>> during this holiday weekend, notable americans on c-span. ke and upcoming series on america's national parks, a tribute to the late writer john updike, two time winner of the pulit days of book tv featuring books on the american revolution including historian john for early taking calls on our first astronauts live from george washington's mount vernon estate. and p.j. o'rourke, his passion for cars and america's need to drive like crazy. and nobel peace recipient maa a maathai on the challenges facing

africa. next, paul tough profiles geoffrey canada, president and ceo of harlem's children zone, an organization that believes on multiple resources to tackle educational and social issues. mr. kanaby contends children and poverty must not only have their educational lives changed but their neighborhoods as well. the event part of the 2008 brooklyn book festival is just over 50 minutes. >> yesterday i was in jackson mississippi where i was privileged to meet james meredith. now, if some of you are trying to recall exactly who james meredith is he was actually one of the lone rangers if you will of the 60's civil rights movement. in his second year at jackson state university he filed a

lawsuit to gain admission to the university of mississippi otherwise known as old miss and oxford mississippi. a year later when a federal court order admitting him to the university and showing he a paper hero, after bobby kennedy ordered his admission, ordered the court order enforced by a u.s. marshals, 160 u.s. marshals were injured including 28 injured by a gunshot in their lights that took place in oxford. nonetheless, james meredith attended graduated, became the first african-american to graduate from old myths. in 1964 the same year as freedom summer, goodman and, sorry, sherman, and of course 1965 was

the passage of the voting rights act but still citizens council swain mississippi. so somewhere in 1966 james meredith decided he was going to initiate what he called the block against fear. he couldn't get the backing of any of the major civil-rights organizations, so he started out by himself with two friends who controlled into accompanying him walking from memphis tennessee to jacksonville. two and half days and to what he was shot in the leg and at that point, martin luther king and other leaders of the movement saw right opportunity, step in, picked up the block. james meredith rejoined the walk. 20 days later walking into jackson mississippi with 15,000

people, thus marking the end of the white citizens' councils. now, that could suffice for my introduction talking about the power of one person committed to making change, but what the reason i was in mississippi is because a year ago the president's national debate council decided that oxford mississippi would be the location of the first presidential debate and that the subject of the debate would be domestic affairs. in another hat, i am of the co-chair of the campaign to end aids, national network of aids activists and we decided that in order to make aids and a national strategy to end aids a topic we would establish a three day aids encampment in oxford mississippi. so beginning yesterday, eight caravans from arana the country started making their way to

oxford including one replicating the steps of james meredith so we i was yesterday at the corner of martin luther king and eldridge, medgar elbridge boulevard in jackson for the kickoff of these folks walking 172 miles from jackson mississippi to oxford mississippi in the walk against aids. james meredith spoke at this occasion, and what he had to say was interesting. he talked about of course the importance of addressing and race and the importance of addressing aids particularly in mississippi. but most of all he said the critical challenge facing our nation today is the role and the responsibility of the wealthy for the poor. he said the biggest and most important issue that should be debated between the presidential candidates today is though

responsibility our nation has four children growing up in poverty. now, you might wonder why housing largely works with adults, formerly homeless people living with aids and hiv, why we would sponsor something that focuses on children in poverty. well, the reality is what we deal with is the result of childhood poverty. what we see every day is the consequence of people growing up as children poor with all of the ravages that come with it. it just one simple statistic we did a study a few years ago, and 70% of the women experience sexual violence before they turned 18. and if that statistics surprises you, 50% of the adult men

experienced sexual violence before the age of 18. so, i see the work of jeffrey kind of somebody i have long watched and admired and as being a part of the same continuum. but we do at housing works is the work with people society has already thrown on her life's trashy offer them the tools and opportunity to take another tried at life again and what geoffrey canada is in the business of doing is trying to give children a break a chance, the tools before they end up. three weeks ago the subject of the debate and oxford mississippi got changed from domestic affairs to international affairs and national security. tuesday and i am flying back down to join the marchers and i will be marching with them for a

three day encampment in oxford mississippi nonetheless. because if you ask me the real security threat to the nation is not so much al qaeda, or whether or not here on gets a nuclear weapons or russia and georgia in situations like that. the real security threat to the nation is right here. it's the aids epidemic that we have allowed to become a disease of racism among poverty. it's the fact that 40% of children in america today who are to vote when the bin poverty, 10% increase since the year 2000. and i think the critical question we all to be asking ourselves, the real security threat is what happens when the wealthiest nation in the history of the world allows 40% of its children to grow up in poverty

and all that comes with it so that is why i am so excited to introduce to you paul tough and geoffrey canada. [applause] >> thank you very much and thank you to president markowitz as well. that was a great introduction. so the way we're going to do things is a line going to talk for a little bit and then read a little from the book, "whatever it takes" and then asked if canada a few questions, turned things over to him and then over to you for the conclusion of the time here if there are questions you want to ask either jeff or me you are welcome to do it then. so i wrote this book for two reasons really the one i realized afterwards was that it gave me an opportunity to hang out with geoffrey canada for five years. and above was a pretty great thing to be able to do. as you will see he is an

inspirational leader and a brilliant thinker and he's also that rare ceo with a sense of humor. but even more than that, what struck me as a journalist is as a subject he is really honest and candid and there were lots of moments i would be in his office interviewing him and he would be telling me about smoking pot when he was 12 and carrying a gun when he was 18 and how much he hated white people when he was in college and talk about things happening right then, how the middle school wasn't working out the way he wanted it to and he was thinking of firing the principle and i just kept thinking are you sure you want to be telling me all of these things, but he was sure. and unlike most people he didn't seem to have any anxiety about the fact i was recording these things and writing down and i was going to write the book and he wasn't going to have a chance to look at it until after it was done. and i think that is because he

has great confidence in himself and what he is doing and he felt to his credit if he just told the whole story of his life and the harlem children's zone that would give people a better idea of what was happening and what needed to happen than any sanitized versions of that's one reason. the second reason was that i want to try to find an answer to a big question which was why are poor people poor and why does poverty persist from one generation to the next? why do poor kids tend to feel more often than they succeed and what if anything can be done to change that. one of the amazing things to me about this question is how many people think they know the answer especially on the internet. i find i've been blogging recently on sleet and i am struck trying to find the nuances to these questions and i get a lot of e-mail that just says welcome to our missing the fact it's all the parents or

it's all the schools or it's all the racist economy or some other sort of one sentence explanation for what i think is a complicated problem. the answer that i think i have found and i write in the book is that a lot of white poverty is so persistent right now has to do with the changes in the economy that place after world war ii. what happened a specially for african-americans is that who you knew became a lot less important than what you knew. before the civil rights in effect especially for african-americans it didn't matter how smart you were or how well educated you were it was hard to get a good job. someone with the leadership skills and intelligence skills of malcolm x, the last job he could get was selling sandwiches and shining shoes on a train and now someone with the same sorts of skills would have the opportunity to be a professor of constitutional law and run for

president. so while a lot more opportunity was opening up for african-americans on the top end of the scales scale, for blacks on the bottom of the sociopath economic scale the change is happening in the economy were disastrous. before you could get a decent job in a factory even if you didn't have a love skills but those jobs as the industrial jobs dried up those jobs disappeared and now if you can't read it hard even to get a job and mcdonald's. but despite the economic incentives for education, things didn't really improve in the inner cities and in fact a lot of neighborhoods got worse. poverty got more concentrated and entrenched in neighborhoods like harlem and south bronx. so this new idea has emerged which is that skills are really what matter and this is led to a new approach in trying to counter poverty and especially the cycle of generational poverty. we've known a long time for adults tend to have poor children who don't get a good

education and to turn out to be poor adults and the conventional wisdom about this was the best way to solve the cycle was concentrate on the adults, give them better jobs, more money, better housing and they will in turn be able to improve the odds for their kids. after many years of trying this and it's not working out people started to think maybe we need a new approach. there's a lot of evidence out there it is hard to change the trajectory of and on skilled 20-years-old but it's very easy to change the trajectory of and on skilled two-year-old so the conversation the last decade has changed. the first big idea is that skills matter and the skills that matter are teachable even though generally in poor neighborhoods they are not being taught. badly run schools don't teach them and poorly educated parents have a hard time teaching them that they can be taught. there are interventions we know more and more that work and if you are able to teach these

skills to work children they are going to succeed. so that first of all leads to a moral shift. the question is no longer is their anything we can do to counter poverty. we now at tolino what to do and the question becomes do we want to do it. is it our obligation to do it if we had to change things from were kids. could we find a good reason not to do it and once you get through that moral dilemma it becomes a practical question. if we are going to intervene which interventions work. where do you start and who do you target. that is a complex question and it's what jeff is exploring in harlem right now and what i try to explore in my book but the short answer is interventions that work best with children are early, intensive and continuous. poor kids are right in kindergarten well behind their middle class peers so the earlier you start the better. and it's also not enough to just start early. there are lots of great programs that say to kids and prekindergarten when they are

4-years-old, give them lots of intensive interventions and stop and send them back into a regular public school and what we found is those kids turn out to be pretty much the same as any other kid from a poor neighborhood. these programs only keep working if they keep going. so the one person who is putting this data into action is geoffrey canada. the harlem children's zone, which he has run out for the last ten years is a comprehensive system of integrated programs from cradle to college. jeff calls it the conveyor belt. it starts with baby college, a program for expecting parents and parents of children under three. the next step on the conveyor belt is the three-year old germany, advanced parenting class for parents of 3-year-olds. then comes a prekindergarten and not just any prekindergarten but an all day language focused prekindergarten that kids four-year-old sort of intensive training especially in language and that leads you into a charter schools that starts at

kindergarten and goes all the way through 12th grade that has an extended year and extended day and the idea is through these services jeffrey is able to give poor kids in harlem the same sort of cocoon of support that middle class kids in middle class neighborhoods have all around them without even thinking about it. and the big news in the book is that this works. detesting around right now is in third grade. the first group of kids that have gone through baby college and pre-que and this new charter school or in third grade last year and start and fourth grade now and in third grade they took for the first time the state test to see how well they were doing compared to everyone else in the state and they are doing really well in english one school is just a bill that behind state average, the other is ahead of the state average and in math, even one school, 97% of the class was on grade

level and the other 100% of the class was on grade level. and compared to what scores are in new york city and especially what they have been for a long time in harlem these are pretty astounding and to me even more important in the stores themselves is what the schools feel like. i spend a lot of time in that first class and second grade and third grade and when you go into -- i also spent time in some of these middle schools especially brooklyn that are successful to use very intensive methods to turn things around for kids who have fallen behind. and what those always feel like is there is an emergency, a crisis, a mission going on trying to save these kids before they fall into the abyss and it doesn't feel that we at the elementary school. these are the same kids who have teenage parents and uneducated parents and live in public housing and don't have any advantages beyond the fact they are engaged in a harlem children's zone but the schools don't feel like they are in crisis it just feels like there

are regular kids learning what any other third great kid would learn and doing the same on the state test as any other kid. all of this starts with a baby college. and because it is a concept that makes some people uncomfortable because really this telling poor parents how to do things differently. but the premise behind jeff's beebee college is that the parent's role is so critical because those first few years are so important that he's got to engage with them and get them on his side and the surprising reality and beebee colleges these parents are eager for more information. they want to know how to give their kids a better shot and they are willing to change. so i went through a whole cycle of baby college, nine weeks, and there was a range of parents. there was one couple, darryl, and they were actually a middle class couple and darryl this was the second time going through

baby college. he loved it so much the first time group and they were all going to each other's birthday parties and sleepovers and he had found exactly the sense of community that he wanted. there was another mother named sean tell at the other end of things. she had four kids already and they had been taken away by child welfare authorities. she couldn't read, she wasn't well educated. she never held a job and was pregnant with her fifth child. and the idea behind trying to help her was if she could be pushed a little bit, say if she could have enough parenting skills to hang on to her fifth child and not have her in the in foster care that would put that child a little bit further ahead when jeff was able to take over when the child was 4-years-old and 5-years-old. then there's a couple named factor and cheryl. they were hard to place for me. they were young, 19 and 17.

victor was a high school dropout. he had an arrest record so they had a lot of strikes against then it seemed that at the same time it felt like they had a lot of potential. so i am going to read a little bit about them. the 21st cycle of baby college took place in the fall from september through november which meant the outreach teams had to spend all summer recruiting parents. it took more than two months of door docking and flyer passing to collect the number they needed. shettle was walking past harlem hospital and clinics avenue on 136 the street on her way to pick up her prescription when she ran into anthony santiago and francesco, two of the college's 12th outreach workers. lenox avenue was filled with people. it was september a warm sunny day and and and francesco were stopping people with strollers, women who looked pregnant, anyone who would take one of their flyers. cheryl will 17 and three months pregnant, just starting to show. a week earlier a friend told her

about a baby college and sherrill had been thinking about it ever since. she was feeling scared and unprepared, not ready to take care of the new life growing inside her and she figured she need some help. she hadn't felt the time to make the call but now here were anthony and francesca like destiny handing out fliers. i was actually looking for you guys come she said and francesca start filling out paperwork, name, address, age. do you have a partner you can bring with you, she asked, cheryl thought about it. maybe, she said. she did have a partner, victor, her boyfriend. they'd been together on and off for four years since she was 13 and he was 15. she loved victor. they had fun together and he always made her laugh but lately things had been a rocky ever since they found out that cheryl was pregnant. factors best friend had been whispering in his year saying he was too young to commit to one woman and victor what sometimes sneak around and see other girls on the sly. he and cheryl were fighting

every day now and before the pregnancy they never used fight at all. cheryl didn't know if there would still be together with the baby was born. twice the head and to what she called the mean dangers on please come and abortion clinic but each time they couldn't go through with it and now cheryl kept waiting for the morning she would wake up and feel good about her baby and instead each morning she woke up feeling depressed and worried and at night she sometimes cried herself to sleep. when she asked victor if he would come to baby college with her he said no. he had been kicked out of more schools could count, usually for fighting and finally he had given up and dropped out altogether so there were plenty of things he would rather do than get up early on saturday and said in a public-school classroom while someone elected him about being a better parent. cheryl said she wanted them to both since she said it might bring them closer together. victor said he would think about it. when the first ecology event came, victor refused to go. cheryl felt sad and trapped and

depressed and decided to go anyway. when she walked through the doors of the public school where the shower was being held, her eyes were wet with tears. so things actually went okay for them in the college. victor did show up the second week and he actually really started to get into it. they went through the brain development class's where is was six-point how important it is to read and sing to your child and then they went to discipline class is where baby college in this parents to not use physical means of discipline. this, these are the kaj verso class is because most of the parents who come into the class come in to baby college were themselves disciplined with corporal punishment when they were kids and they think that is the best way to do things. and so there is a debate that happens in those classes and in victor's class he was the person leading the charge for corporal

punishment. he invented a system he called eat ass early. he figured they bore not the best idea but we he went into it was thinking i'm not one to hit the kid, i'm going to pinch the kit, which is actually what he heard when he showed up was that from his instructor was that's actually not going to work. that's not any better suite took him awhile to adjust to this idea but i think he finally did and there was something about having his ideas taken seriously that really appealed to him. he felt involved in a way that he hadn't before, taken seriously. but after things went well for awhile, things took a turn for them in the seventh week of the nine week cycle. the next week on their way to be the college, trouble found victor and cheryl again. this looked at cheryl's house in englewood might before and in the morning took the bus to george washington bridge and got on the subway to come down to ps

97. on the platform victor turned on his portable radio and the two of them sat they're listening quietly still sleepy. a police officer approached them and told victor to turn it down. why, victor asked. later looking that he regretted saying anything. he wasn't rude about it he said but maybe his voice was to define it. the officer of arrested him and charged him with disturbing the peace and resisting arrest and took him to central booking. he had to stay there all night sitting in a cell on the hard bench between two men who exchanged threats with each other white past victor for hours. the same fault kept going through his mind all right. but i was on my way to baby college. when he been in trouble before he had usually deserted but this time here he was trying to become a good father and yet that didn't seem to make a difference. in the morning victor was sent to the courtroom. he had a bad feeling. he had to act as warrants and a sketchy arrest record and figured the judge would throw the book at him. when his name was called and he got up to approach the bench he was too depressed to act tough.

he looked contract because he felt hundred and incredibly that start something within the judge. she told him he was on thin ice but she dismissed his case, after all, only been playing a radio and she cleared his record and the next thing factor knew the court officers were taking off his handcuffs. next weekend victor told me the story and he still seemed a little stunned that his good fortune. the judge said stay out of trouble and i was like his, all right. i will. and it's true, i will. as soon as the officers a stir your radio of i'm going to turn it off. i'm going to live life correctly. victor had been given a second chance, or maybe this was his third or fourth. he lost count. but he was determined not to blow it. a week later parents of cycle 21 assembled in the gymnasium at the harlem children's own headquarters on 125th street for the graduation. it was cheryl's 18th birthday and have it to the ceremony victor was called on stage with the other fathers. he was feeling something special. there were a dozen father's graduating and each were invited

to see a few words. factor turned to his outreach worker and on stage with him and asked if he could go last. when his turn came he stirred looking sharp in a white button-down shirt and dark jeans. there were about 300 people in the gym at this point sitting on folding chairs facing the stage, 103 graduate and parents plus family and friends, the entire baby college staff and some of the top managers of the harlem children zone. geoffrey canada sat in the front row with the deputy on one side and and on the other, his wife and his son, jeffrey, jr. victor looked up the crowd and swallowed. okay, hello, he said into the microphone. how's everybody doing? his voice, high and nervous. my name is victory and i had a great, great time at baby college. it was one of my best times ever. there was a little applause. the graduates were in the second section everyone decked out in white and looking clean cut. i would like to call cheryl. could everybody give her a round

of applause? today's her birthday. cheryl looked surprised and embarrassed and she slid out and walked down the aisle to where factor stood watching her. when she got on stage victor turned back to the microphone and the supplies part of this, he said, and i'm so nervous is because i would like to propose. digit erupted in shouts. cheryl started laughing and crying at the same time. someone in the backfield at victor to get down on one knee so he did. he held the microphone and with the other to push cheryl's hand. he said i love you, you are my world. so i just want to know will you marry me? pandemonium, applause. more shelton, grandmother scalia. geoffrey canada in the front row got to his feet and clapped and somewhere in their cheryl said yes and she and victor increased in front of everyone. factor wasn't ready to give up the microphone. [laughter] i'm extremely excited he said looking at the crowd. a lot is about to happen. we've just begun. thank you. george turned to geoffrey

canada. well, he said, that was a first. [laughter] so now i want to let you hear from the person in the book which is geoffrey canada. if you're all right, as a few questions and did you talking about when you were doing in harlem. so let me ask you first about so victor and cheryl had their baby named victor, jr. he is now about a year and have told. and so, despite the fact he went through a college he still has a lot of strikes against him. he has parents who have a hard time finding jobs, one dropped out of college and still has trouble with the law. they both are living -- they have a hard time finding an apartment. they are living both with their parents. and so a kid like that in those circumstances what does it take, you want to get into college, what does it take to get him where he is now to college and

graduate from college? >> thank you, paul and charlie. you can get an idea why i allowed paul to spend five years. i actually didn't know what was in the book until i read. about halfway through the book i didn't think it was quite such a good idea to allow a reporter, but in the and i think it was important. before i let paul have access. i really didn't know what was in the book. people could have said a number of things in the book in my opinion could have been something i would have been proud of but also could have been something i would have said that's not really a great sort of characterization of our organization. but this is i think the challenge. at my age i am 56. i grew up in the south bronx

when children like myself, poor children are born to a single mother literally didn't have a chance and we were to bring everything we could to try to change the dynamic and you know what, if in the and we didn't do it than to me that was fine. let paul tell people that but let him tell people it's important that we not stop trying to figure out how we solve this equation and if we couldn't do it after the harlems children's own egotism once marcher, talent to do what we've got to do it so i was prepared for whatever the end of that story turned out to be. i felt it was important someone was going to write about the challenges of trying to do this work. why? because children like victor, jr face a series of obstacles. both from birth and you heard some of the challenges the family is trying to stay together, they are trying to make it. housing is an issue, food is an

issue, finding jobs is an issue. the father not getting arrested for something he either does or doesn't do is an issue. all of these things and had a child and while that piece was going on, you know, i was raising my wife, and i, we were raising our fourth child. and i will tell you the difference between having a stable home, enough income, to loving parents who love one another and wanted this child and wanted the child, this was something when avon and i decided to have this last child -- our children are grown so we've got three grown children and then 18-years-old. there's a story here. i wont give in to the whole story but when we decided to have that child we tried for two years to have a child without success. brann yvonne came in and the pregnancy kit said positive we

were jumping and yelling in the living room. when this child came into the world with parents who loved him before he was even six weeks old and the difference between that child who was planned for and loved versus a child coming in with all these challenges the are facing is daunting. victor jr is still going to make it, he's going to graduate high school, he's going to go on to college but he is not going to have the same set of life think challenges my son will have. he will have a different set of challenges and it's our job i think both as a committee organization but as a society to not hold water for the challenges his parents face against the child so this child doesn't have an opportunity. so what will take? meeting sure we are there with him to any issue that child faces. not just until we get that young

person in our work four-year-old program, our harlem program, but we start with that child, through the ups and downs and twists and turns that, look, if any of you have had perfect relationships and haven't been any turmoil please stand up because you will be the first person i know that that's happened to. we all go through these things. but somehow, in upper middle class communities, we managed to minimize the impact on children. children are still hurting. look, divorce. anybody that's been through divorce you know that child has suffered but you don't expect the child to drop out of school or began getting arrested or go on drugs. we try and get help and support for all were children even when the adults are going through challenges still are going to make it and that is what i think we are trying to get the harlem children's zone. >> jeff, as you know, there were certain moments in our interviews where i would ask you a question and you would give me

the answer and that would be all what take and then there were questions i would come back and ask you the same question and try to get you to explain it. there were some ideas that were a little more complex or hard for me and one of them was about values. what was the idea of what middle class values, what you see as middle class values, when you see as the values you grew up with and how you are trying to use the college and other elements of the harlem children's zone to sort of create what feels to me like a new set of values for the parents in your neighborhood. >> well, one of i think the interesting parts of my life was as i was growing up in the south bronx, i got to see children whose parents shared a set of value my parents had and children whose parents did not and it was quite shocking to me

the impact on i think reading and school work and everybody i knew. there was nobody i knew growing up in the south bronx that wanted their child to fail. i didn't meet someone who says i'm going to do everything i can to stop the child from making it but there were other parents who didn't know how to help their child succeed, and they had come upon a set of strategies mostly a round behavior. i want you to keep quiet. i want you to act flight. i want you to look nice and that's not what they enforced as a set of values on their children. and my mother was always -- part of his life and we were very poor gerdemann caps of things like hair cuts were hard to get. so here i am, 11 and i haven't had a hair cut in six weeks and by complaining to my mother and she would say it's not what's on your head, it's what's in your head and i would want to say yeah, but would be nice to have

what's in my head looking better than it does. but these constant value issues they would reinforce over and over and over again -- my grandmother would always say because she was poor and i didn't want to be poor, and my grandmother was one of those kind of people you talk about all use, you hear these stories where the truck door opens and money falls on the highway and people take the money up and some take the money back to the police? that was my grandmother. she wouldn't take anything and i was constantly challenging her and what she would say to me is money is not as important in life. what's important is that you get an education. if they can never take that from you. i didn't believe that was true when i was seven. but you hear that year after year and it begins to sink in and it is a set of values you

begin to say on a main not have it now but i'm heading somewhere and have a strategy to get there. i think that was one of the challenges a lot of the family growing up with faced. they did not know how to give their children a sense of strategy of success. deily and gratification. we're part, focus on books. my mother used to break our tv intentionally and just tell us it was broke because she knew that that way, we just wouldn't watch it. we would have to read and that was part of the strategy she had. by the way, listened this is what is so fascinating. she couldn't have just turned it off. we would have yelled and fought and there would have been we're fair now this shows you how old i am, she would go to the back of the tv and take a2 out, so you know this is way back in the day she would take the tube out and the tv wouldn't work and she would say try it, you can't get

it to work? what are we going to do? and we would play games and do things, so she figured out a set of strategies to help her children growing up in a community that didn't share necessarily that same set of strategies what might be considered middle class strategies and i am convinced for a lot of our children today this set of strategy where you value education, value reading, you value time spent, sort of helping young people understand their world negative that we have to make sure that set of values or transferred to our young people because in the 50's when i grew up with say that there was a neutral societal values system meaning if you went outside and listened to the radio and tv leave it to beaver and fathers knows best and for some of us people saw were people on tv that was of value but basically there wasn't a set of values being pumped you that

would destroy you. today we have a different set of values these kids face to read every morning when they get up the are hearing a message around selling drugs, using drugs, having sex. it is nonstop, 24 hours a day, and then you have these parents struggling with this child to get a set of values that work hard, be honest, plea by the books. the two don't ballots and we've got to support our parents. i think helping them both understand and transmit this other set of values. >> i want to ask you one more question and then let anyone in the audience who wants to china and do that and ask questions. so, one thing i have also written about and you and i have talked about, but that i'd written about in "the new york times" magazine is this sort of network of charter schools especially middle schools that is growing up, and you'd run one of these middle schools but here in brooklyn there are great examples run by uncommon schools. i don't think that there is a

school in brooklyn but they do in harlem and the bronx and they are able to start in fifth grade and achieve great things with kids who haven't had a lot of educational led vintages before they get there. can you explain the difference between their approach and your approach? >> there are a group of charter school operators who have figured out a way to get young people who are three years behind, four years behind academically and then catch those kids up over time. and they do here a week work and if you go and visit any of those schools you will walk out and say those are heroes and you will be 100% correct. what ghanian trying to do in our schools is eliminate the need to be a hero. i think if we know the communities, this apco, the census tracks where kids the

last 50 years have been three, four years behind before they enter the fifth grade why do we get those kids get three or four years behind? why don't we get an early, get them on the grade level and never let them get behind? that to me is the way we ought to be approaching this issue so that there will always be a need for these heroic programs but they shouldn't be a need that outstrips the demand on ability to provide the solutions. so, achievement first, and common schools are serving 1,100th of the kids that need the service. so at that rate some kids are getting help but the vast majority are not. why? because in those communities 75, 80, 85% of the kids are three or four years behind. and we have got to eliminate that. there will always be some group of kids that will be behind and

so we will always need these but it shouldn't be for so many kids that it guarantees most of our kids won't make it in these communities which is the way things are set up right now. so it is simple. get an early. get these kids on grade level and then never let those kids fall behind. and will of the adults accountable. one of the challenges, once you start with baby college, we test our kids starting at four, find out where they are and it is my belief that in the end we won't provide education for these poor children almost everybody is held accountable so we we started charter school i told our board chair and the chancellor and the mayor, the chancellor always loved to tell people this, give me five years and if my schools are not better than the surrounding schools i'm going to fire myself. but i told my staff i'm the last one going. all the rest of you are going before me because in the end we

all have to be accountable for the success of these children because it is hard work. but once i give you a group of kids on grade level of those kids slip behind i know whose fault will they have problems at home, yes. will there be issues in the street, yes. the community, all of those things or for sure but in the end of those of us to take the money to educate these children we have to provide education for these children and hold ourselves accountable. so my theory is get an early. our third graders on grade level and guess what within the eighth grade they're going to be on grade level. and when they are in the tenth grade they're going to be on great level. will we still work as hard as these other charter schools? yes. but it won't be just to try to get our kids to the bottom. it will be to try to get our kids to the top. and people -- i think the big issue in this nation when people read your book, paul, and

understand this the will say look, well, look with the harlem childrens ellen is doing. that's great. they think that's the ceiling. they think that is the floor, that is the least -- that's what we'll take for granted and every police else in america except poor communities. they get health care -- [applause] this is -- its part of the children and our nation faces. what we are talking about is nothing extraordinary. it is nothing that children should go into kindergarten on great level, that they should have their teeth fixed, that they should get health care and eat healthy, that they should be social service. if kids have emotional problems those should get addressed. but that is just basic for every single child in america. on top of that there's a group of kids who need an accelerated academic program along the school year and along the school day and we should provide that. that is not exceptional. it may seem exceptional because

a lot of people are not doing it, but it should be a basic right of every child in this country and there's no excuse as a nation not to provide that level of support to all of our children in my opinion. [applause] >> i want to thank paul for his extraordinary work bringing this extraordinary person and obviously critical topic. now is the opportunity in minutes i think for questions from the audience. i'm told there's a microphone and i'm going to ask you to come down. we of two gentlemen up front here very eager. please stand when you ask your question and speaking to the microphone. >> [inaudible] >> to questions briefly --

[inaudible] >> you've got a good voice. why don't you go ahead and repeat the question. we are actually using the microphone for the benefit of the television viewers. just go ahead and repeat the question. >> just on the first question he asked is whether or not i think the current school system has the ability to provide a range of resources that we talk about. i think they have to be a fundamental change in public education in this nation and i think part of that change has to do with making sure everyone is held accountable. i think it starts that we have to make sure the may year is held accountable, the chancellor is held accountable and the citizens of new york have to demand that its citizens, its children get an education but it

also means having principles held accountable and teachers held accountable. i don't think this is rocket science. i really don't. i think this is making sure that we collect data and use data to drive out comes and you know what, this gets me in trouble but i'm going to say this. teaching is a really tough business. to be a good teacher, you have to be a savvy professional and everybody who wants to teach shouldn't teach. everybody who thinks they are in great teacher isn't a good teacher. it is hard work. we need a different chrysostom -- system to reward teachers and -- i don't think lousy teachers in my system if you are a lousy teacher you get fired and some people said you always want to fire everybody well, my theory is i don't care if you don't fire them, just move them out of poor communities. there are kids who may not need

great teachers in all the middle class communities. send support teachers to the upper-middle-class communities where they don't need so much. in poor communities we need a great teachers and that's part of the challenge so the system isn't ready to do that yet so i think we have got movement, but we could. there's absolutely no reason in this nation. we could not. you know what, if you are a teacher and can move children a year and a half or two years in one year you are a super star tv i think you ought to be paid like a superstar. that isn't any reason to me that person shouldn't make a quarter of a million dollars. if i paid that person a quarter of a million dollars this is going to happen? all over the world what do i have to because i want to be like that. we would have infusion of talent into our schools dedicated to making sure these children learn and guess what would happen. they would learn. they would learn right now teaching you don't get a lot of

money would you get a lot of time off. we need more than that for or children in the country so could it happen? es. what we have to have structural change for it to happen? yes. >> i'm going to ask you to hold the second question because we have probably only got time for one more and i'm going to come over here to this site and let you have the next question and see if we can get and want more after. >> my question deals with the parents and how i understand your baby college, but at a point if we don't get them how are you cap during the parents and community holding them accountable, getting them educated and all the things they need because it is a very important part of that formula is with the parents are doing. >> i couldn't agree with you more. parents have to be our partners in this work. you know what? we struggle when we have parents disconnected. some of our parents have

substance-abuse issues, mental health and so you still have to work with the kids. that doesn't get you off the hook by the way for the children. and paul mentioned in my schools, 100% of kids passed the math exam. that includes a special light and everything. that's every child. but it's hard work. it could be done. but we need parents to be our partners in this work. and we spend a lot of time with parents who are in our schools and something we want everyone to do. we are starting a new campaign. part of the challenge is that our parents don't know how important it is for our children to read great books. i'm not talking about a good book. i'm talking a great book. you know what a great book was for me and i'm dating myself again, but man child in the promised land. i read this when i was around 13-years-old. i set my god, someone finally is

telling my story, and i felt for the first time -- i read that whole book. donner was up in the middle -- my mother was like go to sleep, i was reading this book because i had to read it. a book like that can change your life. so we started a campaign to get parents to get their kids to read great books. if you get your kid a lousy book to read, guess what they think? that reading thing is overrated. you've got to get great books. we started a campaign. we want people to get every poor child in america, every single poor child in america great books in their libraries. we have launched it as part of our work "whatever it takes" campaign. read great books. people want to know where the great books are. hcz.org. did books in the hands of these children. let them experience what it feels like to read a great book and that's something every parent can do. a lot of times parents don't know where to find a great book

and a lot of times parents can afford a great book. you know what, a great book is one you read over and over. many of us have had those books we have read over and over. so the child actually needs to own this book and we are challenging folks get out there, get some books in the hands of these parents so that they can share them with their children so that we can start all of our kids growing up with this love of reading and begin to change some of these dynamics in our country. >> so, we are actually out of time. i do want to you know that it hasn't ended because the book, "whatever it takes," is for sale at the housing works with, which is both number 30. and i understand both paul and jeffrey will be going after the session closes over to the booth where they will be available to autograph the books and also continue this conversation. so once again, i really want to thank than and jeffrey especially for your passion on

this really essential, and central asia, children in poverty. thank you. >> thank you. [applause] paul speed is editor at "new york times" magazine formerly a producer for npr's this american life and editor at harper's magazine. geoffrey canada is the president and ceo of the harlem children zone. he is the recipient of several awards for his work, including the mccaul prize for his vacation, jefferson award for public service and hines award. for more information about the harlem children so, visit hcz.org. this summer booktv is asking what are you reading.

>> the books i would have pulled out if you ask what books you're reading now are probably two or three graphic novels. one is fun home. do you know the books on home? it is a memoir, graphic memoir by alison bechdel who is famous in a couple of subcultures because she has had an on-line comics trip for years called dikes to watch out for, and she is a funny, feisty, irreverent insurgent kind of artist and she spent many we years working on a memoir and is a true story on her growing up and coming out as a lesbian and her parents were english teachers, so it's a very literary -- the lenses for work

are very literary lenses. and as she is coming out as an adolescent she realized that her father is a repressed homosexual and as she makes the discovery he kills himself. so is a powerful, poignant, funny, incredibly moving book. so, alison bechdel is one of my favorite current writers, authors, artists. and the other book you may have heard of this called "persepolis" which is on the iranian revolution by marsame satrapi. it is a very different styles and alison bechdel, but of coming of age at a time of repression and autocracy and a kind of theological theocratic kind of nightmare in her country and fleeing to france and it has called all of the adolescent propes of falling in love and

discovering your body and all the rest of it but pulled against the backdrop of this gigantic historic moment. very moving book and shows you both book together show you kind of the great flexibility of this medium and the great things you can do with comex, which i don't pretend to be an expert about. i've taught comics for a long time and i've written a comic, but man, it is a terrific medium and one that reaches all corners of the world. >> to see more summer reading lists and other program information, visit our web site at booktv.org. helen political science professor at new york examines the rulings of supreme court justice anthony kennedy who's

been the tie-breaking vote in 5-for decisions more often than any other justice since the retirement of justice o'connor. this event hosted by the cato institute in washington, d.c. is one hour and 15 minutes. ..