and being irish, of course, you're brought up to absorb the sort of slings and arrows of, you know, people's criticism and so on. and so, you know, in all of the attention this book has got -- and it has got a lot of attention, it's really surprised us. because we set out to start a conversation about this issue not because we discovered it, because we didn't, and not because we have all the answers, we don't, but we felt strongly enough about it to try and start that conversation. but coming back to my irishness, and my mother, of course, would be proud of me because she browbeat this into me, you know, when you're growing up, oh, don't be getting too big for your boots, you know? the one quote that keeps flashing on and off in my head and i can hear it, a piece in the washington journal did a

review, and it was quite a good review. but part of it was he called it howlingly inaccurate. i wake up in the morning, howlingly inaccurate, "wall street journal." [laughter] . i got a facebook message from a friend i graduated with a small book about a book, "hollowing

out the middle". it amazed me to check out the book and watch the little book trailer and see a place just like my home town. i got to reading the rest of the web site and i was very moved by this. you might think big deal. i live and work in a small town and i see every day how hard it is for people in small towns in iowa to survive and refused to leave. my boss is also from a small town. she graduated a few years before me. collectively we would like to say thank you for writing this book as we try to explain to friends who have moved away that we are perfectly happy in small-town iowa and they are helping to keep it alive. your book is helping to open the eyes of many people as i find out about the book from one of those friends who doesn't understand how we can live in such a small place. after reading your book she admits she misses it. she will visit her parents more

often. thank you for making our lives seem normal and for making small calm life available for people for your pages. that is one of them. another note from a young woman in a small town in western kansas. she writes my name is sarah downing and i am a practicing community planner in kansas and missouri. i was doing some research and came across an article in your book. i felt compelled to get in touch with you and express my interest in your research and ideas. i am from rural northeast kansas and i was raised in a working family farm. my father, mother, myself and two siblings ran the form growing soybeans, sunflowers and mylar. within the last ten years or so many of our farming neighbors sold or lost their farms. my father is still operating his farm. i left colby to go to college

where i received a b.a. in political science and a master's degree in regional community planning. my master's degree is from kansas state where another graduate was one of my professors. being from a rural area and seeing the plight continuing and the continuing decline of understanding rural population decline in the deaths of these communities. i wrote my master's paper on this topic focusing specifically on the eight northeast can these -- counties in kansas. and came to kansas city to work and have not been able to advance any of my studies on the topic. i would like to offer my help in any way should the opportunity present itself. rural america is near and dear to my heart and i would love to contribute to this field of research. these are some of the responses that we received about this

book. it is clear that it touched a nerve and it should. because if we are ever going to have a conversation and get serious about small-town america it has to start somewhere. let me lay out some of the background to what we see as the issue. why it matters, what in many ways is a typical small town. and what we can sort of do going forward into the future. from 1980 to 2,000, over 809 metropolitan counties like the one we are in lost 10% or more of their population to migration. this is not natural decrease. this is people actually leaving. between 2000, and 2,005, over 800 rural counties lost 10% or more of their population again and in those same counties there were more deaths than births.

the median age in these places had also risen pretty dramatically. that would lead us to conclude that the people who are leaving our young. in most cases although we don't have firm data on this, mostly educated people. they are leaving for a variety of reasons. some leave because there are opportunities elsewhere. some leave because they want to. the fact of the matter is many small towns are in some cases years away from extinction and sometimes the final death knell for a town is when there are no longer eat enough children to keep a local school running. we have seen it in many places. so against the backdrop of this, we began studying small town of ellis in 2002. i have to pay tribute to the macarthur foundation for having

the foresight and largess to fund a study like this because most foundations don't really care about these issues. most foundations are unwilling to spend what was for a study of its type quite a lot of money. they were interested in something that wasn't world brain drain. they were interested in how people come about, we chose the town of ellis because some of our ties, it was in many ways what they wanted, a typical small town that is far from a big city. has one school and so on. we got in contact with the school, tremendously helpful. reassemble incoming lists of freshmen to graduate in the 80s

and 90s. children are on their way to adulthood by then. coming of age in a small town means you have to face two fundamental questions. the questions are do i stay or 2 ago. the second question is if i go, do i ever come back. the pathways these young adults have taken a sort of fall on the fall line of those two fundamental questions. this isn't something that is new. this is a question young people coming of age in towns like this have always faced. what is fundamentally different now is the economy has changed, opportunities are different and staying or leaving now in the context of that is different from it was 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. when we caught up with these people we found their studies to

be compelling. we came around $0.84 of the population which is very good. we did in depth interviews with hundred young people. we have people in the town and in 15 different states from new mexico to main to florida and minnesota. from new york to kansas. i put a lot of miles in my car. spend a lot of time in the air and airports. it really was a fascinating study to be involved in. what we found was young people in many ways sort themselves out into various groups, those who leave, those who stay, and those who come back. there are two main groups.

one is the achievers. the achievers are young people who are motivated to leave because mainly of opportunity. colleges. people who go on and succeed elsewhere. for the most part achievers leave and don't come back. the second group are seekers who are not quite as academically oriented as the achievers or don't have the same opportunity of the cheevers. the secrecy of the military as a way to see the wide world. young people who never leave our stares, have no idea to go beyond the confines of a small town, for whom life is just fine where they are. who is working lives start early and revolve around these small towns. of the returners there are two

groups. one we call boomerangs. people who go away for a short time always intending to come back, and the come back to small towns usually but not always with associate's degrees or some college education and settle the last group is the smallest group of all, the high flyers, basically the small number of achievers who come back to small towns. doctors, dentist, the young people who are very sought after and in many small towns trying to dream up ways of bringing these people back. when we spoke with them it was interesting how nearly every single scheme that a state or local jurisdiction can dream up to bring highfliers back, they focus on -- people moved back for very much effective

emotional reasons to be close to family because they really want to live in a small town and raise a family. so what is different? why does this matter and what does it have to do with the future of small-town america? what we found was in our research, through the voices and the words of the young people we spoke with, giving a voice to their experience, what we found was in small towns, small towns have always done this, much of the community resources, much of the education resources are focused on the achievers. the young people who are destined to succeed. the achievers, put it this way, one spoke about how the whole town has your back. one spoke eloquently about how are feel that i am destined to do something beyond your and to

do this. in many cases that is very true. small towns have always done this. they have always done this very well. small towns should do this. young people who have talents should go on and use those talents and should achieve but what is different now and what is crucial is for those who stay and many return, fact that many of the resources aren't devoted to them means that they are badly underprepared for the economy that is here right now. by that i mean those who stay and many who return, 30 years ago there was a robust farm and factory economy. that is not the case right now. some towns are managing to make it, some towns are doing okay. many more towns have seen jobs disappear, seen jobs outsource, seen jobs become lost to

mechanization in agriculture, and in many cases seen jobs that were of solid working-class jobs generation ago, meatpacking, that is a third of what they were 50 years ago. they don't have benefits. they did have benefits 50 years ago. we talked to one stare who talked about how it rankles with him about he does a job on the same line with a guy who earns $20,000 more because he was hired at a time when the contract was better and the benefits were there. he does the exact same thing as the guy next to him but doesn't have the benefits and earns $20,000 less. that is the sort of reality now. the reality is for those who stay and to come back there is a shrinking, pool of opportunities. those opportunities even if they do exist are not as good as they

were a generation ago. putting all of your eggs in one basket of those most likely to leave and least likely to come back is perhaps not the widest use of resources. that is the problem in many ways. what are the points at which you can intervene? with -- it is a confluence of things that happened at the community level and a larger level. a change has to happen on both levels. at the community level we suggest the resources that are distributed to kids, the inventions in young people, with cultivation, the mentoring, equalized across all groups, not that you don't prepare achievers to do wonderful things. you could and should do that.

it is a good thing to do. you also prepare those who stay for the opportunities that are out there. let me give you a couple for instances and explain them. how that can be accomplished. although manufacturing has lost 130,000 jobs in the current recession in the state of iowa, there are opportunities in some fields. there are growth fields in nursing and biotech and wind energy. these are the kinds of opportunities young people should be prepared for. what are some of the ways we can prepare them? one of the things we think is an institution that is underutilized in terms of preparing young people who are not destined for a four year degree for these kinds of jobs are community colleges. community colleges do have programs but many of the

programs they link up with high school are college prep programs. you are going to go on to a four year degree. why not be imagined that? why not we imagine situations where young people destined for this degree -- take introduction to computing classes while in high school or community college? why not have the bureaucracy in school districts, community colleges and larger university systems, one of the best in the country? why not have the bureaucracys. other and talk to each other and think of ways to productively link up these various pools that operate like a mosaic? they don't speak to each other. tie in the sky, may be. i got an e-mail that i didn't send out. e-mail is a wonderful thing.

i learned so much in the last couple weeks. got an e-mail from a woman who was director of the chamber of commerce in new moon who is the director of the greater new development corp.. an umbrella group. her name is indeed. she spoke to me about the career academy program they have begun -- as you recall -- few places would be able to work on that. we have got to get to the point

in newton,. they refitted the cat to produce wind turbines for alternative energy. they retrained 500 of those workers. it is not everybody, it is a lot of people and they are thinking along the lines of what we have been talking about where you link a high-school students to community college to prepare them for industries such as that. that is one thing you can do at the level of a small town. there are other things small towns can do. a group like in speak a li in d about our military personnel. they were serving before and during a time of war.

this is an all volunteer army. this isn't an army that is drafted. people choose to serve. many people choose to serve for a combination of reasons. one of the most powerful reasons people choose to serve is the fact that this is the best opportunity that will come their way. they do so because they believe that they will get training, people believe they will get education and a good living wage by joining the service. and they do. and they don't. one of the more poignant things we found was people who served in the military and no longer serve in the military, they felt somewhat let down that the skills they had learned in the navy or the army or the air force weren't really transferable once they got out. these were skills that were not going to get them a job.

one person trained in the medical field who would have to start from scratch after she finished. that is not right. that should be. there ought to be a better way to ease that transition back after you have served. is heartening to me to see that there's some money set aside for veterans as of last week. there was an announcement by president obama, part of that can be evolve to small towns because ellis has a lot of veterans and you can think of imaginative ways to train, retrain these young men men women to be at least able and available for some of the opportunity we have. third thing that can happen at the level of small towns that is

in vogue but is a wonderful opportunity for us. we hear a lot about the economy. we hear a lot about sustainable agriculture. these are two things that by their very nature need to be decentralized. you can't have your green he economy in the big city. you can't just have wind turbines in philadelphia. it won't work. maybe there's a lot of hot air that can power them but in reality your wind turbines need to be on the playing field off the coast. they need to be at or near small towns. this can be ground zero for rolling out the green economy of sustainable agriculture. we need to rethink the way we produce food. big mass production of food, that day is almost over. we, as a matter of our own

health and well-being, need to do things different. on the law, i lived here for summer and i grew things in the ground here that i didn't think i would ever have a chance of growing anywhere. i was a skilled gardener by the time i left, lost it all when i went back to the big city. i can grow things and i started putting things and maybe i can't. maybe it was the soil. this can be ground zero for that. sustainable agriculture, community supported agriculture are things that need workers. need people. i was in iowa city doing a talk and went out for lunch afterwards to a cafe. great food. there was something with take-out in its name. pultmilky cow, i don't know.

heat organic food, when your grandparents called food. we don't have to be this way. we went this way in the 1970s. it doesn't have to be that when. small towns benefit from the investments that pay off. these are labour intensive things. at the larger national level, there are things that need to happen that big government has to do to help small towns. part of this is providing the support for the green economy and rethinking how we produce food. part of this is reforming labor laws in agribusiness. one of the reasons the wages of a meat packager are 1-third what they were 150 years ago is very simple. agribusiness can get away with it. if i can take somebody from

mexico and pay $5 an hour to do a job by with a local guy $15 an hour for 15 years ago i will do it and not only will i do it but i am going to get away with it. and they have and they say to states like iowa, if you let these guys organize and let local people organize and agitate for a living wage we are just going to move. my question to that is where are you going to move? the food is here. the land is here. you think you are going to move somewhere else? know you are not. you are going to pack meet right where it is at the source. we have to think of ways to do that. you do two things. they become real jobs again when you pay people properly, when you give them benefits. when you enforce health and safety standards.

that was closed after the immigration -- what was lost, one of the things that was lost on that rate is the plant had 157 health and safety violations in the previous 18 months. none of which were enforced. that is a disgrace. that shouldn't happen. why not make them good jobs? why not make them safe jobs? fairly easy to do. okay. lastly, in terms of -- there are a couple other things. i want to give -- i have spoken for too long. that is the irish in the. put a microphone in front of the, there's a camera here, i could be here for hours. my mother used to joke that when the fringe would open the light would go on i would be there.

song and dance. we do also need to provide support in sustainable ways for small towns. the stimulus is one way of doing it. the stimulus, beach state was different but why not have that trickle-down to real towns? have real investment? why not have that invest in go to some community colleges? and it has. there was a college graduation initiative announced over the summit that provides $12 billion for community college development. the news is good. there are ideas out there. there are ways to attract people back to small towns. they are as varied as the hairs in your head. there is a program in kansas and tuition remission programs in western kenya and name, come back to iowa please campaign.

we will find out in a few minutes when we get to the q and a. where was that car parked? right at the front? there are ways to do this. one of the things we thought about, here's another statistic that didn't used early on. over half of all counties in the state of iowa, just the state of iowa, i could tell you about missouri and other state, have at least one underserved area. an area that doesn't have a doctor, pierce, nurse's assistant, dentist and so on. over half of all counties have at least one medically underserved area and a third of them have more than one. here is a thing you can think about. while not prospectively instead of trying to attract people back

once they have gone, there is an umbilical cord that gets thinner and thinner the longer you are away, why not identify people who are going to be the doctors and nurses and dentists and lawyers and whatever else you need in a small town and say here is the deal. we will help you out, we will have you do an internship with a local professional and we will help you out as you go to college and provide some of your tuition and all of your tuition for your professional school. if you sign up to give us ten years after you graduate, that would pay huge dividendss for a sparely -- fairly small -- think of it as akin to a job corps or an americorps or whatever it is.

think of it as health core for america. it is quite simple. there are ideas. people ask about this issue and say how bad is it? surely this has happened before. in boston town they come and go. that is certainly true. here is what is different about this. this is a crisis that is slow burning. there is a continuum here from the robust health the town on one end and the almost sugar town on the other end. ellis is on the robust side of things. one or two things happen and you slide inexorably toward the other side. there are thousands of towns along this continuum. this isn't just a frontier issue. this isn't just a boom and bust cycle that happens so rapidly a town springs up from the earth

and disappears five years later. this has taken decades to happen. if we don't start thinking about it now, in ten or 15 years, there will be many more towns towards the shorter end of things. with that, thank you for your incredibly rapt attention. thank you for not throwing things at me yet. we will open it up for questions from the floor. denise has a microphone. please speak clearly into with because we are taping for the wonderful c-span folks. i am going to get my gym. [laughter] someone has to break the ice. >> my name is amy tucker and diana 2006 graduate from sumner.

my capstone class, the fourth year of seniors for community sociology, for people who are strangers in the back. we have not read the book yet but we skimmed through it. but opportunities for college, had to leave. however, we were talking some and wondering about the implications of the labels you have given like the achievers earansanand earansananand state -- of the p keep people in small-town iowa, as far as people saying on want to be an achiever, isn't that out more than being a stayer? >> you are right. from the point of view of

writing this it is an incredibly difficult line that you walk when you try to describe something. we tried very hard in this book to do several things. we had to absolutely respect confidentiality of the people who spoke with us. in some cases some of the details are a little money to do just that. the other thing we tried hard to do was give voice to those people in such a way that makes sense and part of that was labeling them in an accurate sort of way. i get your point that achiever is maybe purge orderly different than stayer.

let me say that -- why would you leave? what would you miss? things like that. the answers were so vastly different. it was very poignant about both sets that the leavers were ambivalent about the process of leaving. the guys who went off to college, there were a couple moments they talked about. one was leaving home for the first time and the first night in the dormitory. you all experience that were of a i am away from home and on my own and have to watch my own sox. or not. hopefully not. if you have roommates please respect that. the second moment was when you leave college where do you go from there. the feeling that you are getting for those that is ever further

away and speaking about what you miss. and feeling bad about that. feeling bad that i miss certain things but i will never go back. one person spoke about their is just something taking me away. this force that takes you away. pile it up against the stayer's responses to the same questions. much less detail because the question of would you ever leave is almost -- why are you even asking me that? that is a crazy question. why would i leave? i love it here. this is where i am from. there is an incredible sense and rightful sense of pride and real love and affection for the place. there are bad things about everywhere. neighbors, everything.

although i can't imagine anyone ever being annoyed by me ever because i am the perfect neighbor. over and above that the stayers talk about it is a crazy -- i can't think of an answer to the question because nothing worked. one guy talk about maybe if a bomb went off and the town was raised to the ground then maybe i would leave but that was a may be. one of those things that -- you are right that we're being very careful. it is not pejorative because of the way they spoke about the place. it was funny. almost maybe john mellencamp is more influential or an i thought i was born in a small town and live in a small town and that is where i am going to die. this is a wonderful thing. i couldn't think of anything that is better.

the last response to that, i don't want to overdo this, feet high flyers we spoke with who came back, these are the people who want to attract the incentives, it is not about that. it is about the effective stuff. i want to be close to where i grew up, be close to my family and be in a place where i can raise my kids the way i was raised. a woman talked about an offer from des moines that would pay me twice as much. it is not about the money. there's something more important for her than the money. it is -- i think as a good sociologists, you are right to ask that question. is not a pejorative. that is the reason. >> was there an age at which the likelihood of the highfliers returning drastically cut off? you are saying the reason for coming back to legally the heart

fell by one to raise the kids the way i was raised. typically there's a point when that is no longer an issue and do you see a drop-off in the amount of people who would choose to come home? >> that is a great question. it is funny. here is the thing. a lot of small towns. we heard this from other places. how do we get these guys? how we get the doctors and lawyers back and all these people? we don't really know but we do know everyone is trying. there are two main approaches and they are both -- they occur at different ages. the first approach is the capture and release after graduation. basically you stand at the graduation of a big university with a net, snag one of these people. i am joking of course but it is kind of like that. can we get you just after graduation so that if you leave now you are gone? if you cross state lines you are

on the run from the state police and if you get across the state line that is it. the warrant doesn't apply or whatever. that doesn't seem to work because let me give you just one instance. the state of michigan has a huge problem losing their technology graduates. michigan, michigan state, michigan,? michigan state system produces around 70,000 graduates a year. knowledge graduates are people working for information and so on. only 7,000 state in the state. they lose $63,000 out of state and they spent a lot of money educating these guys. would do we do? their idea was what we need to do is make the place cooler. if the state is cooler people will stay because young people like cool stuff. they want ipods and cappuccinos

and bike paths and bands and music and whatever else. they had the cool cities. every city was going to be a cool city. i don't know what that means exactly but they expect a lot of money on this. city number one. what is your cool tech? we have a lot a polar and waller rank. four years in spending tens of millions of dollars didn't work because you are focusing on a group that seems to they 5 incentives. they are just not ready to listen to this. on the further end of it is to focus on the young people in their 30s who are selling in to their professional lives and who are ready to start a family. people are having kids later. the age of marriage and first

child has gone up. those have a little more success. the come back to iowa please campaign focused on a bunch of ads that focused on that. they would have -- i thought it was a humorous way of doing that. i will, the 6 safest state in the nation. i didn't know that. iowa, where commuters can be measured in minutes instead of ours. i have yet to be in a traffic jam here in iowa. i was going through fairbanks. i was almost got there. i was at a stoplight for twenty-second. there were four cars behind me. this might be a traffic jam. when you are ready to have a

family, these wonderful example. one guy was originally from iowa and he had gone to california of all places. the hotbed of whatever it is and he was a realtor. i am just kidding. he said he is a guy whose job it is to know where to live and he chooses iowa. his testimony was the same price that i paid for my 1100 sq. ft. box that i lived in in california i have ten acres. those work a little better. it is a curve of the near thing where it doesn't seem to work at a certain age but as they age there is an optimal time that you can get it and it declined

after word. to answer your question it is in their 30s to focus on. >> when you were doing your interviewing, did you get anything from the stayers as to their attitudes about the people who left? >> that is a good question. i think all of the group's talks about the other groups in a way. one of the ways they spoke about each other was how they were in high school. high-school is the crucial age in which -- it is not that you only enter into a halfway then or you can't change or whatever. it seems to sort itself out but by the time you finish high school you are pretty much in

one of the groups. not that change doesn't happen but there seems to be that you have settled into a path. one of the way that every group spoke about the other group was to describe each other in high school. we asked tell me about what it was like to go to high school and tell me about the different groups. talk of it in terms of what people did. the kinds of activities they did. one of the main dividing factor is tbetween stayers and achieves is stayer worked and worked a lot and work was something we heard from them, one guy talked this way, you had your prep types and little tights and your work types and i was a work types. other people would talk about

how working was something i was born to do. sort of pride in a work ethic. the great irony of that was one of the things that makes it so attractive to work for stayers early is you can earn a decent wage at 16 working 30 hours a week. you can still go to school and work 25 or 30 hours a week. totally anomalous. kids in suburbs and cities would have no conception of that. they would be dead even thinking of working 30 hours and going to school. it was fairly normal when a guy would talk about all i get up and go here for five hours before going to school and after-school i go to my other job and i would be doozy even just thinking about doing that. the allure is there to do that because you can earn at 16 what

a 25-year-old earns. that feels good. you feel like a man or a woman doing that. but what happens is when you are 25 and you are still learning what you learned when you were 16, that is where the rub comes in. the answer to your question is they spoke about each other but really in terms of the lens of high-school. the last thing i want to say on that, there was an acute awareness of the stayers of what they lacked in terms of the skills that they needed to compete. one young man, we talked to him and -- the question that may be elicited this response was how did high-school prepare you for life? he said look, we didn't do computers in high-school. it just wasn't done at the time. he graduated in the early 90s.

but he said nowadays either you are a laborer or you are behind a computer. if you don't have a lot of skills like i don't you had better get them fast because that is what you need. he was very much aware that these were the kinds of things that he would focus on. there was that awareness that in some ways we talk a little bit presentations talked about how work betrays these guys because they buy into the idea that work will save you. if you work hard you will make it. yes and no. you will make it but -- one other guy talked -- this sticks at me. here i am. that i am learning this in four years later, no benefits, it burns me that we are the first generation that will not do

better than our parents. that is something that is very poignant. i hope that answers your question. >> i am curious if you did any research or percentages on older people that returned back to their home town. >> we didn't. but there are a couple responses to that. we didn't because of the way the initial study was designed to focus. however, when we are writing the book one thing we did find was of the non metro counties that had people in migrating, more coming in that leading, these were mainly retirement destinations. these workplaces people were

coming back to retire to. of the town's, there is a wonderful report that i just read recently from the university of north carolina that basically focuses on about 30 small towns that are making it. they divided into 3 groups. of those 30 towns. one of the things that struck me is only four -- a lot of these were towns in the north carolina colorado. in the midwest, focusing on the midwest where we are, the counties that are gaining population are gaining population because people are coming back as retirees. in some places in western kansas this has been very beneficial to

towns. they want them to come back because there is wildlife, hunting and fishing and so forth. here is the thing. for the overall health of the small town we believe that is great but it has to be balanced from young people. you need to have young people who are going to have families, kids in the school, who will be on the pta or volunteering at their local library and so on. it is important because retirees bring money, they bring expertise, all of their social capital with them but you need to balance that out as well. there is a lot of research. >> thank you. right here. >> i am a 1951 graduate of

sumner high-school, lifetime resident of sumner. any time i read or hear criticism of sumner i have a tendency to be taking it somewhat personally. i came with a list of things i wanted to share with you. your presentation has blown most of them away. i compliment you on your presentation. i do still have two things. [laughter] i have two things. i am assuming the book was based on your findings here in this town, not the entire midwest. fair statement? >> i can't speak about the town. based on the findings in the town called appellates, >> that answers my question. based on that, in one paragraph in the local paper, the book

gives an accurate review of the heartland is committing suicide by sending the best and brightest away and neglecting its less gifted who are condemned to blue-collar jobs with stagnant wages war to party. i think that is overly critical. of this area. >> you are probably right if you take just that -- >> i appreciate that. [talking over each other] >> just taking bits and pieces. >> i wouldn't disagree with you. why don't you and i -- [laughter] -- i am irish. you are absolutely -- can i respond in a way that maybe couches what we're trying to get at? one of the difficulties in doing this, you are trying to get the conversation going about the

issue. here is what i think about ellis. ellis is a wonderful place. it is also a relatively healthy place. the young lady who wrote from colby county if we had done the research, it would have been much drier -- more bleak. they're both on this continuing as i was talking about earlier, from the healthiest small town that is thriving to the one that is finished. and i think one of the -- we used the research in ellis to speak to this wider issue and the passage you quote speaks to that wider issue where we do believe that in the current socio-economic context where opportunities have shrunk, where there just isn't a safety net for those who aren't going off to college, there isn't a viable

safety net, think about when you were young and what opportunities there were for you when you graduated high-school. they are very different now and they require different skills and they require that people be prepared for them. our point was that if you are going to disproportionately allocate your precious resources to go and not come back, it is basically you are literally taking your money and throwing it away. because that is akin to what you are doing. we don't believe that you shouldn't help young people achieve, you should, but you need to also prepare the ones that are staying and most likely to come back for the opportunities that are there. in that context you are absolutely right.

i would take the same numbers that you did and be much less polite about it probably but that is the wider context of using the case study here to speak to -- the wider issue, ellis is not in great health but it is healthy. one or two bad things happen and the process we talk about, it is slow, like a thread in your sweater. it unravels bit by bit by bit by bit and you have to address that or else. >> i have one other comment of a critical nature. you cover in the paper a quote from richard brodsky. which states the best kids go are the ones with the biggest problems staying and we have to deal with their kids in the school and the next generation. i hope that very few people agree with that statement.

enough said. i don't agree with that. >> cam i address that? i think you are right, very few people did agree. he did say it. one of the things -- it is an extreme point of view. but it is an extreme point of view that speaks to a deeper truth in some ways. there are people who hold that point of view. not everybody feels that way. most people don't feel that way. but here is a person whose position at the school is a pivotal position and went on the record to say that. that was the reason we included it. to speak to this wider thing but

you are absolutely right. most people would not agree with it. >> just part of the conversation. one final comment. >> you are on a roll. keep going. >> is not addressed to you, it is addressed to people of sumner. as evidenced by this fine library, the modern aquatic center, our school system, hospital, local industry, parks and trails, ambulance service and fire department, etc. we are not a dying town. i don't feel we are even sec. thank you.ick. thank you. >> amen to that. >> just to reiterate.

just to reiterate i was in colby, kansas, this summer. we might have a little sniffle but they have pneumonia. >> you are absolutely right. >> things have happened here that had to make us look inward. the potential closing of rockwell. you can't just say it won't make any difference. it will. it is part of the unraveling. >> let me just share a little further tidbit about colby. it is so much further down that line. this woman sarah shared with us, she went back to colby and it was christmas of 2007. she stood in the main street on saturday afternoon for three hours. and she met one person in three

hours. she said to -- the bank had hiked christmas music over the loudspeaker and it was just echoing off of this empty town. it was the eeriest thing she ever saw. a very poignant way of giving you a window on what can happen when you don't think about what the future can hold and don't take action. we are trying to get started here. >> i have a question. on the research you have done was basically on the group that graduated in the 80s and 90s, that is when the computer age was just coming about. when you are in high school you did a little bit but not a lot. really the big wide web and social networking come around you. do you see that changing things and how would you see that changing things for younger