>> coming up next, booktv presents george friedman, an hour-long program where we invite guest host to interview authors. this week, local intelligence expert george friedman discusses his latest book, "the next decade." in it the former political science professor calls the the. an imperialist power that will be forced to reduce its dominance. the author of the next hundred years predicts china and turkey will challenge the remaining superpower in the coming decades

and wave the government may not anticipate. he talks with the executive editor of foreign-policy magazine, susan glasser. >> host: george, thank you so much for joining us today. i'm thrilled to have the chance to talk to you in some depth about your new book, "the next decade." i see it represents a little bit of what is the right word, narrowing of the frame of ambition from u.s. book on the next 100 years so you have now taken on perhaps a slightly more manageable next 10 years or perhaps that is actually more undoable the next 10 years. i think we can talk about that a little bit over the next hour and some of your very counterintuitive views i think about what direction you see the world headed and in particular the u.s. encounters with that world, whether it is on israel or china interview of its rise or russia. i think you have some interesting things to say that are not exactly what you are

going to pick up from reading the papers every day so let's go ahead and jump right into that conversation. the next 10 years, what are the three most surprising takeaways that you are offering people in this book? >> guest: i think the first is the war on terror has been overdone not in the sense that terrorism is not a profound danger but as a monochromatic structure of foreign-policy. it is simply unsustainable. they were too many other things happening in the world. the second i suppose is we have been arguing a long time that china has profound economic problems at this point. it has grown magnificently over 30 years and will continue to grow but it is going to go through an adjustment. i suppose the most important thing i'm arguing is that the next 10 years is really about the relationship between what i call the empire of the republic between the best global power of the united states, the

difficulty in managing that and retaining entertaining republican forms of government. the military-industrial complex. i'm going beyond that. i'm saying that the requirements of managing an international system in which we are the only global power with the institutions that we have, the complexity of our intelligence organizations, create creates create the situation would know what really had a clear idea what everyone was doing. aside from creating unnecessary chaos in the world, it creates real challenges for the republic. i would even maintain a democratic society in the face of both accumulating and launch french parent power. i would say those three things would be the most talented to do. host of the word balancing i think is a word that appears a lot in the course of the book and what you are talking about in many different areas of the

world really is this question of what course is the u.s. going to chart? are recalling to adopt or for lack of a better word a more realist approach to some of these challenges rather than the direct interventions that we have undertaken over the last decade? you point out about the united states has been in more exactly 100% of the time over the 21st century as opposed to the very very bloody conflicts of the 20th century which amounted to a believe you said 17% of the time. so are we going to find a way to back out of these wars? >> guest: we are going to have to find a way to back out of without tacking out of the responsibility for the area. i said one point in the book that the balance of power is to foreign-policy worthy bill of rights is foreign -- domestic policy. i compare the united states to the split germany, nazi germany and napoleon tried to rule by main force. it doesn't work very well.

the romans in the british persians ruled subtly and indirectly by managing various players and controlling them and bringing them to the point where it wanted that. >> host: subtlety up until now has not been a hallmark of american diplomacy. >> guest: we are a very young country and it has only been 20 years since we have been the world's only global power. december 31, 19 the 91 was the break but if history. first, the first moment in which been live hundred years there was no european global power. and second it was the moment of the united states quite by surprise, think what was done that it happened stood alone, and it takes time to build institutions. takes time to build a political culture. is not surprising the first 10 years everyone was gideon decided history it ended and we would not have any wars and then 9/11 happened that was all about

the long war that would never end in the islamic world. the united states is off balance. didn't expect to be and that is why say this was the unintended empire. it didn't expect to be in this enormously powerful position. it doesn't really know how to manage it and this is a decade, the third decade we are and that it must come to terms. the incredible strains not only creating in the international system but also within the domestic system. >> host: that is right. in a way i'm struck by your argument about the need for a new diplomacy and new institutions to go along with it that will be the agent of this balancing. there is not a clear sense that we are -- into a project of building post-cold war institutions. if anything that project seems to have been put on hold or perhaps has gone in the wrong direction by the reframing of the american foreign-policy is a global war on terror over the

last decade. >> guest: indeed i think that has to be adjusted but let's remember that the british was devastated in the seven-year counterinsurgency in north america where they were badly defeated. the germans and 60 a.d. got their heads handed to them by the germans. it is not uncommon for great imperial systems as they burge first to be totally unaware that they are an imperial system and second to suffer serious reverses. we americans, like others, tend to be operatic. as soon as we encounter a serious problem, we declare declared that we are failures and this is a process we are going to go through. the first up of the process is admitting what we are. for the united states admitting that we are an empire is extraordinarily difficult. we are the first great anti-imperial project, the american revolution.

we have been warned to avoid foreign entanglements. we have as recently as world war ii argued that europe is not our business and a large number people feel that we should disengage. >> host: again, that is something that hasn't gone away. that is not a historical clean artifact. that is going to be an increasingly loud debate over the next two years. >> guest: but it is a debate that is meaningless. you can disengage. if the united states is 25% of the world economy how do you disengage from the rest of the world where everything you do unintended or intended has devastating potential or -- for some region of the world. large numbers of people either celebrate or cry, and this is the problem. our institutions are not really aware of the problems we caused it and the decisions we make.

the president's office is not always aware of what everyone is doing. and the public is unaware of how dependent they are. on these relationships for their own well-being. there is a lack of awareness both in our institutions and our political culture of the necessity of these relationships but we would like to mentioned that we could have the benefits but all of the nasty responsibilities will go away. >> host: increasingly that is the dialogue is he taking place between the u.s. and china for example which is to say china's probably running through the end of its course of making the argument we are simply a developing country and we can't afford to bear the burdens of international leadership if the united states has been -- china wants to be recognized as the second largest economy in the world growing towards being at some point in the next couple of decades the largest economy in the world. at some points those conversations are going to make and they question of who pays

the bill for global leadership and what is required in order to sustain that is going to, but i want to back up, december 31, 1990 when you call the break point in history the collapse of the soviet union is what happened on that day and the birth of the post-soviet era.

power is relative. within the form of the soviet union, russia is strong relative to. that europe is i won't say disarmed but certainly militarily weak and economically strong but has a very heavy dependency on natural gas. there are ways the europeans can move beyond that dependency. but over the next 10 years they're going to acquire russian resources. the germans have also reached a points within the european union that they're asking basic questions about, what is the use of this. they need. they have problems. they need workers. they don't want to have any more turkish workers come in. that's a problem for that. so when you can't have your workers come to the factories you move your factories to the workers. oddly enough russia even though it has a declining population still has surplus labor. most of the economy is

unemployed or under employed and welcome russian technology. what i think has happened here is russia and germany have increasingly intense economic relationships they cooperate and neither are particularly happy with the world run by the united states. it creates weight. germany has not yet moved to this point. germany is still sorting through the wreckage of the e.u. and trying to figure out which way it is going to go. i suspect that it has stronger interest with russia at the moment. in the long run there was a reason that the soviet union collapsed. that reason hasn't gone away. so if i look out longer, i see those reasons there. i see another weakness but in the short run, given the state of the e.u., given the state of russia relative to the e.u. given the situation in the union and especially given the massive

preoccupation of the united states with the middle east as opposed to europe, this is an opportunity for russia to try to stabilize itself and doing fairly well. >> let's talk about the middle east. what does the middle east tell us about the perils of forecasting and the dangers of accepting what we think is the conventional wisdom today >> first i have to define the middle east which is very vague. when i speak about the area the united states is engaged in, i think about the mediterranean to the hindu. from israel over this is very different from north africa. >> the greater middle east you're talking about here? >> well, some people have used the middle east to include any islamic country. some people use it for arabs, it's a british term for the british foreign office that doesn't have a great deal of use. i'm interested in the area where the united states is waging war which is iraq, afghanistan,

pakistan, possibly iran. battle box. there's three balances of power in that region the arab israel lishgs the iran iraqi and the pakistani. each one of them has destabilize over the 10 years. in the arab-israeli relationship barring some dramatic change in egypt over time, israel is so dominant that it can create new realities on the ground. it is indifferent to what the united states really says very often. in afghanistan the united states is asking pakistan to do things create instability that weaken pakistan that potentially create an independent regional power in india that the united states may not appreciate in the long run. and of course the invasion of iraq has destroyed the iran-iraq balance of power. create what is the most immediate issue which is forgetting nuclear weapons the iran is the dominant

conventional military force in the region if the united states isn't there. the united states has its policy to withdraw from iraq. the potential for iran filling the vacuum is extremely high. that in turn changes the balance of power or at least the political dynamic in the arabian peninsula. there are vitally important decisions to be made. on the one hand the united states must rebalance its global policy to deal with issues like russia. to deal with china and so on. at the same time the united states can't simply withdraw. it doesn't have the ability to simply exit and doesn't have an endgame in any of these areas. so we have a very powerful nation much less powerful than might be other circumstances because it'ses so off balance and so overcommitted to one region. >> that's where i was really surprised in a way to look at where you're take the consequences of that analysis.

let's take those three that you mentioned, india, pakistan, iraq, iran and israel and palestine. in all three cases i think you've gone out and looked at some ways in which we might end up the decade in a place very different than the one we are now. whether it's your thought of almost what i would call strategic distances from israel noochlt rejection of israel. but a deprioritizing of our mediation effort in the israel-palestine conflict. india-pakistan, i think that's where i was most surprised to read your book right now there's a lot of talk in washington in particular about the strategic prospects of a potentially invigorated new alliance with india. of course president obama just made a big trip there last fall. this falls on actually bush's foreign policy emphasis on building a new and a sub stan tvly different kind of

relationship with india. and really after the enormous disappointment of a long-term u.s. strategic partnership with pakistan. this is not a new recommendation we've had a partnership with pakistan. it seems to have failed in some key respects. i definitely want to get back to that. and then of course your third area that you look at which is iran-iraq the destabilization caused by the u.s. invasion of iraq and your recommendation that ultimately we're going to have to find a sort of nixon in china moment here where no matter how unpalatable it may seem, we come to some different kind of accommodation or even perhaps a new kind of alliance with iran. so let's take those three. israel and palestine first. >> we are committed to the survival of israel. the survival of israel is not an issue. if iran were to develop nuclear weapons the israelis say is 3-5 years out that's another issue. but under the current

circumstances the issue here is not the survival of israel. in 1973, 74, it was. and at that time we gave $3 billion which was 25% of his gdp which today is 1 and a half percent of its gdp. the relationship itself has changed. the foundation of the relationship guaranteeing israel's right to exist is not the issue the level of aid that we provide is not critical. not so much i want to change the relationship. the relationship has changed. the question now is we had one set of relations prior to 1967 we gave little aid to israel. there was a second period 67 to recently where the united states and israel had a unique partnership. not advocating changing the partnership, wondering what we're partnering on. israel's view is that it must create a reality on the ground

in which settlements institutions and so on.. one point of redefining relationships is not that somebody at the think tank publishes a paper and says he is a wonderful idea and that applies to the others as well. is the recognition the relationships have changed that the terms of endearment if you will be are still there but not what they were before, and

adjusting to policies satisfactorily. particularly at a time when the united states is so bogged down elsewhere. >> host: what are the tools in the toolkit for making this adjustment i think is an important one. >> guest: the first is recognizing the relationship is changed already. it's not your tool kit that changed it. the only thing you're toolkit can do is adjust your policy to the reality that you're facing at this moment and potentially facing in the future. >> host: again that is what is striking, you have barack obama coming into office speaking in a different manner certainly in the way that president bush had the forehand, and i think what's been interesting to observe the past couple of years is that in the end obama up until now hasn't managed a major shift. >> guest: and that is what is crucial is the speeches are very nice and policy papers are night and have nothing to do with the making. >> host: but analytical observations don't translate per

say into policy shifts or the rebalancing. >> guest: which is why i'm not interested in foreign policy. obama is a perfect example. a person who genuinely wanted a different foreign policy and was unable to it. it's equally interesting to look to george w. bush and raise the question to what extent did he have the options we would like to do? we would like to view our presidents with magical powers that they make decisions in a vacuum and create policies and people who speak to the president or semi magical and so on and so forth. i live in austin texas, pardon me to avoid the demagogue of washington. it's extremely important to understand how little choice obama had. hence the relationship that george w. bush had with chancellor merkel wasn't based on the fact george w. bush allowed, it was the fact that germany as a nation has

interests as they do not fully coincide in the water with those of the united states. perhaps to to the president down regardless of his intentions are he will wind up with the same relationship and it's not a personal relationship. it's not that they get along or don't get along or the like each other. germany is a nation of many tens of millions of people in the united states. the president is the end product of that. but he leads best when he's going to the place we are going anyway. and obama is perhaps a clinic in the limits of the foreign policy. >> host: certainly of frederick. there's no question about that. >> guest: you can turn the rhetoric and to many volumes of position papers and policy

papers. his essentials assumption is that the u.s. german relations could have been what they were 20 years ago had it not been for the unilateralism of george w. bush. the difference was like this, obama's position was i will be much more pleasant person and therefore the germans will do much more to help. the german position was think what we finally have a president who will ask us to do things we don't want to do. so they have this tremendous love affair, the nobel peace prize and everything else and suddenly realized my goodness, barack obama is an american president and angela merkel is a german chancellor to be a cost cutting you're right about that but i would like to go back to one of your earlier point which is what does it mean for the united states to grow into accepting its role as a sort of global win plater if you will or

certainly in a power cents an entire and you actually make the case that in player requires a much more sophisticated foreign policy in which to operate through regional alliances and networks of much more sophisticated ways of looking at what's happening around the world to accomplish american interest rather than to share exercises for hard power if you will. you could argue that in some ways that is what barack obama said all to do in the world, his embrace of multilateralism was in their view almost certainly an effort to rebalance the world where the simple projection of american force -- >> the rebalancing of the world, the vision of the president as an engineer. prior to that, they're has to be sophistication of understanding the impersonal forces. what are the things others cannot agree to?

what are the things they must have? is essentially foreign policy to be built on constraints, understanding what it is you cannot give up, what you must have. understanding other people. so the idea that a building alliances takes place in a vacuum that you simply reach out and it is the problem. the problem is that within the confines of the given reality of foreign policy as possible to manage, it's not impossible to abolish that. when the british dominated india the engineer did in a way but by taking a finton tough detentions and the balance of power within that area and try to take it over. similarly, the united states had the option in the middle east to manage the existing

relationships with the first thing you must understand is what are the existing relationships and the needs and requirements, and i think one of the things that obama had to learn and we will see if he has learned it is good will is insufficient. before you go out you have to understand the limits, the constraints and that is what kunar barack obama will make in the morning and what initiatives he will undertake. i can talk about what will fail because the other side want possibly agree to it and i can understand those things that tie the nations together. so whether putin is there or not russia is an exporter of natural gas. >> host: its sheet the last two decades in the geopolitics neither of which were very

predictable or certainly were predicted by the vast majority of the analysts and experts indeed of the soviet union in 1991 and the attacks of 9/11. you could say it represented a threat to carry out dramatic attacks on land and i'm not sure that anyone was predicting that it would be shaping force of international affairs in the first decade of the 21st century, the same for the brink of the soviet union there were those who accurately diagnosed its internal rise just as there are those that have been diagnosing the internal right across the regimes in the arab world from a sample. >> guest: why it is easier to forecast. postal and we've been waiting for the collapse of the regime for quite some time. >> guest: it was impossible to imagine the british would be

defeated by the american insurgents. when we look back on the british history in the 19th and first half of the 20th century it wasn't a critical event. over the long run, certain things of enormous importance shrink to insignificance. when we look back on of the imam war which was such an enormous event in american history looked back in the context of even today it has the lesser significance in terms of what will happen. to begin the conversation by saying that i've gone from a more and vicious to a less ambitious -- >> host: but it must be harder for the tin your prediction. >> guest: it's easier to look forward and 100 years blanking out the unexpected things and looking at the main thrusts. you may be wrong but that's possible. at the beginning of the 20th century, which would have written about the collapse of the british empire, the rise of

mass warfare, things of that sort without getting into the specifics. in fact h. g. wells and others and lemon wrote about all those things what is now the driving forces, demographics, some were politically and so on. i wanted to come back into a ten year framework because there is a point at which this has to begin playing out and this is the point where policy in history need each other not in the kind of way of policy makers, but in the more complex way of policy in countering of the emerging reality and that is what i wanted to do with this book. i wanted to see the hard part where i take a look at the 9/11

and say what does this decade mean? and i am making the argument that in the end of this wasn't a pivotal war. from the standpoint of the british politics of the time the war family enormously noisy in 1998 in retrospect was a fairly passive thing. but i look at what happened at 9/11 my with it this way when the soviet union collapsed, the defining line in the islamic world shattered and the region from yugoslavia to the hindu kush was thrown off balance, a massive earthquake took place. the first was in yugoslavia which was regarded as whatever kind it had nothing to do with but it was actually a precursor to the massive destabilization, the united states with moderate

force on hundred 50,000 men for 320 million country, person countries and a massive commitment. when it probably made the situation was ideal than it would have been otherwise. nevertheless, the question is what is the lasting effect on this? you could see the number of ways to read al qaeda's goal was to trigger a series of risings that create jihadist states, a complete failure. the american goal to understand correctly is to create a series of pro-american regimes, preferably with the government's like wisconsin governing in this region, that didn't happen. what is remarkable to me about the region is how changed it is. >> host: that is where we are going to see is this really just the very, very long in the game of the waning of the clients of

the soviet versus the u.s. era and we don't have the sense of yet what is going to replace that certainly across the broad least. are we seeing some of the beginning of the next stage but the very long in the game of the last stage of -- >> guest: it becomes what we want from india. >> host: funny you brought it back to that because i have to say why are you down on the idea of the u.s. in the in the alliance when you look to the context of china's rise and the strategic and the emotion and the genuine repeated failure of the u.s. policy of supporting cast him? >> guest: what is our goal? certainly we will have a long-term relationship with india. relation with foreign countries is always enhanced by having letters against and in addition to positive things for them.

the balance of power means you do not make a unilateral unconditioned commitment to any country. to understand the defined interests in common and it's always the central as crete or lesser power and we have other options. entering into the relationship with the power that is unconditional goes against the principal of a prudent foreign policy. how do you condition the relationship with india? did in the geography it's hard, it's very far over the hill. the american relationship with pakistan is delivered that is available. do we want a subcontinent of under the domination of the power regardless what it is? its more interest of the united states to have a relationship with the country that has an element of insecurity so when we talk about a sophisticated foreign policy, it doesn't

simply mean people, diplomats can speak the language, it means understanding the relationship with the foreign countries extraordinarily complex. it is and monochromatic. they are our friends and enemies, they consist of conflicting interests. and when i look at an country i asked two questions. how can a benefit the united states, how can be made clear that there are alternatives so that the dependency doesn't exist? so the issue isn't shall we have a close relationship with india. we will have a close relationship with india because we share the common interests economic and political. the question is how to reshape the relationship and i think one of the problems the united states has is we think in terms of friends and enemies. this is a friend, i have a friend i want to be generous and

forthcoming. think of it more as a business relationship. i have a business relationship with this person. i may or may not be his friend. that has nothing to do with it and i want to make sure i have options. and i think you would be healthy if we were to place the frame work of the relations of the countries to depersonalize it. >> host: that's what's been going on with pakistan is we have in fact made our dependency so clear with them and they have a sense that our strategic calculation in the region is where you just outlined that we prefer to have a friendly relationship with india -- >> guest: we can screw up relations india and pakistan at the same time. it's possible. >> host: the point is we tried the strategic approach in the region in the way that you're suggesting and it hasn't worked out during well. >> guest: if you look at the period what time you're talking about since 1948 i'm not too uncomfortable with the way that

it's involved. certainly our invasion of afghanistan has created a problem for pakistan and that threatens its internal stability. when you speak to the pakistanis the look that to the 1990's period as the period they were doing with the americans wanted. it was a period of relative stability. the man not like the government that's not our concern. we say that al qaeda developed in afghanistan and we didn't want that. and they come back and said yes the did and that is unfortunate but al qaeda could have developed and where else. al qaeda was not an afghan movement. it happened to be there. the point we ask now is how do we deal with it? the united states is a temporary presence in afghanistan whether it is one or five years we are not inclined to be there permanently. pakistan is permanent in afghanistan. it does not want to have a hostile afghanistan and

therefore it doesn't take responsibility for afghanistan. the american goal is that al qaeda shouldn't be in afghanistan but al qaeda is in yemen, somalia and cleveland. >> host: when you look at south asia do you disagree with those who consider pakistan and afghanistan to be unstable part of the world? >> guest: i wouldn't quote them as dangerously unstable. i think iran is potentially more but it's not worth having. it's certainly one. the question is how we get it back into shape. a destabilizing pakistan to the point that it collapses and making it the responsibility of pakistan, which made it what it is is a more interesting not come. we ask the fundamental question

why are we in afghanistan? was the strategy that president obama had in mind, president bush's strategy was a more modest one holding the key areas not trying to dominate the country. president obama ran the campaign in the wrong war. we are now in the war. it's not clear we have the force is necessary to bring this to conclusion. therefore we are stuck with a pakistan because we have to withdraw in which case pakistan war we entice pakistan in various ways into the collaborating in a staged withdrawal so this comes to the point that it really doesn't matter if hot what happened in the past and at this moment if our goal is to somehow exit afghanistan without attempting to occupy which is in the choice we must deal with pakistan.

>> host: that's right. the question isn't dealing with pakistan so much as what is the longer term outcome in terms of are they going to come away from wherever we end up with a new status quo in afghanistan committed to their campaign of undermining their neighbor next door in india. >> guest: we can avoid that by staying in afghanistan permanently or live with it. so here's exactly how why approach to foreign policy issue. you posed the question if pakistan comes to be secure in afghanistan to destabilize india, they will. shall we therefore stay permanently in afghanistan? how do we prevent that? i come to say yeah i think pakistan and india have reasons to distrust each other. i don't think they are going to come away.

i think at various points in history they will attempt to undermine. how can the united states benefit from that and create a stable balance in which american interests are secure? those lucila pakistan is not to be trusted, i ask the question okay what is your plan? and the problem is nato has almost 150,000 troops, fighting in afghanistan. i regard that as an untenable position. i see no solution except within the context of the pakistani relationship and therefore i regard can we trust pakistan cannot trust pakistan? i don't know what to do with it. because i see our country as having decisions and i think this isn't a realist or an idealist position. this is simply the way that we have pleaded the cards. can we do this and get pakistan to stop undermining in the eye

and get india to stop undermining pakistan? that we don't know how to do. and one of the problems is when you make your foreign policy that ambitious, that i simply don't want to get out -- >> host: the failure is much higher and -- >> guest: and you leave yourself in afghanistan. i much more interested in having those 050,000 troops out. i'm not particularly interested in the national interest of the united states what kind of government there is in kabul and i want to see the united states more balanced and able to respond to russian invasion with georgia and things of that sort so i want to balance foreign policy. afghanistan creates an unbalanced foreign policy and my question is how to rebalance it and there are some prices to pay. >> host: one thing we haven't talked about so far at all is china. and of course when you have a conversation about india and pakistan, the big piece of that

we haven't talked about at all is china. keillor of the view that some of the current almost his story about a rise of china and would mean for the long-term consequence to the power has been widely overstated in the west. tell me what you think that. >> guest: to begin with, using the chinese statistics this 1.3 billion people in china. 600 million of them live in households earning less than $3 a day. 440 million live in households earning between three to $6,000 a day. in other words, china over 80% lives in poverty that is sub-saharan africa. there is the china that we all see about 60 million people, they have an average income of $20,000 a year, middle class which is the size of france. it's not a trivial number but it's less than 5% of china. that china cannot sell to china.

they are constantly trying to find ways to do it. you can't sell and i had a person. they are the hostage of the west. and the gun pointing at the head of china this is the rising american savings rate because every dollar not spent at wal-mart is taken of the chinese diet. the stable is a system increasing exports. the current profit margin as 1.7% on the chinese exports which i think is high. >> host: even the officials will tell you not necessarily to believe the statistics have been little -- >> guest: which means they are exporting almost the cost in order to prevent the thing the are the most afraid of, unemployment. they can't keep up because at this point, chinese wage rates are high year than those in mexico. if you take a look at the shirts you'll find mexico and the philippines, not china.

china lost its competitive that vantage. like japan in 1990 when we all believed in the massive japanese superstates taking us all over and we saw them by the rockefeller center -- >> host: >> guest: it is cyclical in the sense that look japan has come through a 20 year period and which it achieved its economic goals. it had the choice between having the cringing recession, unemployment and violating the social contract that underlines japanese society. they made a strategic decision and that strategic decision was we would have dillinger streets to keep the businesses going and avoid unemployment. from the standpoint of the western investors this was bill law of the decade because we couldn't invest in japan and the japanese looked at them and said we haven't realized the purpose of japan was to give you

opportunities to make money. the achieved what they wanted in the this is one of the important things we talk about and sophistication to be the understanding with the japanese were afraid of, unemployment. and you could understand why the policy wasn't stupid. it made perfect sense, the debt level has reached the point of probably unsustainable. they're going to unleash growth and social instability. the of one of vantage that china doesn't really don't have 1 billion people living and third world poverty. china does and the chinese are bitterly aware of that which is how big increasing security crackdown everywhere, moving the people's liberation army, having the crises and secession of what we just saw and also investing anywhere in the world outside of

china. i had a joke when japan came up. the japanese do this so well one or the volume temple beach? if the chinese are doing some spectacular why are the media from becoming a massive investments? in the two previous asian crises, the japanese in 1997 east asian crisis the precursor of capital flight. money moving out of the markets and investing overseas. we are now in the middle of the chinese capital flight which the media is interpreting as the growing power of china but the simple point is they are making a rational investment decisions based on their fear of the chinese economy caught between all the various forces. >> host: to be precise, is it your sense that the projections of the continued chinese economic growth or understate it? do you not believe china will surpass the u.s.'s largest economy sometime in the next decade or so?

>> guest: compounding at ten to 12% as fairly difficult to believe. remember that china came from a position on the mount centcom where the economy was in a complete shambles. the first decades of growth was simply the reconstructing the economy with a fine work force and resources and everything else. the last decade was brilliant. but in the same way that you can't invest on the assumption that he will always have the same compounding rates the chinese have to make the readjustment in their growth rate and they are doing it and they are doing it very carefully. and this is why you can ask them to revalue any now you want they are not going to do it. so it's not that -- it's not between the collapse and greatness. like japan and a very similar situation there is a readjustment of the normal and

japan went from the high growth economy, massively exporting and so on to the different structural kind driven by financial problems. china is in that situation as well. i can get to the question of the debt and equity durbin economy and so on but the point is it is not an insult to china to see you had a magnificent 30 years and the next. the projections suggest the rate of growth as we did a wonder the double digits that it's been that certainly the next decade or so. that would be on the course to become the world's dominant economy. >> guest: 8% growth is extraordinary. and i don't think it is at 8% growth rate now. and it's possible for the economy to grow out any great if it is indifferent to the rates of return capital and that is what the chinese are right now.

if i have a company and i am selling my product of low-cost and i can have fantastic rates of growth before i go bankrupt and that is what happens if the chinese. the huge rates of growth in '88, '89, '90, but at low rates or capital because the bank of the national settlements want to shut them down. so, the chinese have that situation now and this is why the margins on exports are so important they have a fantastic rate of growth that isn't necessarily healthy. >> host: the also have -- delude to this before but it's an important factor -- a demographic crisis will only because of the sheer scale of the people that live in really difficult for a world conditions in poverty but also because the one child policy and you're looking at the disappearance of this enormous generation power growth in the long term. >> guest: as much as that there is a cliff between fifth third world peace and the rest

as china becomes a more sophisticated economy producing more sophisticated products, the level of education, expertise required to join that blocks out the third world peace and it can't rise. the real question in china is the same question they confirmed. he attended the rise in shanghai and field. he marched and raised in the army in the peasants, they were better, they can get over 20 years and restructured china. the chinese government is painfully aware of how they began which is how they are ruthlessly crushing an organization outside the party which is they are not hitting living anything rise. if the chinese after the purpose of the economic the function which i think they are then the question isn't economics? the question is social and political. and the chinese are aware of

that and there is several members of the pla are going to be in the senior positions now. the chinese are aware of that and they are trying to whether it and they may well. but now the chinese are very inward and very concerned with how to manage the current problems. in their view they are confident they can manage it. perhaps they can but it's not great veazey. >> host: basically what you would say is here in the west both the economic analysts and the overall tenor has missed the underlining potential of the political instability in china. it's not front and center. if you look at not just america that european analysis or china today is all about jealousy at the astonishing growth figures. it's really not been an out of the political instability. >> guest: there's an interesting social phenomena to the west. in 1993, 94, with japan already

slowed down there were still people writing articles on the japanese. they have a treat for year lagging between the economic reality particularly in asia and the recognition by the west the whole theory of why but it doesn't matter. we are now in the position china has already stopped beating the way that it did a year ago. it's going to take several years before it is noticed. so there's a process that when the chinese economy grows the enthusiasm for the chinese economy grows but it's no longer universal. there's any number of economies now writing about the bible when china but is this also has a very -- wal-mart and the waitress once and countries outside of china because china has become too expensive the aren't particularly sentimental and they don't really right

position papers there simply changing the sourcing. so the philippines and pakistan and other countries but the point i'm making is it is natural and normal for a country after 30 years exponential growth jihad to slow down dramatically. is doing that. the consequences the economy could handle it if it didn't have a billion poor people. they could manage it like the japanese did but china has a problem. >> host: just to pull back a second to the big picture we are almost out of time here. many analysts look at the 21st century as talked about this as the sort of specific decade, the asian decade to, or even a century to come, the waning of europe. i don't really see that in your work. you seem to be much more in a way of reminding us of the relative for example to the

american strategic thinking. >> guest: when saying is it's going to be the american decade and the american century, the collapse of the european imperial system including the collapse of the soviet union left the united states standing as a continental power with very deep resources in the command of the world sees what a quarter of the economy, with bases in 27 countries and so on. there's nothing even close. we talk about the brick countries. the brick countries have to grow altogether by 75% so all for equal the united states. >> host: ten years from now is the united states going to be spending 50% of the world's military spending? >> guest: sure, i think so, but here's the point. the united states will go through extreme trouble and instability. it will be constantly reminding

us of this on the verge of collapse and it won't collapse and people like britain and rome and if you look at the roman speeches in the senate just before the empire bursts out museums of the predictions and catastrophe that happened. >> host: ten years from now we will come back and have this conversation and see how it worked out. >> guest: it'll be different this in conversation. >> host: thank you. it's been a great conversation today. >> guest: i enjoyed it.

wendy kopp is the founder of teach for america. she recounts the condition of the organization in 1990 and its goal of educational equality. ms. kopp reports on the more than 25,000 teachers that taught in low-income areas with teach for america and present her thoughts on the state of education in the u.s.. she discusses her book with author and new york staff writer malcolm glad well at the new york public library in new york city. this is one hour and 25 minutes. >> thank you for joining us for what i hope will be a fun our. you know, i had intended this to be a love fest because you are a great hero of mine. but then paul said that i have to ask tough questions, so i want to make it clear whenever i see something that is supportive and warm that's me and whenever i say something that is critical

that is me just channelling paul. [laughter] so, to get that of the way. i wanted to start by -- you are in a very unusual position. you're going to have this big conference in washington this coming weekend were there will be 10,000 people. you have this enormous falling and you are a kind of figure and i was trying to figure out is there any recent historical figure that you think you are analogous to? [laughter] people for what the restaurants of modesty. just like you. >> to be clear the 10,000 people are coming together because they want to -- i mean because they are drawn to the same vision as each other and they want to spend a day just thinking about and reflecting on the incredible progress that we have made in the last 20 years against what is a true crisis in the country this issue of educational and

equity and what we need to do individually. >> guest: but you will be treated as a kind of rock star. [laughter] >> the sad reality is maybe we would all wish, but there will be my critics and friends but it's not all a love fest. >> the closest analogy i could come up with was the marine corps. it's tough to get in and then they send you to really nasty places. [laughter] i was wondering how in the movies there's always the moment in that kind of movie where the one tough guy meets the other and they are staring each other down about to get enough light and the other says were u.n. nam? yeah i was in nam. wheelan the marine corps? of and the 29th infantry something or something and then they go semper fi! [laughter] was wondering if there's an end

to economic for the to teach for america alums' get together and the producer of? south bronx. south bronx. [laughter] [applause] and then the show each other there should teach for america tattoo. [laughter] and joking, but there is a kind of -- you are creating a kind of movement. the marine corps alumni represents a kind of movement representing a certain attitude towards the world, you know -- >> this is the big idea. and teach for america really isn't about -- we are about teachers are critical but teach for america is about building a movement among the country's future leaders to say we've got to change the way our education system is fundamentally. and i think your article in the new yorker about the formation of movements captured the change for teach for america. this is about the foundation of

experience of teaching successfully in ways we are creating a corps of people that were absolutely determined to expand the opportunities facing kids in the most absolutely economically disadvantaged communities, you know, who are pouring themselves into their work and trying to put themselves in a different trajectory and having varying levels of success and taking from that experience. incredible lessons. they realize through firsthand experience the challenge their kids face, the potential they have. they realize that it's ultimately possible to solve the problem, and that experience is not only important for their kids but it's completely transformational for them and i think of course they are all going through this together and i think that we will leave with a common set of convictions and insights and just a common level of commitment to ultimately go out and affect the fundamental

changes we need to solve the problem. >> you've got how many alumni now? >> 20,000. >> and so you considered your alumni to be as important as your active teachers if you're thinking of it in movie terms. how many alumni do you need before you think you have a kind of critical mass? >> well, you know, i guess you never know what would lead us to the tipping point. laughter [laughter] >> you just bought yourself five more hardball questions with that. [laughter] >> i think, you don't know, this is growing exponentially at this point. you know, five years ago we had 8800 alums and today we have 20,000 if we can continue the growth trajectory we will have more than 40,000 by five years from now. and i guess i look at what is happening in some communities where we have the critical mass of teach for america alum.

communities we have been placing people for in some cases 20 years, new orleans and washington, d.c. and oakland california, houston texas and any number of other places and newark new jersey where very different things are happening for many reasons, but if you to call of the teach for america alum out of the picture to take away a lot of the energy and the leadership in the pictures. >> as the teach for america movement have an ideological person of the? >> i think that people come out of this and we probably have a bunch -- we have a diverse community and people come into it reviewing the issue we are taking on in different ways and from different sides of the political spectrum. i think people come out of it sharing, largely sharing a few views. one, i think people come out of it knowing we can solve the problem. it's not that the kids don't have the potential and the

parents don't care. i mean, if you look at the gallup polls, and i would be interested in seeing another one now i think the prevailing ideologies navy started to shift a bit. but as of about three or four years ago most people in our country thought that the reason that we have low educational outcome is because kids were not motivated in the communities and parents don't care we know for a fact that isn't true. they see their kids working harder than any kids work and they see that their parents to care when they are brought into the process. so, they come out of that thinking when the kids are met with high expectations, given extra support they do well and they also come out of it realizing that there is no silver bullet. meeting -- >> we are going to get to that but still want you to answer the question. i only ask because whenever i see teach for america spoken of in a derogatory manner it is

invariably by someone on the right which confuses me because i would have thought that it -- i would have thought it would be the other way around. do you have a sense of this? am i wrong in thinking this? >> i doubt it. you're saying folks are largely from the left? we have a diverse group of people. >> the alumni voted republican in the last election. [laughter] >> i don't know, i can't answer that. it's probably -- it's maybe not that high of a percentage but i'm not sure. >> quite apart from the value of the observation isn't that weird to you? why would it have an ideological dimension? why wouldn't you expect kids to be signing up for this who were diehard right wing as everything is consistent with all? >> what is the profile of

graduating college seniors today in terms of their ideological perspective? i mean like what percentage of them vote republican? i don't know and they would be interesting to look. i don't want to say. i mean, we get republican folks, too. i wonder what college students -- i'm not sure, i don't know if we are out of line with that or not. i've sort of media living in a bubble, but -- i don't know. i think that we are drawing people -- would be interesting to look at that i guess. >> this is your 20 the anniversary. so, when you reflect on the differences between -- and to reflect on the differences between 1990 and now. we were chatting earlier and you mentioned how the was hilarious how the movie lean on me could never have been made today. what is it about lean on me to

would be unthinkable today? >> we put the movie and the school of in life as a success story and the principle was kind of a super hero with some level, there was the point of the movie, and he really changed the culture of the school but it's still number 317 out of 326 in terms of educational outcomes in the state of new jersey. the kids are on the path -- we are not giving the kids enough school real-life options and we couldn't make that movie today. we couldn't hold it as a success because today we know what's possible. we know what is possible to give kids who face all the challenges that are facing the kids to go to that school in paterson, new jersey who the school that actually sets them up to graduate from college, not just a few kids to beat the odds with

a whole buildings full of kids to actually get on the same trajectory as kids and much more privileged community and i just think it shows. >> it's about somebody that imposes order on the school, it is about discipline. >> but it's also holding up the school as a success story, and i just think we would never do that today. i mean hollywood would never hear the end of it. we would say this isn't a success. it tells me how far we have come. >> it was low enough you could describe the school where kids were not getting killed. in that sense we have made progress, right? [laughter] >> its huge and dramatic not to underestimate how significant that is. we didn't know that was possible

to provide kids with a truly transformational the education, kids growing up in poverty. the assumption was and all the research backed up the fact the socioeconomic background determined the educational outcomes and we knew a few kids the were beating the odds and if you charismatic teachers and another hit movie my senior year stand and deliver who could do extraordinary things the we viewed them as out layers. [laughter] go on. [laughter] >> but today we don't just have a few -- first i think it's fascinating to think about not only lean on me but stand and deliver, and i have thought a lot about the fact that why didn't i go out and think let me find out how he did what he did so we could teach them the same

way. it took many years to figure out to spend a lot of time with our outliers like every truly exceptional teachers putting kids in a different trajectory to try to understand what were they doing differently and it turned out the point is now we know. we know what the teachers to teach and otherwise not very successful schools and low-income communities to to produce incredible results with their kids so we know so much for the classroom level, but at the school level with the one thing you really is is it takes a total superhero to do that classroom by classroom but it's possible to create whole schools that foster good teaching and enable teachers to sustain that kind of work and hundreds of the schools it is dramatic progress in the question used to be can education overcome poverty and we know it can the question is

how we do it at scale and cradle systems will transformational schools. >> you are applying something interesting which is you think that the task of providing quality education can be decoupled from the broad kind of macroconditions of the society. in other words, 20 years ago we would have said you've got poverty and dysfunction and the educational task is impossible but what you're saying is -- >> i think what we have learned is that it's not. we can i mean we should solve poverty. it's just that while we try to do that we don't need to wait. in the meantime we can provide kids the kind of education that breaks the cycle of poverty and maybe we will realize that is the answer to poverty actually. >> it's interesting because this is the same transformation that

took place in our thinking about crime 25 years ago if you ask people what would it take to bring down the crime rate of new york and they would say you have to solve poverty, drug abuse, discrimination, we solve one of those problems. the crime rate came down by 75% which is both very good news and also kind of disturbing disturbing in the little sense that it says that you can actually break off these pieces of the pathological puzzle and solve them without ever getting the core problem. is the paradox? >> i guess i believe that education is different. i feel like i meet in my work everyday people who -- honestly i meet them because some of them are joining teach for america today. people who were not on a path to

graduate from high school love alone college who end up going to college and graduate from college and be able to choose what do they want to do? to they want to teach, do they want to work for a big company? do they want to go into the law and that's how you treat the cycle of poverty. >> but let's just for a moment dwell on this point which is i think it's an important one that for the longest time a central tennant in the liberal ideology was that the reason we need to solve the fundamental questions of the social and economic injustice is without doing that, problems like educational equity and crime will be beyond our reach. the experience of the cause that you have been part of, and the experience of the crime fighting the last 15 years has been that that ideology -- that fundamental tendencies totally

false. economic and social inequality in this country has soared in the last 15 years and simultaneously, we have made extraordinary inroads against crime and the beginning of extraordinary inroad against education. what does that mean for the liberal ideology? was it wrong? is there no reason? >> i would hate to conclude that there's no reason to solve the fundamental challenges of poverty. i mean, one of the quickest ways to make the job -- as we will discover if it is possible in an enormous amount of hard work and we can make it easier by taking the pressure off of schools and absolutely we should take on the fundamental with improve the economy in the urban rural areas and improve the stealth services and to all of that.

we don't need to wait and maybe we will discover that freakin' the cycle of poverty for kids some of whom will come back and improve their own communities. let's pretend that you were in education czar and i gave you more power than we normally give czars. very often we give people the title czars but they are not czars, not classic czars. [laughter] it's just a word we use to pick on somebody in washington that has a large office. he wasn't any czar. [laughter] you are a real czar and you got to start over. can you describe your perfect educational system? >> i think that we would first of all be very clear about the

standards we are trying to reach one quick start with a clear understanding of here's what we think kids should people to master and we have to develop a great assessments so that we understand whether or not kids have mastered at and we would put an enormous amount into attracting a tremendous school leaders, educators in general and then we would freeze them out to obtain those results. isn't that what you would have funded organizations and the sectors where management does its job. >> i don't know, are you asking

me? [laughter] >> i thought maybe would bring in a kind of analogy. it's a different sector. >> so you wouldn't in a perfect world? >> you wouldn't need them because he would have school principals and district superintendents and everyone else who would know that the most voluble assets or the teachers and people and they would be making them happy and the -- they would be listened to etc. >> we sort of had an example about this and you talk about this in your book in new orleans. it was kind of after katrina the sort of blow up the school system and start over. can you talk about what happened there and what we learned from that example? i thought was one of the most fascinating parts of the book. >> so, teach for america start replacing teachers in new orleans 20 years ago, and you know, i personally spent a lot of time walking around the new orleans public schools and you

could call it a crime scene at some level before hurricane katrina. it was just tragic what was happening to the kids. after the hurricane you may remember many of the kids were displaced to houston. they were living in the astrodome with their parents and some of the folks in the up recruiting the kids and basically running the school for them in houston. the did the diagnostics and discovered that the eighth graders were on the second grade level and that is pretty much what we knew to be the case in new orleans. and you know, so of course post-hurricane katrina, talk about a place where we can see the incredible burden of poverty , but the storm basically created a window of opportunity for some people who had been working for a long time to try to improve the schools without gaining much traction to

actually just love the system. i think after the school board announced they were going to open schools for a year they decided no more. and they basically created the new system where -- >> could you mean in this instance? >> i'm thinking about into real advocate for change comes word from the business community named paul pasternak who ended up being the school superintendent of the state level, and there was the state legislative change, but essentially they created a system of charter's. this is a slight oversimplification, but they create a world where and they slowly shut down the schools still under the management of the central department and anyone could appoint to run a charter school. they created a very rigorous accountability system so that very few of the applications to run the schools were approved

and if they didn't work would be shut down. but the people in that puzzle knew that it wasn't as easy as that. they knew that the charter laws don't create transformational schools that put kids who are starting we behind facing lots of different challenges on a different trajectory in order to do that we would need extraordinary leadership, and they went about finding it. they went outside of new orleans and looked inside of new orleans and hugely scale that teach for america and brought the new teachers project to help recruit people from all of the local community. >> how many people did they bring before katrina, do you remember? >> we have about 600 people now. from -- we were placing about 120 probably total of any given time. >> is that as many as you have in any city? >> the core members alone in the first and second years are reaching one out of every three students in the new orleans

public schools right now. but there are -- >> and sorry. you said they start looking for -- when you see looking for, are you talking about looking for principals, looking for -- >> they did everything. they went about the different pipeline to read a skill that teach for america and they brought in a different group that sets up local teacher recruitment of michigan's so they tried to recruit people who didn't have teaching backgrounds like the new york city teaching fellows in new orleans. new orleans, teach new orleans or whatever it's called and then the leaders to recruit nontraditional folks to become principles and they recruited the operators of the high performing schools and said come to new orleans like we are going to create a model school district and they set up this organization for the purpose of recruiting people to run the charter schools and making it easier to find buildings etc., etc.. and, you know, as i write about

in the the chance to make history, i spent two days and new orleans last spring and i was just in shock when place all. i had heard what i was going to see and have been talking to everyone and assumed that it would be great but it was shocking given the comparison that i had. >> what do we know, what kind of statistical measures of improved performance to we have? how the is the job? >> the jumps are completely dramatic. they are making in some cases depending on the grade levels between six to ten times the kind of improvement over one or two years that the other schools in the state of louisiana are making. fifth dakota i didn't just go to one school making great things happened. i spent two days going from school to school and meeting these very entrepreneurial school leaders who were on a

mission to put their kids on the trajectory to graduate from college who were obsessing over the teams they were building, you walk into the schools and i just kept thinking i'd send my kid to this school. there was a shocking thought from the mere three or four years ago. one of the schools is run by a guy named todd and when he recruited his fifth graders about 8% of the kids were profession and reading it 8% were proficient in math and 8%. now his kids last year his seventh graders were three-quarters of a year above grade level. so he has his kids on a trajectory by the time they are finished eighth grade he wants them to be able to get into any good high school anywhere in new orleans or elsewhere. >> so katrina is the best thing that ever happened?

[laughter] that's not a joke. i want to pursue this idea. >> you know it's fascinating and i have this conversation all the time. people say this could never happen anywhere but new orleans because of the hurricane and i feel we have a crisis in new orleans that was bad before the hurricane. we have a crisis in detroit and philadelphia and any number of places right now that should merit the kind of action that was taken when the school board decided not to open the schools and we are not acting, but we could. >> you could make the case given the single most important measure of the city's health, long-term health is the ability to educate the children. if new orleans was utterly failing before and now it has some signs of succeeding beyond other schools in the state of louisiana the city is better off for having hurricane katrina. it's sort of to the point before

the, you know, i'm not going to say that it's not. there are so many people in the worst conditions because the hurricane. here's the other interesting thing about this. it's not quite -- it's convenient to look at it as -- >> you can't get away with saying that. >> yes i can. it might have happened without the hurricane. the was the interesting thing. >> the use it it's not happening in detroit and all these other places. >> but it did and you know what's different and here's the difference this is the whole point, actually in new orleans to was a group of leaders who were absolutely bound and determined to fix this problem for kids. the existed and were working before the hurricane. in fact, all i remember when the hurricane had and my first thought was like all the progress that these people had made which we felt was going to be revolutionary, went down the drain of course everyone was

dealing with a huge natural disaster but they revived and made a dramatic change happen anyway. who knows, i don't know what would have happened before the hurricane but what i think what is interesting and most of the communities, in most communities we would have had a hurricane and we wouldn't have taken a advantage of it of the circumstances of the day to actually revolutionized the schools. we probably wouldn't have bought you know, that's actually create a system of charter's and most certainly because this is the problem and why we haven't moved if the needle against this issue in an aggregate sense we wouldn't have realized that's not enough, changing bill law isn't going to do it. we'd better go out and find the leadership necessary and cultivate over time the leadership necessary to actually run transformational schools. ..

>> right? >> you know what? i have not lost my revolutionary -- >> i'm not accusing you. i'm in malcolm mode. >> you know what concerns me? honestly, in order to create true, sustained, dramatic change we need -- the reason i'm so careful is it isn't about one simple thing, right? it's about doing a lot of different things right. and i fear, i really believe a lot of the problem right now is that we like to play, like, the

blame game and the silver bullet lurching and, honestly, when you say so the answer's to blow up the system, right? i have to think, do i -- am i sure? because i think, i think the solution -- i think it, i guess i think it depends. but i think the real key in new orleans actually wasn't the hurricane. the real key was leslie jacobs, paul pastarak and a whole generation of other people in new orleans most of whom, many of whom were teach for america alums who were deeply determined to address what they viewed as the single most unconscionable crisis in our country and who understood what you understand especially after you've taught successfully in this context which is there isn't a silver bullet to this. >> yeah. >> you change a governance law, that's not going to fix the problem for our kids. >> but you had a you had a nucleus in place poised to take

advantage of an opportunity. the opportunity was katrina, and that allowed an awful lot of change to happen in a very short period of time. >> yes. >> i have no argument with that -- do you have any argument with that version? >> no. >> good. [laughter] that's what we're talking about, we have these nucleuses in place or we could put them in place in a lot of different cities, but it doesn't change the fact that you could do an awful lot of good sometimes by blowing it up. >> you know what? if we had leadership in a lot of other places determined to solve this problem, if we with viewed it as the crisis that it is and we had the right leadership in place, we would, we would blow it up, to use your terminology, in lots of other contexts. >> uh-huh. i mean, i'm reminded -- i'm going to come back and ask you about what you mean in other contexts because it's intriguing. [laughter] >> absolutely. >> blowing up -- um, we're in a situation in a number of different areas in our society

where objectively when we look at the institutional structures we have, we realize that if we were starting from scratch, we would never, ever have anything even remotely resembling what we have now, right? health care, everyone in the health system would agree if we were starting from scratch, we would build a system that bore zero resemblance to what we have now. [laughter] right? but yet somehow we sail on year after year after year tweaking it at the edges -- >> yep. >> -- even though, you know, if we had a katrina that just systematically wiped out the culture of health care in this country and allowed us to start over again, we'd be better off. >> you know what? i mean, i think -- let me say one other thing in reaction to this which is really the thought that occurs. i think what you are saying is absolutely, basically, what needs to happen, right? we have a very systemic problem right now. most people, i think, misunderstand what's going on. like, why do we have low outcomes, low educational

outcomes in our lowest income communities? why do you think? teachers are pathetic? i mean, that's probably what you'd think if you read all the headlines right now. you know, lots of people aren't very committed to kid. the real reason we've got this issue is we have kids who face unimaginable challenges that kids in other communities don't face. they show up at schools that don't have the extra capacity to meet their extra needs, and it becomes one big, vicious cycle. so, you know, we can blame the kids, the parents, the teachers, the school principals, we could blame anyone in the picture, but what we've seen over time is we could also just change the picture. we could decide -- so right now our public schools, i grew up in dallas, texas, in a very privileged community and went to one of those public schools that's always on the top ten list of public schools in america. that was not a transformational school, right? we all showed up on -- at that school on a trajectory to

graduate college, had perfectly hard working, nice teachers, some of them made a great impact, but it did not change our trajectories. if you took that school and put it in the bronx, it would crash and burn. i think it might take a year, maybe it would take two years. but its results would be no better than most of our schools unless it completely changed the way it operated. and i think what we've discovered over the last 20 years is we can change the way we operate. we can embrace a completely different mandate for schools in low income communities, and when we do, it actually works. and so that's -- and in that sense i think we completely do need to start over. >> yeah. one, i want to make one last point about new orleans before we move on, and that is that in the, in your book you talk about the amount of autonomy that is given these individual schools, that is to say so long as they do their job, they get maximum freedom. and when they fall down, they lose their freedom, right?

>> uh-huh. >> just sort of -- which i have, and i have, you know, far more than me, but that struck me as incredibly convincing as a kind of philosophy. but my first thought was, are reprepared -- are we prepared for the kind of social and institutional anxiety that that kind of process creates? in other words, a system where you have that kind of as long as you perform, you're on your own. when you don't, we're going to step in. it's a system with a lot of turmoil, right? in a good way it's messy. things go up and down. some schools are going to do great, and others very visibly are going to be crashing and burning. do we need to prepare, if you're going to institute that kind of culture which i think is totally the way to go, do we also have to have a conversation with parents and with the public about what it means,? the kind of -- >> i think that parents want a

great education for their kids, and i think what they're doing in new orleans is exposing parents to what is possible. and, i mean, truly there are more and more schools in new orleans that are actually, parents are thrilled, like, they see the potential. like, they see this is going to change my kid's trajectory. and be you're in a school -- and if you're in a school not like that and your neighbor's in a school like that, you know, i think ultimately this is how to kind of, you know, i think create the context that will, that will be conducive. >> uh-huh. uh-huh. i want to move on to your silver bullets and scapegoats. it's a, it is the, one of the most interesting parts of the book is where you run down the list of the usual suspects and kind of go, uh, you know, and

shrug a little bit. you're not crazy about the argument that this is about fund, and you tell this wonderful story about -- not wonderful, depressing story -- about the school of the future in philadelphia. can you, can you -- >> yeah. um, so there's a very big corporation, maybe these people remember this. about six or seven years ago there was a lot of talk about this big technology company that was going to design the school of the future. and, you know, they spent $62 million designing this school in philadelphia. it's a beautiful building. i remember meeting an executive at this company and asking him, actually, do you think the people who are designing the school have spent time in this then-still small number but growing number of high performing schools in low-income communities so that they know what accounts for success? and i just remember sitting

there thinking i can the tell that they haven't, so chances are not good. i went to visit that school a year ago. >> briefly describe, it is this big, gleaming -- >> it is a big, beautiful facility. this school has managed to underperform the average philadelphia public school. some of their proficiency rates depending on the subject are in the single digits. okay, this was a school that parents fought to get their kids in. okay, i went and visited the only classroom that they will open to the public. there is one, it's led by a teacher who's been there since the beginning. and i stood in the back of the room, and i made sure i had my facts right because i was in the process of writing this book. but i watched every single kid in that class engaged in one of the following three activities. they all had laptops, that's one of the key features of the school. they were either trying to fix the computer -- taking the battery out, sticking it back in -- iming their friends or

surfing the internet while the teacher talked as loudly as he could at the front of the room to try to get them to listen to his lecture. and, honestly, it would have been, it might have been funny if you didn't stop to realize that, literally, this school is shutting off these kids' prospects. like, they will have no prospects. and if you know anything about philadelphia and the communities where these kids are living in, i mean, this is, this is like life threatening. and, honestly, it's right down the street -- and i couldn't have said this seven years ago, but today there is a growing number of schools in philadelphia that are serving the exact same student population three or four blocks away and putting them on a trajectory to graduate from college at much the same pace as kids in more privileged communities. and you know what? they don't have any technology. they might. maybe they've gotten some white boards. but it's definitely not the core of that school. the core of that school is a school leader who is absolutely

determined to put, you know, the kids on a different trajectory, who's obsessed with everything a great teacher is obsessed with, right? building an incredible team. like, they obsess over attracting and developing teachers. they build this incredibly powerfulture where they get the -- culture where they get the kids, the parents the teachers all aligned on the same mission, they manage well, welln they do whatever it takes. they know they're coming in way behind, so they lengthen the school day, bring in extra support in social services, etc., etc., they're completely redefining school, and they're getting different outcomes. >> are you suggesting that having constant, unimpeded access to the internet is not going to solve every social problem? [laughter] that's so -- wow. that's an eye-opener given everything that's happening in the world right now from egypt to tunisia is simply a function of social media, i would have thought -- [laughter] >> 8% of the kids in this school

are proficient in reading, so access to the internet doesn't help that much. >> yeah. doesn't necessarily. charters. >> you know, i think one thing -- [laughter] one thing on the side of charters and then i'll go after them as a silver bullet. this growing number of schools that i keep talking about, many, many more of them are charters than traditional schools. there are traditional public schools in the regular system that are getting these kind of results, but they are few and far between. and i think that's for a reason, you know? i think the charter laws provide talented, committed educators with an incredible opportunity to say, okay, i'm going to assume responsibility for results taking complete freedom over who i hire, how i spend my budget. so it's an incredible enabler. but unfortunately, i mean, if you look on average at the charter school is results and

the public school rugs, they're no better. and i've seen charter schools -- because teach for america places in some of them -- you really wonder if we should be putting some of these people in jail. they're so much worse than even the dysfunction that we see in the regular system. and i think it's just another example of we thought, you know what? it is the best of intentions. it's people wanting to solve the problem tomorrow. change the laws, hopefully everything will be better, you know, very soon. but, unfortunately, it's not that easy. like, we still need to then cultivate the leadership necessary to take advantage of the charter laws. and that is the most precious resource this all this because it's hard to find those school leaders who have the kind of foundational experience necessary to actually run a transformational school. >> does, is the, is the experience of new york city with charters different from the rest of the country? and if so, why? >> yeah.

um, well, i think because there are such -- there are probably many reasons why. yes, it's definitely different from, i mean, i'm not the charters expert, but, you know, we have very lots of high-performing charters here, and i think it's because, first of all, there's a charter path. youyou can only open so many. not necessarily a good thing. but they have vigorous standards for who opens them, sort of like new orleans, and they shut them down if they don't work. and probably even more so, you know, joel kline made an extraordinary effort to recruit people in to run charters so we've done a lot to recruit good folks in. >> is it possible those things are, that good experience with charters and can that kind of selecttivity and high standards for them is in part a function of the existence of the charter cap? doesn't the cap make -- doesn't the restriction on a resource make you use it more wisely? >> you could argue that. but, i mean, i think -- >> would you argue that? >> no. [laughter]

well, it all -- i think that it's a very, i think it's a fact that it is very hard to find and develop the leadership necessary to run a high-performing school of any sort and including a charter school. but i think that we could find a lot more than the cap. >> oh, i see. what would, what's the cap now, do you know, offhand what the cap is in new york state? >> isn't it -- who knows? 100 -- >> [inaudible] >> they raised the cap last year. >> 460. >> 460. you don't have a -- 200. do you have a figure, do you have a kind of optimal, would czar cop have an optimal figure? [laughter] >> i would bring the principals of charter into the system. so i think -- but i would, i would do that, and i would also do something else. so, you know, and joel kline has really worked very hard to do

exactly this, and thises exactly what they've done in -- this is exactly what they've done in new orleans. the bottom line is wherever you see one of these transformational schools i'm talking about, always, always, always they're run by someone who feels such deep, passionate commitment and full ownership over insuring that their kids get on a different path. and if they don't have the freedom, they take the freedom to do whatever it takes to get to that end result. and i think we really need to ground our policies in an understanding of that dynamic. and i think the implication is that our central system should spend an immense amount of energy attracting and developing real leadership which is a process, right? we can't snap our fingers and have great leaders. we need to recruit them into the classroom, insure they've highly successful, keep some in the classroom, move others into leadership roles and what not. we need to obsess over talent

development in the way any high performing organization does. but at the same time we then need to empower our leaders to get results. and so i think that kind of restructuring is probably the answer overall. >> yeah. unions. >> i think that, um, unions need to change just like i think districts need to change and lots of other things need to change. but i think the idea that we fix the unions or just swipe them off the face of the earth -- >> you were the one earlier who said you wouldn't have them in your perfect universe. >> right. it's just that we don't live in a perfect universe. and i think that we have, i think it's not totally -- i think the assumption that if we lifted -- let's assume we remove them all tomorrow. anyone who works in and around schools, just imagine what do you think will be different the next day? like, we have so much further to go. in states where there is very

low unionization and collective bargaining's sort of a nonissue, we have 1% teacher dismissal rates. we have 1% teacher dismissal rates whether there are strong unions and unions or not. is that? because there's no culture of in our school districts. when you think about how these very high performing schools operate and compare that to how most of our public schools and school districts and even, probably, private schools for that matter operate, there's no, you know, we don't do what we know it takes to run high performing organizations. and so i think we need to, you know, unions to change, but we need our districts and our schools to change as well. >> does all of this become, does dealing with, does making -- what you're saying is in all of these cases -- funding,

charters, unionization -- these are all variables that can make a difference provided you have in place, first, an organization and culture that makes effective learning possible. in other words, it's cart and horse here. >> right. exactly. um, i mean, i think anything short of that gets us incremental progress. in a world where incremental progress is not affordable, you know? >> yep. >> we haven't really grounded ourselves in the magnitude of the issue here, and it's so easy to not recognize what's going on in our country. but we live in a country where the 15 million kids who grow up below the poverty line, half of them will not graduate from high school. if you don't graduate from high school today, you know, your options are, i mean, lots of, you know, i mean, we have communities that are putting more kids into the prison system than into college. the kids who do graduate from high school who we applaud for

walking across the stage have, on average, an eighth grade skill level. a few percentage points on standardized tests doesn't meaningfully change the kids' lives in that context. and that's what any of these interventions at their best will get you. and what we've learned in the last 20 years is we could have something different. we could have meaningful change for kids. we could actually put whole buildings of kids on a different trajectory, and to me that includes the moral imperative. it's on us to figure out, okay, so we immediate to treat this as the crisis it is given now we mow that we can solve it and go after it. and anytime any of us have a true crisis in our lives or in many our midst, you know, and truly view it as that, we view it in all of its complexity and go at it with, with an equally complex solution. like, it is no one thing, and there's no way around the hard

work of building high performing organizations, essentially. >> yeah. let's talk about the practical impact of importing -- what teach for america does, essentially, is import large numbers of motivated college graduates into the teaching profession, right? so let's talk about what that means on a practical level. first of all, are, do teach for america teachers, are they -- how do they compare on average to the kind of median teacher? are they better teachers? what do we know? >> um, the kind of growing body of research out there would show that they're more effective than other beginning teachers, and in some subjects and grade levels they're more effective than the experienced teachers. but not by the impact levels that i just described that we need. you know? like if you look at the studies, researchers think statistically

significant, positive results and we think this isn't changing kids' lives. some of our people are changing kids' lives, but on average. and, honestly, this experience is kind of part of what, i mean, i think teach for america is an enormously good thing. you're better off as a kid in a school if you have a teach for america core member than not, you know? and our people are, obviously, then going off and, you know, staying in teaching for an average of eight years, but also moving into other positions and taking that experience with them and affecting broader changes and what not. but this experience is why i say that, you know, if teaching is the latest silver bullet. because i think we somehow think that we can reengineer the way 3.7 million teachers are recruited and trained and what not. and i think our own experience where we've poured immense amounts of energy and the smartest people i could possibly

find and millions and millions of dollars, literally, we've got a continuous learning loop in our organization that is kind of mind-boggling. we can do tons of studies to understand what are the most effective of our people, what differentiates them at the selection stage, what are they doing differently? how does that influence our training and professional development? every year, and still we're where we are. and all of that has led me to think, you know what? we need to take this on at a school level. this is an organization problem. if you run a big company, you don't fix your problems by sending brain waves directly to all of the people in your organization. you think, okay, who are my managers, let me work with them. and when you go up here to kip infinity and you see their incredible, incredible results and ask them what's the key, it's like the teachers. but he has gone out and attracted and developed and retained and, you know, you talk to the teachers, why have they stayed? because of the culture of the school. it's a team i want to be part of. i feel so supported, etc.

so i think, ultimately, we just need to come at the teaching question differently. >> does this represent an evolution in your thinking? you would not have said what you just said 20 years ago. am i right? >> well, i probably didn't know what i, you know, 20 years ago i was saying why aren't we being recruited as aggressively to commit two years to teach in high-poverty communities as we were to work on wall street. i mean, that was really -- >> yeah. >> but i think once i got into this, i don't know when i started, i've felt this way for some time though, i have to admit. >> yeah. i mean, a -- i mean, i sort of sees the my one mild, it's not a criticism, it's an observation about your book. >> yeah. >> which is that there are these two strands that are, in some sense, complementary and in some sense contradictory that run through the book and i suspect legitimately run through your thinking. >> yeah. >> the one is this notion that we have to find new sources of

talent and bring them into the system, and the other is that, well, that's not really what it's about. what it's about is building a system that allows people to flourish. now, they overlap, you know? in the venn diagnose gram like this -- diagram like this. [laughter] and there's the same kind of, uh, you also run into the not entirely fair observation when one read your book that you're saying that virtually all students can thrive given the appropriate culture and environment. right? but then is the same true of teachers? can virtually all teachers thrive given the appropriate culture and environment? i mean, if we can, if we can help virtually any kid, why can't we help virtually any -- or is there, is this apples and organizes? >> yeah. i mean, this is such a very complex set of thoughts.

but i do, so first of all we can't understand teach for america as a teaching organization. and i think this is the biggest thing we fight in the world. we are a leadership development organization. there's no other way to look at it. we are going out and saying we need our future leaders to channel their energy against our country's most fundamental injustice, and we're going to get them to commit two years to teach in the high poverty communities, we're going to make sure they have the leadership characteristics that we've seen to differentiate the most effective teachers, we're doing to invest massive amounts in their training and support in pursuing that they're highly successful with their kids. and we know that experience is going to be important for kids and for them in every single decision they make thereafter. and it proves out to be. and we need them to go out and engineer the changes. we need them to go start great schools. and, in fact, they have. we wouldn't have the school model that we have that everyone's trying to replicate if it weren't for a few teach for america alums.

we wouldn't have the energy and the budget, we wouldn't have the revolution we have in new orleans and d.c. and what not without a bunch of these people. we need some of them to go take on the challenge of poverty to make the whole thing easier. so i think we need that. at the same time, what many, many of our people come out of this thinking is, wait, we need to change the way these systems attract and develop talent. um, and there's no doubt. i mean, i've concluded the same thing, right? so what are the systemic changes that we need? that is one big, central issue. and i think what we've seen is we can do that too, you know? you go to new orleans, and i think, you know, one of the most interesting things about my time there was talking with some of our teachers who we'd placed there over time who said, you know, i came here for two years, and i wasn't -- i was just going to teach for two years and leave. he said, you know, i just bought a house. it's seven years later.

why'd they buy a house? because i'm the hot commodity in new orleans. i can pick whatever school i want to be a part of, you know, they even pay me a lot because they can control what they pay their teachers in new orleans. and by the way, to get to your other part of the question, this whole conversation then went on in new orleans, and they said don't think it's just the outsiders coming in. the good people came out of the system. and, you know, that could take us down a whole other path, but it speaks to your point. i think most people who come into education are coming into it because they want to do good things for kids. but they come into a system that, i mean, i think about people we hire, the best of the best. we'll take 4500 of 47,000 applicants this year. if we brought them into a completely nonrigorous, undisciplined culture and just let them go, no management, honestly? lots of good things who would not happen. some good things would happen, lots of not great things would happen. and over time, i mean, people have to operate in strong,

rigorous cultures. and so i do think there are tons of people out there who would operate in a very different way if, if the culture and the overall structure was different. .. i mean, we placed our first 489 teachers 29 years ago and they went in with the same level of commitment and idealism as the numbers we are facing today.

they would say it would be fair to say they hit the wall. you know, they saw their kids bring out the social challenges into their classroom. and you know, it became a downward spiral, right? like, it's downright impossible. what happened was the view of our people rose above it all, like her beard and figured out how to change things, like how to actually teach successfully, how to create the island of excellence. and they did it by teaching different. we didn't know how to tell people to teach. now we can say here's what it takes, you know, it takes being very clear about what vision are working toward. where are we going to be pedantic here? what are we going to accomplish to make a meaningful difference in their lives? once you figure that out, spend half your time to believe that's important. if they work harder than ever before they can get there.

you get your kids working with you and everything so much easier. you have to be incredibly cool oriented, maximize every second. realize that i'm not good enough country and have enough time. any things have been in need of your kids extra needs. but they accomplish the goals. he sort of redefined the role of the teacher. i mean, that was the first learning experience a unique. and then again, they've just learning from our people basically, some of those people not been said this this is not sustainable. you may superheroes who can take outweigh. if they can sustain its because there's so many of those people. it's humbling to spend time, but then they went off and started school that actually make it much worse is the noble to teach it more successfully.

>> forgive me for accessing about your personal journey, but it's like if you've got on this road that starts with a noble ambition, which is kind of an elitist ambition, to bring the best and brightest into the neglected corner of the world and now you're like a marxist. in the best sense of that word. i'm not criticizing you at all. although i will say come you're not a total marxist because when we were back there and they asked you to test out the microphone by using the word p., i thought you were going to save peter picks a pumpkin. >> and i was talking to him, so -- but yeah, honestly this has had an unbelievable journey and illuminating one. and i'm learning from our people and others who are working alongside his communities and that's exactly why wanted to write this book.

it's such a demystifying experience. you know conceptually of course kids in low income communities have full potential and could have an excellent education but now we know really is within our reach to view this and there's nothing magic about it. there's nothing out of reach, but there is also nothing easy about it. it takes the same kind of discipline and leadership to have really ambitious outcomes. the question is do we believe the crisis? because if we do, then we need to approach it the same way we would approach any credit crisis we know we can solve. and that's what it appears we are not doing. >> let me switch gears for a moment. 40 -- how many thousand applicants? >> 40,000. >> or how many positions?

>> well, depends it depends what happens where federal funding. it's always good memo, 5300. >> so that his princeton at this point? >> although, i don't view this as elitist. >> my point was how many 10 years ago, for example, what with those two numbers have been? >> with 4000 applicants and guessing about and probably brought in five or 600. >> and part of that dramatic increase in your popularity, how did she do it -- this movement catching fire? part of it has to do also with the economy. am i right? you are the beneficiaries? >> honestly, what people don't know because they either view it

as an outpouring of idealism from this generation are they view it as the economy is that we are out there building a movement. every year we take some of our most successful teachers. we probably have about 70 different directors who each of, you know, partners in crime who are recent college grads that we give them three or four campuses and we say, go find not just anyone but the people you believe have leadership ability necessary to be transformational teachers and have her possessions of influence long-term. and they sit down one-on-one. we've probably met with 40,000 college seniors this year, people who are going to law school and met cool and all sorts of things or at this point they are making lots more people who are interested because of the friends before and what not. but we are completely changing their minds because the

recruitment directors sit down and share their personal experiences. they say, you know they used to be a recruitment direct your, who is now renting our boston office is that i was based in phoenix. they started teaching fourth grade. my kids came in at the second grade level. i fell in love with my kid. they made a couple years of progress. i guess the principles i could teach them again. they needed two more years of progress and i realized first of all, can you think of anything that would give you a bigger responsibility and bigger impact right out of college? secondly, this is -- this is something our generation can take on, be part of the group of people who are going to fix that problem. so i actually think -- the economy was a great enabler as we ran around and told everyone like the silver lining in this

economic environment is that it's given the true leaders relicense more broadly about their futures and given the most precious education resource and education is talent in the wake of a certain data that. but the foundations are already there. >> the same thing we're talking about with katrina. you build a structure. >> you have to be ready to take advantage of the crisis. >> it's funny because the last time this happened in this country was during the depression. the well-documented effect of the depression was to the contraction of the private economy costs an awful lot of incredibly talented people to go into the public school system in the generation that emerged from schools in the depression which was one of the most successful, well-educated generations we have are the unintended

beneficiaries of the economic calamity. you know, i hate to harp, but it's fascinating which we spend so much time bemoaning our misfortune, whether it is a hurricane or economic hard times, do we forget there are incredibly fertile. but if you can build -- >> yeah, that's a compelling point. and we have lots of crises that we should take advantage of to solve the true crisis. >> a terrible thing to waste as rahm emanuel says. i don't know -- where is paul? is paul want to ask the question? areas. no, no, i think -- but not you, and make -- >> i have one nasty question and you can tell it's written by me. i'm curious, how many teach for

america alumni in the program are here? pretty amazing. further question, was there a time or american education was not in christ this? you can say yes or no if you want. [laughter] >> no. i mean, i think we've had this issue. i have limited historical knowledge myself, but i'm sure we've had these issues forever. i think we've been in denial about this particular issue that we are working to address. i think 20 years ago a lot of people were in denial about the very existence of what we call today educational inequity.

>> and security officers and police and security officers and police in the hallways, less and less resource time, school manuals that require a law degree to decipher with rule upon rule, longer school days, why would a child do you think want to go to school? >> you know, i think about the schools that i've been talking about these transformational schools. kids are dying to be in school because first of all, the principals and teachers in the schools for their kids. and you know, they build such a community among them and the kids know they are going to work incredibly hard, but there is huge for the. so i don't know that there's a place they'd probably rather be. >> lots and lots of questions from alums at the organization. this one begins with being alone

i am completely on board the belief that all students can learn. however earlier this school year, "the new york times" covered a study that pointed to statistics showing that when stripped of all society and economic factors come african-american boys are underperforming when compared to female african-american peers as well as other non-black students. what are you and tsa's thoughts on this and what do you think -- what do you think are the ways to shift education focus to address these statistics? >> meaning even outside of the context of low income communities? >> ray. >> you know, i feel like it will take me out of, you know, i think about my own kids who go to public school appeared that very diverse, but not as

economically disadvantaged when there are kids from all of the economic backgrounds, all racial backgrounds. honestly the puzzle of how to make the schoolwork for all kids is very different from the puzzle of making the schools i've been talking about work. so i am hesitant. i actually think what we need to understand is where the schools out there that are working for african-american kids across all socioeconomic backgrounds? let's find out because our schools -- i'm sure there are schools working for these kids. let's find out if there's one what are they doing differently? i think therein lies the key to unlocking the answer to that question. >> either way, you can jump in whenever you want if any of these questions and you have comments to that. for instance, is there consecration to expand the teach for america to training and supporting administration?

>> now, because we are going to stay focused on our core mission of channeling a lot of talent and energy in this direction, but we do, you know, we have a whole priority around accelerating leadership of alumni in ways that are strategic for the broader ad reform movement and we think supporting them to become principals is one huge important focus among others. i mean, helping support them to run for elected office and start advocacy organizations and social enterprises are others. we partner with others to do those silly partner with the feds out there, with a charter school or districts or universities or other school leader training programs to center people to streamline school leadership. >> you bring up joel kline quite a lot -- quite often many seem to admire him. what do you think of joel kline's success?

[laughter] >> think it's too early to tell. but i think better commit and -- i mean, she's clearly committed for all the right reasons and you know, i guess we'll see what happens. [laughter] i think we should reach a point where when we are trying to figure out who should be the superintendent of our nation's largest school systems or newark, new jersey for that matter which is in the midst of a superintendent church or atlanta or soon-to-be chicago, where some of the best jobs on the planet, they should be, we should be considering sites of people who bought the foundational experience is necessary to do that job. issue people who have typed in transformational ways, ran trans-to national schools and

supported other transformational schools. can you imagine ge, for a ceo selection just stepping back and deciding not someone you haven't even worked in corporate america should be the ceo? i mean, we would never do it. again, this is why i say i wonder if we think this is a true crisis. but we can't blame the mayor because the fact is we don't have that. we don't have the people pipelines and that's what we need to -- the longer we stay above the development of sure people development systems, the longer we just have to learn from silver bullet to another and try being of things and pray that they work, which is pretty much where we are at the moment. [laughter] >> often when schools strive

towards excellence in key competencies of reading, writing, math, et cetera, they do so as the odds of physical education. do you believe they are part of an educational system? if so, how? >> i think what i want for my own kids and a think that all kids should have access to parts and physical life in all sorts of other enrichment opportunities. i think again that go visit, if you haven't already, schools that are not only can a good test results, but they're really trying to set their kids have to be on a level playing field with kids in communities where parents are giving them not and i think absolutely we need to -- i think we need the whole picture. >> when you come back to the new york public library and 20 years from now, what difference do you

think we will find in the education system? >> you know, i think it is so hard to predict. i think about the fact that, you know even four years ago, if we had come together and you had said, what are the most impossible to move school systems in the country? i would've said new orleans in washington d.c. you think those are two of the fastest improving right now, you know, things are moving very quickly and the snowball is moving down the hill. i think it will be easy to underestimate the progress we can make in 20 years. what i am hoping it's the way we have growing numbers, you know, hundreds of incredibly high performing schools today that we could never have imagined even 12 years ago we would have, i hope we have proof point that the whole system level and i

think once we do the proof as possible -- we can talk about tipping points all the time. we are going to get to the tipping point where people realize we can do this and hopefully were doing all the right things. i think it is limited our reach. in 20 years we should see the achievement capped closing of big waves. >> madam kopp, were getting to the closing point. what is the difference between teachers excellent performance and pay? >> i think we need to, you know, absolutely think completely differently about the whole human capital picture committee is a terrible jargon term, we need to free our districts and our school principals will ultimately up. i mean, they need to be obsessing at all times on how do they attract. i mean, they need to be

obsessing at all times on how do they attract develop them and retain them need to be obsessing at all times on how do they attract develop them and retain them and compensate them? ultimately i think we need to give them lots more flexibility over their compensation dollars so that they can retain and value the people were making the biggest impact. >> if they are paid more, are they better teachers? >> well, i think ultimately, you know -- i don't know, with the research show? we got to look across the dresses well, we should be valuing our most effective teachers accordingly from a compensation perspective in search of a the research we've done ourselves, you know, we might consider a $15,000 p. job for teachers who are perfect is in four to eight were dead serious retentions.

>> surely the issue is not so much obstet level of compensation, but compared of compensation. so much what you have been trying to do is the ability and attract different kinds of people to hear part of the way we rehabilitate professions as we pay people comparably to other professions that we esteem. the issue of teaching is not whether they make x or y. it is the amount of money we pay a quality teacher is not commensurate with what we pay and another profession that event nearly as important socially. >> i also think that people with lots of other options, you know, there shows reality. you got to raise a family, we have to make it financially viable to say in teaching and education. >> different ways of expressing

this question, but what is your greatest regret? what is the greatest mistake you think you've made? >> gosh, there has been of course -- >> baby miscalculations would be another way. >> you know, the most significant one i went say in recent days with the i think it's tough, teach for america has grown a lot and we have the priorities around not only becoming thicker and more diverse on one hand, which leads us to put an enormous amount of energy to recruitment processes and requires us to scale up a lot. we've gone from 1,003,000 teachers in the last 10 years. but we have equally ambitious goals about increasing the measurable impact to teachers during their two years because

we think it's critical for their kids and we think it's critical for the lessons they learned. and in pursuit of that, you know, we've tried many different things. we put in place measurement systems ourselves that were very well-intentioned. we've tried lots of different strategies and ultimately if we got into the ins and outs of that, ultimately you see the limitations kind of leading web measurable -- i mean, measurable results are critical, but it's about more than that and i think the culture that you build in keeping everyone grounded in what this is all about in this. a truly putting kids on a different trajectory, creating the right balance between a focus on measurable results in keeping everyone grounded at the same time is a powerful and they think we sort of veered too much. we are trying to now ricci are

and i hope remake that have been around the spirit of things. >> finally, what are you most proud of? >> probably sticking with it. i think this is very challenging work. many other people to accomplish great things takes time and i think persevering and constant learning, you know, grounding ourselves constantly and what are we learning from my most successful core members and alumni and the constant evolution of thought here that is probably but i think is teach for america's strength in what i am proud of a guess. >> malcolm gladwell, wendy kopp, thank you very much. [applause]

up next on c-span 2, frank brady on the life of chest master bobby fischer

>> what i try to do is tell a story with visuals instead of words. i'm basically writing paragraphs with images. i think the great thing about being a journalist is the variety we get to experience so many parts of the human condition since so many different levels. >> now, frank savoie examines the life of chess master bobby fischer from his world recognition from his 1972 championship match against soviet subfloor and recursive mess as an international fugitive. from barnes & noble bookstore in new york city, this is about 40

minutes. >> i would like to start off. this is not a reading this evening. it is just simply talk and that will have a q&a. i'd like to start up beside me to read something from the book to set the mood. and i will set the scene was in the 1960s when bobby fischer was going to martinez to model plots to play and a big international tournament. so here we go. a week before i left argentina, bobby and the author of this book had dinner at the theater tavern in greenwich village to hang out with an abstract expressionist and one of bobby's favorite eating places. jackson pollock in france i'd

were having conversation toward andy warhol and don cage dined at a nearby table, not the bobby notice. he just liked the pub food the restaurant served. it was a shepherd's pie kind of place and the anonymity that came from sitting among people who preferred document are celebrities rather than taking note of chess prodigy days. we slid into the third boost from the board and ordered bottles of beer. but we sure this didn't question bobbie sage, even though he had just turned 17 and wasn't legally old enough. 18 as you remember was the limit at that time. but he looked like he was 18. bobby knew the selection without looking at the menu. he tackled an enormous slab of prime rib, which he consumed in a matter of minutes, as if he

was -- if he were a heavyweight boxer enjoying his last meal before the big faith. he just received his during the lull in the conversation, since he didn't talk much and wasn't embarrassed by long silent as i asked, bobby, how are you going to prepare for this tournament? i always wanted to know how you did it. he seemed unusually chipper and became interested in my interest. here, i'll show you said smiling. he slid out of the side of the booth and grant me into the corner. next, he retrieved from his coat his chest that and all the pieces lined up in the respect they've thoughts waiting to go to work. i doubt he'd seen one of those, but they are the larger than an index card. at the talks come elect for me me to the pocket that and spat

out this dollar retreated on this method of preparation. he's the first of all, all the games they can play and all the players when i'm going to really prepare for bronstein. i'm not worried about. he then showed me progression of his one and only game with ron stein, a draw from the kazaa the two years earlier. he took me to a bronstein choice. one moment awarding another the next. variety of choices bobbi worked through his dazzling and overwhelming. in the course of his analysis he discussed ramifications of ramifications intact deflation is advisable or not was like watching a movie with a voiceover narration that with one great difference. he was manipulating pieces and speaking so rapidly it was

difficult to connect the moves with this commentary. i couldn't follow the tumble at ideas behind the wheel and phantom attacks. he said i didn't think of this. whether kennedy? the thoughts on bobby's pockets were so worn and large from thousands of games that little pieces almost fell into the slot and aesthetically it is well banal of the images were worn off. then he went on the discussed braunstein style. at one point he said, did you read reinstein spoke? i said no, it isn't in russian? hewitt annoyed and amazed that i didn't know the language. it's a fantastic book. you play for a win against me and i'm sure in a plane for a

draw. resetting pieces in seconds, again i must without looking he said, he tarcher prepare for if he can play any kind of game, positional or type the code. he then began to show me from memory game after game, dozens focusing on opening for bronstein had played against bobby's favorite variations. multiple outcomes leaked from his mind but he didn't confine himself to bronstein sufferer. he also took me a mature games that louis paulsen had played the 1800s and i ask. men with in the 1920s as well as others just weeks before in games that he had claimed from a russian newspaper. all the time, bobby wade possibilities and suggested alternatives that selected the best lines, discriminated, decided. it was a history lesson and chess tutorial.

amazingly it is an amazing feat of memory. his eyes slightly glazed were now fixed on the pockets that what she held open in his left hand, talking to himself, totally unaware of my presence or that he was in a restaurant. his intensity seemed even greater than when he was playing in a tournament. it sped by in a blur in his face showed the slightest of smiles as if it was a referee. he whispered, very audibly, he plays that. i could block his bishop. and then raising his voice so loud he will play that. i began to weep quietly, aware that in that time suspended moment i was in the presence of

genius. [applause] okay, a couple of things were going to do here is all talk, have a q&a. there is a microphone man over here from c-span. c-span is filming this for a future broadcast. if you have a question, don't give it out. at the microphone man come over so it gets picked up on the tv. i was attempting to do a number of things when i began to write this biography of bobby fischer. the me tell you, those who here do not want to play chess and all you can read this book. this is not a chess book. it's a biography. of course it's a great interest i would hope to chess players, but you don't necessarily have to know the game very well in

order to enjoy it. i had written a number of other biographies and from person to aristotle onassis. i approached bobby's life in the same way as a biographer. as a microscopic look at his life and i attempted to leave no fat behind. i mean, that's the way i approach all of my books. i want to note every fact -- every trivial fact. i may not use it, but it gives me confidence that i know my subject and then they use it somewhere along the line. and there was no bite very unvisited, no archive on the research undone on my part. in addition to approaching this

as a biographer or researcher, i was also an official witness to a participate in bobby's career. i was the direct terror of one of the first tournaments he ever played as a child in new jersey at the old monterey hotel which doesn't exist any more right on boardwalk there. somebody was 10, 11, whatever he was. his mother was with him. and i didn't talk to bobby at that time, but i noticed him and he was a bad net for people because he was so tiny. he was the youngest person in the tournament in iraq gathered around and watched him. i noted a new he would become what he became. he really took his time. he really concentrated. we also played -- bobby and i played in some of the same tournaments together over the

years. we never met at an official tournament game. by the way, were light years away in terms of ability, but we did play perhaps hundreds of speed gains over the years. don't ask me which one. but he was an incredible speed player, by the way. it is very interested to watch them play speed chess. don't think basketball, neighborhood or playground basketball. you know, a lot of trash talk. what? play that against me, how dare you. you're a cockroach. an elephant. elephant steps on cockroach, that kind of stuff. crunch, whom. he was absolutely the most incredible speed player in the world obviously as it turns out.

so i was there. i was also the arbiter of the u.s. championship where he won all of his games without bosses, without trust. it'd never been done before. it is not been done cents and may never be done again. it was right there it is for during the entire time. i was able to study and observe him i talk about that in the book of course. i also defended bobby when he got into a big conference which caskey and bobby was force-fed and i stood up for him and went to bat for him in print and turned out to be a lawsuit and because of my champion had i ended up losing my job, which i founded. so we bonded and i was in

iceland with him for actually the match took two months, but i was up there three months. i came early and monthly during the time he won the world cheered winship. and i also looked at this book, this biography through the eyes of a friend. i was his friend. we had falling out, whatever we had, we had arguments. and there were times in many come in many areas we didn't speak. but i did feel that he was a brand. we dined together. he came to my house and red chess magazines. he swiped a lot of those, i must

say. we went to parties together. i taught him how to play billiards. we were friends. so that was my focus, study bobby fischer is a biographer, as an official chess arbiter, as a player and as a friend. and i can tell you as they go through this in the book, bobby had an extremely competitive personality. i matter what he did, i mean he was a good swimmer, for instance. going to high school in grammar school and camp he would swim in when they had recess, bobby would be in the water before everybody was in the dies. he was just fast and he wanted to win. when he got older and when he

went up to grossing kurds, he would play tennis to beat everybody at tennis except the tennis pro. other than that, he wanted to win everything again. so i go into that and talk about his competitive personality. he also had a phenomenal very. when he was preparing for spaskky, there is a book, spaskky's game, hundreds and hundreds of his games with about 10,000 moves to not book. and almost as a parlor game they would you need the book and say pick up the game, tell me when it was played into spaskky played against. it's a all right, 1978 against portugal. he would then rattle off all the

moves. he had memorized the 10,000 moves. i mean, that is just one of his memory feeds. i can tell many other stories and they do in the book about how good he was. and he had a total focus on chess. many people as he was growing and when he got older said bobby isn't savant and he doesn't know anything about chess. well, i don't know if you read malcolm gladwell's book, the outliers where he achieves success in 10,000 hours in a sense, that's like a thousand hours a year for 10 years in order to become good at something. bobby spent probably more the not although gladwell disputes that. but he spent six or eight hours a day. i may say yeah, he didn't do anything else. have you ever talked to a

musician, but they know music, don't they? i know psychiatrists who doesn't mind. they know the interpretation of dreams. they know all kinds of things. but many of them know anything about art, literature, art life. they know how to analyze you. i see at least one psychologist in the audience. i'm not putting psychologists have. so yeah he put a greater portion of his life playing chess. select from he became chess. and so misconceptions. and by.

and this is not a defensive bobby. i'm going to. i just want you to know that he was he of disraeli, causes of in the 40 years won the championship chess all that much and started my specific approach in the book was to this book, you'll.

you're the opening. there are no diagrams think i should analyzed and. he came from a poor family when bobby was born they had to live in a hospice. and they lived then they finally and he never had any government support like mean come the if they could do anything wanted and spend bobby got.

i talk about why did he and for entries another of the cd section of los angeles and given into cheese,, why did.

were not positive who married the next time comes she married someone denied he yet i have found evidence that bar mitzvah, never why did that do get into it and you cram it inside the pages is difficult to do. in any event, it is there and

american.

this is bobby's story. it is bobby's life.

it is a great odyssey of what he went through, truly a rags to riches story and now he's a multibillionaire. it has shakespearean overtones and it's truly the stuff of greek legend. so that's about all i have to say. let's have a q&a. [applause] remember, wait until the microphone comes around. >> hi, how are you. at the end of his life, where did he get his money? >> in 1982 he played -- he violated sanctions that the united states had against serbia. in montenegro and ended up with

a $5 billion match any ended up winning $3.5 million lift him >> but the most of it -- was that most of that swindled by the serbian banker? >> absolutely not. there was a billion dollars in television rights that bobby never got, but the 3.5 million definitely pocketing cash, kathmandu hotel with exchange, deposited in switzerland, said he had his money. >> wasn't the u.s. government trying to take the money? >> yes, and they still are. bobby first of all violated the sanctions come is that we at

least $250,000. on top of that, you stop paying taxes in 1977 and was so anti-american. so i don't know how much time she was a a heck of a lot during the 20 years i call the wilderness years that was living in l.a., he had some royalties he was making on its books, but wasn't a heck of a lot. he still had to be taxes on that, so they are trying to get a lot of this money. who knows, they may still do it. it's up for grabs in the icelandic words. country in courts. >> did he make a will? routed his money go? >> he didn't make a will and the money still exists. he spent it since 1992 and he died in 2008. so he had those expenses.

he bought a house for his girlfriend. he bought her a condo and supposedly there was $2 million left. >> did he believe the things that the senator was he just being provocative? and did he have in high school? >> were you in high school with them? >> no, no. >> you're much too young. there is somebody here that supposedly went to high school with robbie. are you still here wherever you are? [inaudible] actually, i met him and he used to walk around campus with his head down and a copy of a

russian journal in his back pocket. i went to brooklyn tech. >> will forgive you. did he believe the things? yeah, i believe he did. at the end of his life, he came out with what seemed like a terribly pretentious statement by saying, you know, i'm not just a chess genius, i'm a genius and all things. and he believes himself to be that. that was the whole point with ib, even when he was younger. whatever he said, it was. you know, he believed it. you either accept it or not and sometimes they don't seem very rational, that indeed that's the way it was.

so he wasn't just been in a church country and. >> hi, frank. this is a chess question. you said they played a chess. did bobby ever play blindfolded? >> at, he rarely played blindfold chess, but he did. i know on a trip for him to dock played as a young man they played fine for chess, what does it take? six hours. during that time he played blindfold games, but his opponent kept not remembering the game. the two bobby, you know, in a sense he was always playing chess because it was always going through his mind. >> what made him anti-american?

>> there was a story that appeared -- a series of stories that appeared in "life magazine about bobby and the writer who is now dead, brad darrah, wrote the stories with a contract for bobby that he would not write a book about it. and a year and a half or two years after the match was over, darrah came out with a book. believe it or not $100 million in bobby always had problems with lawyers, decided to handle the case himself. so the race was scribbled on yellow paper. eventually it was thrown out of court in bobby claimed there was no justice and the american

jurisprudence system, so therefore he said i'm not going to pay taxes anymore. i don't believe in america. it is a corrupt government. >> i just want to thank you for delivering to us the second book. i have the first one he wrote. when he was playing, he kept losing to him. i enjoyed your book. i found it very interesting. thank you for the second part of it. >> thank you, thank you coming thank you. let's get one over here and then we'll come back to you. >> yeah, where they are every bit clinical mental issues that were attributed to him, given his statements that he made

linux >> no psychiatrist and i know ever said anything along that line and i interviewed a number of psychiatrists who knew him. the latest dr. magnet schools funner who was with bobby during the last months of his life he said, give you a quote, he said he was disturbed, he was paranoid, but he was not schizophrenic and he was not psychotic. dr. schooler sin is an m.d. and was the director of the largest mental institution, a very reputable man. he said he came up with a troubled childhood and was mixed up, but clinically he could not say he was paranoid schizophrenic. he had paranoid tendencies as most of us due to some extent,

so yeah. >> well, it is the end of his life in the end of the game. thank you very much. thank you. anymore? brooklyn tech trader. >> i'm curious as to how well he would have done in its prime against a spiral? >> well, how would dempsey have done against tyson? it's a very difficult thing to compare things that cannot really be compared. ..