>> now, in depth with bill ayers. >> host: bill ayers, in your book, "to teach," you talk about teachers having a moral choice. what is that moral choice? >> guest: i think that teaching is profoundly ethical work, and the moral choice is to take the side of the students, to choose to see them as three dimensional creatures with hearts and minds and spirits that have to be both nourished and challenged, and to see yourself as somebody who is

in the position of shepherding the choices of others, and that gives you a profound, i think, ethical responsibility. so part of it is to see the students whole, to see them as human beings not as interchangeable cogs in a machines, manipulatable, but to see them as human beings much like yourself and to open your eyes to that. >> host: as individuals? >> guest: as individuals and members of a community both, and that's one of the techs of teaching right there -- tensions of teaching right there. if you have 25 kids, you have a responsibility to see each kid as the one and only, indiewb lick bl. and that's essential. on the other hand, they're members of a community, and you have to figure out how to help them learn to live together, so it's both. >> host: throughout your books on teaching and on being an educator, you always -- social justice seems to be a theme throughout all those books. in fact, one of your books is

called, "teaching for social justice." what do you mean by that? >> guest: it's taken on the kind of tone of something special or some kind of an add-on, but what i mean by that is very simple which is by teaching in a democracy, at least theoretically, it's quite a different approach to teaching than teaching in any kind of authoritarian or autocratic system. whatever they teach in, you know, fascist germany or soviet russia or saudi arabia or apartheid south africa -- and those systems incidentally all wanted their kids to stay away from drugs and crime, show up on time, learn the subject mearlts, things which we want as well -- but there's something distinctly different about teaching in a democracy, and the difference is social justice. so one way to put it is that whatever else they teach in those systems, they teach obedience and conformity as, number one, hidden curriculum.

whatever else we teach we should be teaching the democratic ideal that each human being is precious, indue applicable, to be treated with utter respect and with profound human rights. so we start from a different angle. so whatever else we teach, we want to teach initiative, courage, imagination, creativity, entrepreneurship, things like that. >> host: is there any case in your view in a democracy where teaching should include conformity and dis34reu7b? -- discipline? >> guest: well, of course, we have to learn to be disciplined to live together. the question is how is it structured and organized? if you create a classroom which is absolute chaos or a school that's absolute chaos, nobody has an opportunity to learn at all. but if your fundamental value in your classroom is one of the

things we're going to be doing here is respecting each individual and learning to live with each other, that means you have teachable moments. you have moments when somebody makes a cruel comment, when somebody tears up somebody else's work, when somebody makes a racial slur. these are teachable moments. they are moments when we use the occasion of whatever has happened to open a conversation about what's fair, what's just, what's democratic. that's the distinct i make -- distinction i make between teaching in a democracy and, say, apartheid south africa. >> host: you write that standardized tests should come with warnings. use of these materials may be hazardous to your intelligence or the life chances of half those taking these tests will be narrowed. >> guest: yeah, i did write. that.

>> host: why? >> guest: frankly, i wrote that 10 or 15 years ago, and it's gotten so much worse that it's kind of hard to believe the world we live in. we have reduced education which is always about opening doors, opening minds, opening possibilities, opening new visions and new horizons. we've reduced that to the taking of a single cognitive test that's culturally biased, that narrows the curriculum, and we've gotten to a point after kind of eight years of following the regimen pretty viciously, we've gotten to the point where the only kids whoever access to music and sports and debate and the arts and science are kids who either live in privileged sun bushes or go to -- suburbs or go to private schools, and that's the result of a silly, standardized test. so the question i ask in the book and i've asked it really all my life as a teacher, who benefits? who doesn't benefit? who profits, who doesn't profit? and, frankly, i think these

standardized tests are a mistake, and they're a mistake because of our obsession with them and our, you know, reaffying of them. they do not represent intelligence or achievement. they represent something, but that something is quite narrow. >> host: could you give an example after what you mean by cultural bias in a standardized test? >> guest: sure. i have a couple of granddaughters now, but i remember a standardized test this my oldest son took, and it was a picture, i think it was first grade. it was very young. and there was a picture of people sitting on a porch, and it said the people are sitting on the, and then they had three choices one of which was a porch. now, the kids that i was teaching at the time had never seen a porch, never heard of a porch, never had encountered a porch in their own reading in the stories they'd been read, so how are they to answer that? now, of course, i grew up with a

porch, so i might be able to answer that quite easily. what if we gave a test to kids in central iowa where we drew a set of rectangular boxes boxes e said the people are living in the and we gave a list of choices and one of them was projects? that's not about intelligence, that's not about ability, that's about experience and cultural background. so again and again what we're testing for, and this is the shame of it and it's the shame that somehow dares not be spoken, but the shame is all they tell us is what we already know. the clearest indicator of how you'll do on any standardized test is how you do on the first one you ever took. the clearest indicator is the educational level and income of your parents. that's a pretty horrible statement for an educator to swallow because i don't want to say to my kids, okay, line up. how much do your parents make?

okay, you stand over there. how far did your parents go in school? you stand over there. i want to believe as an educator i can make a difference in the life experiences and opportunities of kids, but i can't do it if i'm obsessing every day and if my job depends on my kids' scores on this test. >> host: well, bill ayers is our guest on in depth this month, and we're going to put the phone lines up on the screen if you want to participate in our conversation. we're live in chicago at the corner of south state street and congress and just south of the loop in downtown chicago, and this is "the chicago tribune"'s printers row lit fest that is going on this weekend. we also have a studio audience here joining us at the university center where we are doing our live in depth. 20 #-737-0001 if you live in the east and central time zones. 202-737-0002 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones, and we'll begin taking your calls in just a few minutes, but first we want to

look at some of mr. ayers' books on education. "teaching toward freedom" is one of his books. another one is called "zero tolerance, resisting the drive for punishment in our schools." we have "teaching the personal and political," "city kids and city schools," now, these are with several different contributors, and this is "city kids and city schools, more reports from the front rows." we'll get into some of his other books as we go. this is "to teach" which also contains the myth of education. what are some of the myths? >> guest: gosh, i wrote that 15 years ago, you're asking me to remember? [laughter] what i, when i wrote the book i was taken with the fact that when you go to college, it's an

education. when you become a teacher, you get kind of surrounded with these myths, and some of them are things like kids today are different than kids ever were in the world, that these are the toughest kids, the worst kids. that's been said by every generation ever, and now that i'm old i feel myself wanting to say it about young people today. it's just not true. kids experiment, kids try things, kids do things, and so one myth is kids today are different than ever before. another myth is that i remember writing is teaching should be fun. and, you know, i argue that it can be deeply satisfying, it can be, you know, enormously rewarding, but the idea that a teacher should be fun seems to me a little bit like you've put on a clown costume and danced around. that doesn't strike me as particularly correct. you know, one of the myths that i am very concerned about is what i call the myth of the third grade, and that's the idea that the way i often think about it is every fourth grade teacher in the chicago public schools

besides being angry at the kids and the parents is angry at who? they're angry at the third grade teacher because the kids aren't ready, and every high school teacher is angry at every elementary schoolteacher, and as a professor i'm angry at everybody because the kids aren't ready. [laughter] it's absurd, but we have this notion that there's this kind of, you know, some place on mount olympus there's the ideal third grader who does everything just right. it's not true. third graders are various. i've known kids in kindergarten who could read and others who were still wetting their panels, some who were wetting their pants and still reading. there's an idea that there are standards we should all live up to. i'm 65 years old, and the range of what it means to be a normal 65-year-old is huge. it's not narrow, so the idea that somehow a third grader should fit, i argue that they're various, and you have to learn

to teach to the variety that comes into your classroom. >> host: saul stern wrote that mr. ayers is not a school reformer. he is a school destroyer. he still hopes for revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down american capitalism and imperialism, but this time around mr. ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in america's future teachers. >> guest: wow. that's pretty heavy. i don't know what he means about this time around. i've been a teacher since 1965, so it's a long time, and i've always thought that teaching is, you know, teaching at its best is geared towards, as i said, democracy and social justice, and i also think that it's, that progressive education -- and i consider myself a progressive educator -- stands as, you know, as it ought to against the status quo. because the status quo is unacceptable. in the city of chicago, we still have close to a 50 percent

dropout rate. that's unacceptable, and that's a system we need to change. and, you know, in the quote you read i think it's also true that schools do serve social systems. that's why, you know -- and when i talked a few minutes ago i said, you know, soviet schools serve the soviet system, fascist schools serve the fascist system, and at least theoretically we want a more perfect democracy, and therefore, we want more democratic schools. >> host: on your web site, bill ayers.org, you are not a fan of arne duncan, the secretary of education. you write that he is a failed urban superintendent of schools. >> guest: well, i wrote a piece for the huffington post, and actually i like arne duncan very much. what i said the line that you're quoting is that says that it was almost inevitable that the new president would choose from and then you quoted me correctly, from one of the four failed urban superintendents, and what

i meant by that is that michelle rie paul, and arne duncan in chicago, none of those four superintendents have actually shown that they can actually make a system work. what they've got is tremendous public relations. so i go on in that piece to talk, for example, about michelle rie who's the most ideological of the four. arne is probably the most pragmatic of the four, and probably of those four the best choice that obama could have made. but i describe a cover story in time magazine where michelle rie is featured on the cover, and i don't know if you know her, but she's a 39-year-old superintendent, and she's got a very -- the picture on the cover she's carrying a broom, and she looks very mean, and it says how to fix america's schools. and the pivotal paragraph in the time magazine story says this: michelle rie has done more to

reform the washington, d.c. schools in a year and a half than most reformers can do in five years, colon, she's closed 29 schools, fired 139 teachers, fired 39 principals, fired 200 central office staff. period. not a word in that photograph about bringing resources into that starving system, not a word about turning around dropouts, not a word about connecting the schools to the community, not a word about supporting the stability of teachers, and the reason i say they're failed is time magazine calls that reform because those are all proxies for reform if you buy the idea that schooling is a business. i don't buy that idea. not in a democracy. in a democracy schooling is a right and a journey, it's a human right. so that's the argument i have, and it's not meant to be a putdown of arne duncan at all, i were him well. >> host: how did you become a teacher? >> guest: i became a teacher in 196 5.

i had been arrested in a -- weird, i know, but it's true. [laughter] i was arrested in a sit-in at the draft board in ann arbor, michigan, and i went to jail, and in the jail i met a man who had also sat in and remember, this is early right in the beginning of the war when the war was quite popular in the unite, but we thought we had to stand up and object, and we did. i met a man whose wife had just founded a little free school affiliated with the civil rights movement, so in an odd way for me because of that experience school and teaching has always been linked to, you know, the quest for a better world, the world of peace, of justice, of balance, of stability, yeah. >> host: and this was a preschool. >> guest: yeah. i went into this preschool which added a grade a year, and i think we got up to first or second grade. >> host: how many students, and where was it? >> guest: ann arbor, michigan,

it was in the basement of a friends center, a quaker meeting hall. and i think we had maybe 35, 40 kids. >> host: and you did not have a degree at the time. >> guest: no, i didn't have a degree, i was 20 years old. >> host: and was this an accredited school? >> guest: yes. we had one certified teacher. >> host: what about your education? what was your education like? >> guest: i grew up in the western suburbs of chicago, went to suburban schools, good schools. went to glen burg high school and in my junior year i went to a residential prep school and from there to the university of michigan. >> host: how did you end up at lake forest academy? >> guest: you know, i write about it in one of my books. i jokingly refer to lake forest academy as a kind of a reform school for kids with privilege. it's not literally true. i was, i was disenchanted with

school as a lot of 16-year-olds are. i was disconnected from school, my girlfriend had gone away to college, and i saw no purpose in going to school, so my father thought that was a bad choice and looked around for some alternatives, and he had the means to take that alternative. >> host: were you a child of privilege? >> guest: very much so. >> host: why? well, my dad was the chairman of commonwealth edison in chicago which was the electric monopoly. i'm not sure what the name of it is anymore, i still get bills from them. [laughter] >> host: how do yo go from being the son of commonwealth edison to a fugitive? >> guest: just lucky, i think. [laughter] well, you know, it was a particular time in american history, and i do, in fact, feel lucky to have grown up at a time when, you know, in a sense my future was mapped out, my, you know, path was laid out before me, and it was 1963 when i graduated from high school. i went to michigan.

i got caught up in the civil rights movement which was actually even in prep school, interestingly, you know, speaking of the power of books, james baldwin penetrated lake forest academy and hooked me. and to this day i have a special affection for james baldwin because he awakened me in a way that i didn't, you know, when your awakened, you're not aware of what you're about to be awakened to, but james baldwin brought the civil rights movement into my privileged, you know, padded, all-white, all-male prep school, and i was very taken with james baldwin. i went off to michigan, got involved in the civil rights movement there supporting the student nonviolent coordinating committee, and then the war began. the war blew up. and i found myself drawn into the antiwar protest. i didn't know much, but instinctively, intuitively i felt there was something wrong with the united states going 10,000 miles away to pick up the

failed french colonial mission, and the rest kind of followed from that. >> host: who was or is ruthie stein? >> guest: ruthie stein in fugitive days was a, was a woman who had, was an older radical who i really loved and learned from. she passed away many years ago. i don't remember in what context i bring her up there. >> host: she was the artist at the university of michigan who, from my reading of fugitive days, got you involved in the antidrug movement. >> guest: ah, yes, yes, yes. okay. because i changed the names and i wrote it ten years ago. yeah. she was someone who was from new york and a lot more sophisticated than i was, and i had quit school and joined the merchant marines when i was 19. and when i came back from a stint in the merchant marines, i went back to the campus. i reconnected with her, and she took me to my first antiwar

meeting, yeah. >> host: in my reading, and tell me if this is fair, bill ayers, in my reading of "fugitive days," it seems as if you drifted into the antiwar movement. is that a fair statement? >> guest: i mean, you know, in some sense. i mean, i think that all life is a kind of a combination of choice and chance. i mean, i don't think that any of us can look back and say with any clarity, i made this deliberate choice and then that deliberate choice. the first choice you didn't make is who are your parents. you were kind of cast into the world without making that choice, but k you know, take my life. i was cast into the world in a world of privilege and so on. i was cast into a world of nuclear weapons. i didn't have any choice about that, but i did have a choice once i awakened to the fact of deciding whether i would be a person who opposed nuclear weapons, and from the age of about 18 i've been a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. so that's where choice comes in.

but the chance is very important. so to say i drifted, yeah, i drifted, and then i made choices, and then i drifted and made choices. some people have argued that our new president drifted into the presidency, but actually he made some choices too, didn't he? >> host: we are in chicago, and this is our in depth program, and i'm going to tell the studio audience, if you would like to ask a question, if three or four of you would get lined up, the microphone is right over here, and we'll get to y'all as we take calls and some e-mails that came in during the last week. we cannot take new e-mails because we are remote here in chicago, but we do have some that have come in the last week that we'll add into the program. our first call comes from california from a caller who's identifying him or herself as q. please go ahead. >> caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. thank you, mr. ayers, you know, for opening this forum up. i have nothing but the greatest

respect and preeshes for the sacrifices that you've made. i wanted to also i'm a retired special operations disabled vet who was poisoned in iraq due to depleted uranium shells, and i have grown really disenfranchised with the government, especially the government lying to us. it still denies that my medical condition was related to my combat service, but nonetheless, i wanted to ask you how you felt about the way in which the media portrayed you, especially fox news which seems to have a, a very significant impact on the public's perception with regard to how we cast in terms of what type of light is cast upon the particular person or event that it's covering? i was wondering if you had any particular views at all or

experience with how this news operation operates and how that's affected your life. thank you, i appreciate it. >> host: thank you. >> guest: i try very hard to kind of ignore what's said on fox news in particular, but on any kind of media, and i would be, i'm suspicious that there is such a thing as either the public mind or public perception. i think we're all capable of having minds of our own, and i know it seems sometimes like we're all a herd going in a certain direction, but then you look around and you say, gee, it's not so true. i mean, for example, for the first year of this illegal and unnecessary war in iraq, it seemed like the whole country was for it. it seemed that way if you listened to any media outlet. turns out three years in, the majority of americans opposed it. so somehow we have minds of our own in spite of the voices on

the media. but the problem that you're raising about how i was kind of created into a cartoon character during the recent presidential campaign i didn't take it, i never took it personally. i felt that there was a sense that nobody knew thousand run against this -- how to run against this new, young, fresh candidate. nobody knew what script to put together, and the dishonest narrative that was created first by the opposition within the democratic party and then by the republican party, the dishonest narrative was he's a mystery man. nobody knows who he is, and, look, he hangs around with strange people. and the dishonesty of that was partly to create, for example, in the reverend wright who is a respected, important chicago theologian and leader to create the idea that he was somehow a monstrous, fiery, frightening black nationalist revolutionary. it wasn't true, but that was what was tried to be, you know, created. but the second part of the dishonesty is more profound, and

that is this notion by association. the idea somehow if you share a boardroom or a bus ride or a cup of coffee, that you also share political perspective, policy outlook, history, experience, you're responsible for one another. there should be no political litmus test for a politician having a conversation with somebody. one of the great virtues of candidate obama was he'd talk to anybody, and he still had a mind of his own. so the idea that talking to strangers or talking to others is somehow a sin, i think, was rejected by the electorate, and i'm glad of that. >> host: we have an e-mail here from lawrence. as a former member of the weather underground, how would you advise the obama administration to deal with the problem of global terrorism? are there any lessons to be learned from america's '60s experience in this regard? >> guest: i don't think i would advise the obama administration on much of anything, but certainly, i mean, i think that one of the things that is true

is that, is that there is a world that's profoundly out of balance. and a world that is filled with violence and fear and all the rest of it. the problem is that we've created in the public mind, i suppose, or in the noisy voices that dominated the discussion after 9/11, created the notion that there is such a thing as a monolithic thing called terror that you can kind of deal with by declaring war on it. and that has led us down so many false paths in the last eight years that it's kind of frightening, and we are more at risk today than we were eight years ago precisely because of those policies. so my advice is to all of us, and i don't -- and really it isn't to the obama administration partly because i believe that what matters most is creating the kind of popular will, social movements. that's what changes history. but my advice to all of us is to wake up, open our eyes,

recognizing that having a trillion dollar military budget does not actually make us safer. learning to live as a nation among nations makes us safer, and then, of course, we have to deal with crime, we have to deal with violence, of course. but not as an act of war, as an act of sanity. >> host: mary and kalamazoo, michigan, you're on with professor and author bill ayers. >> caller: hi. quickly before i ask my question, mr. eye yers given your statement you just made, how can you still not regret the slaughter of innocent americans that yourself, your wife, and the weather underground perpetuated? you left children orphaned, mr. ayers. i'm a lifelong liberal democrat. i grew up in the '60s, i was very idealistic. quite honestly, the reforms in education that we have seen come from the left sense -- since the '60s have decimated education.

the dropout rates have skyrocketed as a result because we are no longer providing children with a classical education. individual help when they need it. and free and honest discourse. i've seen education become extremely ideological. we are not allowed to think for ourselves, in fact, we are attacked and censored when we dare deviate from the status quo of the far left, especially in higher education. this is offensive to me as someone who cares about civil rights and social justice rights and freedoms. i'll hang up and listen. >> guest: i'm not sure where to begin except to say that whatever you're referencing about the slaughter of innocents and killing people is not true. i never killed nor injured anyone, and it's, you know, it's part of the narrative of the far right blogosphere as far as i can tell, but it's not true, and it's not true a