technicians. >> engineering is creativity. people think it's numbers and rules, but engineering is creativity and problem solving. there's so much room for that in the economy. >> absolutely. >> so nice to meet you. >> you're very welcome. >> thank you. a s.t.e.m. degree can help course child succeed, but it can be expensive. not to worry, though, we'll tell you how you can afford that degree, next. spark card earns double miles... so we really had to up our game.

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we showed you how it pays to go into s.t.e.m. can you afford that s.t.e.m. education? the longer you're saving for college, the better. whether they're an aspiring engineer or not, make a contribution to a 529 plan. most investments in the 529 plan come in the last three weeks of the year and most states offer a tax des dukz for the money you invest. next, don't underestimate the cost of that education. especially an engineering degree. that can take five years. you can afford to borrow more for than engineering degree than you can for a liberal arts major since you can expect to be paid more when you graduate if you're an engineer or you're a scientist. aim for loans totally what you expect to earn in your first year working. that means maybe $65,000 to $85,000 is manageable.