[inaudible conversations] .. >> the dialogue with the north koreans on human rights is, it's kind of a ridiculous dialogue because you can tell them, you need to improve your human

rights situation, and their response to you will be -- and we've had this conversation at the official level -- their response will be, well, you, the united states, have human rights problems too. i mean, that is not a comparable discussion. >> that's tonight at 10. also this weekend marcus luttrell details operation redwing from "service: a navy seal at war." sunday night at 10 eastern. three days of booktv this weekend on c-span2. >> from busboys and poets in washington, d.c., lisa delpit contends that recent public education reform efforts from no child left behind to the proliferation of charter schools have failed to assist african-american students and address an achievement gap. it's about 50 minutes. >> i guess this is, may not be on. is it on? can you hear me?

okay, i can't hear it. i just wanted to thank all of you for coming out. it's an honor for me to be here. i don't know that i've ever done an occasion like this, and i do believe i probably write better than i speak, so i will just talk for a few minutes. there's so much in the book that it's, i certainly can't talk a lot, too much about it, but i will start with a story about a young man i met yesterday who's 11 years old, and he's avery, a young african-american man. he gave me -- his mother showed him the book and some other books i had written, and he looked at the title, and you could see his mind, the wheels in his mind were grinding, the gears were. and he was trying to figure out how to ask me about it without

being insulting. [laughter] because he clearly thought i had it wrong. [laughter] so he read it, and he said, well, what's your response to that? [laughter] and what i found over the years is it's such -- i love, love talking to children because they are so clear-minded about things. and so i explained the title to him, which i'll explain to you because you may have the same question and not be as diplomatic as he was. [laughter] but the title came from a child asking her tutor, an african-american child asking her due -- tutor, how come you're trying to teach me

multiplication? black people just add and subtract, white people multiply. so, of course, that quote stayed with me, and i explained that to avery. and i asked avery, um, did he find in his integrated school in maryland in a very good area that people had the attitude about black children, that they couldn't learn as much. and he said even though he is at the top of his class in mathematics, and he said, yes. he said that a lot of times there are kids, he named some names, and he said, well, they act silly all the time and act up, so people think they don't know how to do anything. and that struck a chord too.

and i told him that from what i've unearthed and be all the classes i've been in, a lot of times kids believe that if they don't know something, they have two responses. the first response is to hide out which is the kid in the classroom who pulls the hoodie over his head to try and pretend -- and puts his head on the desk to pretend like he's not there, and the other response is to act out. because then if you act silly or act out, you can prevent whatever was going to make you look dumb because you didn't know it from occurring. and avery thought that that was a good explanation. and so that reaffirmed for me that our kids are actually

seeing a lot of the things that i was seeing. and those -- that's what was in the, that's a major part of the book, that our kids, well, as beverly tatum said, we live -- if you live in los angeles, you live and breathe smog. you don't try to breathe smog, there's no intention to breathe smog. you may not even know you're breathing smog, but if you live in los angeles, you're breathing smog. and if you live in the united states of america, you're breathing racism. it doesn't matter what color you are, you're not trying to breathe it, you don't want to breathe -- you may not want to breathe it, you may not even be aware that you're breathing it, but we're all breathing in these toxic fumes of negative stereotyping, negatively

stereotyping certain children. i've been asked why i wrote the book about african-american children since the previous work has been more multicultural. and the answer to that is i have one, that's the first answer. [laughter] but who as she, as you'll see if you get the book, in the acknowledgments believes she has taught me everything i know about other people's children. [laughter] but it's also because i think this is the conversation that is never held. this is -- we all talk about the achievement gap, and we talk about all the reforms that you all are i would say familiar with, but i should say afflicted by -- [laughter] that people are trying to maybe address this, but nobody ever talks about race, and nobody

ever talks about within these reforms about the fact that a black child and black education is not just a dumb white child. there are issues that affect african-american children and their teachers that don't affect other people. i was just -- since the trayvon martin horror there's, i don't know if you heard about it, there was a poll that was recently conducted. i just heard the results today. um, 85% of african-americans believe that trayvon was targeted for race but only 41% of white americans believe that. 80% of black americans believe

that trayvon's death was racially motivated whereas only 35% of white americans believe it. and for me the most telling one is 60% of black people believe that racism is a big problem in this country, be but only 19% of white people do. and i believe that all of us, you know, the man who pulled the trigger on trayvon obviously is the one who killed him and who should have a trial related to it. but all of us who do not have that conversation with each other and with our children, we have to take a part of it. because trayvon was all about --

was a child of all of us, and we're not putting ourselves in enough situations to defend and prepare, prepare our kids. as i said, i have one, and for a number of reasons i am, you know, i am concerned about her. i have plenty of nephews and nieces and young men who, like avery, who i talk with. and there's just a lot that we owe, owe them because we are all breathing in this cloud. and if we don't find a way to talk about it, then we're going to have -- as we have had in the last couple of days -- a lot more instances of this slapping us in the face without our realizing why. so, actually, i think i'm going

to stop talking now, and i would like to hear if you have questions or things that you want to talk about. >> if you have questions, you're welcome to step up to the microphone here. again, please, give your name, if you're a teacher, what subject you teach and what grade, and ask your question briefly so that we can field as many as possible. >> my question has to do with parenting. >> with what? >> with parenting. yeah, because i think that, um, if parents read to their children, that's the best preparation a child can have for school. because the school's going to teach them how to multiply and so on. and the child will come to respect reading. a couple guys got on the subway the other day, and they came --

i was way in the back of the train, and they must have come back on purpose. so they pull bed out newspapers, you know -- pulled out newspapers, you know, to show that they read. and they took out the sport section and stuffed the rest of the newspaper in their satchel, so hopefully they're going to be reading some of the front page. >> okay. would you like me to comment on that? >> sure. >> let me just start with a little story. >> i, as my good friend who drove me over here knows, i'm a complete sports phobic. [laughter] i know nothing. and i did not want to raise a child who knew nothing. so as a single parent, single mom i put her in various sports, and she was in, well, yeah. there's long stories about each one of those sports, but let's talk about softball for a

moment. and i said, okay, i'm taking her -- i found a place, i looked up, and i took her to the softball place. and the coach wanted to talk to parents, and the coach said, parents, you have to get out there and help your child learn softball. [laughter] and i thought about that, and i said, well, gee whiz, that's why i brought her to you, because i don't know anything about softball. [laughter] and it dawned on me that when we tell parents sometimes all the things they're supposed to do at home, many of these are very young parents, many of them are limit inside their reading ability, many of them don't have a minute to sit down, and we tell them, well, we can't teach you unless you work with your child at home. then they probably feel a lot like i did when that coach gave me that message about working with maya on softball.

so whereas i think it would be great for parents to read to children, i know that many of them will not. the question then i ask of myself as a teacher is if i know that parents are not reading to children, what can i do in the classroom to make sure that this child is read to? and there are a lot of things i can do. if i have kindergarten children, i can get third grade children to come and read to them. i can get people in the community who want to volunteer to come and read to them. i can read to them myself. i can get them to read to each other. and so i think what we need to focus on when we're teachers is we can really get very depressed very fast if we try to focus on all the things that we can't change and that we can't affect. but if we focus on what we can change and can affect, i think

we have a much better shot at providing the kind of education that all children need. okay. michelle? >> hi. my name eat michelle, i'm principal -- name's michelle, i'm principal at a charter school here in d.c. and i have a question about the sawtist ticks that you gave about the trayvon martin case and the number of black people who feel that's racially motivated. and then layer on to that the number of white people who are teaching black and brown children across the united states. what are things that you feel like school communities can do to start to address the systemic racism that is there and that's, um, whether people want to appreciate it or not? you know, the achievement gap is the residual effect of racism. so how do we start to address that in small communities? >> well, you know, i haven't had much of a chance to do it because i've not been in a

university that supported it. but i've always believed that when -- i've done it in some classes -- when we are teaching teachers, we need to bring in folk who -- parents and people from the community who may be activists in the community to talk about education and what are the issues. and this came to me because when i was in alaska, martha who's a wonderful native alaskan teacher, she said in the villages what she would like to do is just have the teachers listen to what is it, what are the problems that our kids are facing. so i believe i would try to really have -- and then in another instance, in another situation i have had people, men, who should not have been

successful, but who were, like, from very low socioeconomic backgrounds, come in and talk about what made them successful. and they inevitably say it was one or more teachers who did it. and it was the stories that they tell that help teachers understand what a, how strong their influence is and what, how much of a difference they could make. so we have to have the conversations. but sometimes if you just have it with the people in the school, you get this. and what i've found is that it's much easier to have the conversation if you bring in someone from outside to just talk about their experiences, to talk about race or the racism that they experienced in school or that their kids experienced in another school -- not in that school. [laughter] so you can get some defenses

down, and you may be able to begin the conversation. because people -- a lot of times the reason why 19% of white people don't believe it's a problem, i mean, not 19%, 81% don't believe it's a problem is because they've not had the opportunity to really listen to people who have been affected by it. and you can't hear it, apparently, because i've tried, from your colleagues. [laughter] it's really tough. you almost have to have, you know, bring in neutral people to begin -- does that get at it in some way, michelle? do you have any -- >> you know, the follow-up is if you're willing to come to our school to talk about -- [laughter] i'll come find you after. >> okay. but you understand it's not me coming. they need to hear from folk this this -- in their own community.

>> yeah. >> because when i come, i come and i leave. >> yeah. >> and, you know, that was an interesting interlude. wasn't that fascinating, what she thought? [laughter] about those people who are not us? >> yeah. >> but i find it much more powerful if you can, and easy to get a conversation going. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> good evening. my name is julian, and i teach 11th grade u.s. history at capitol city public charter school. and my question is about the different content areas, the different subjects. do you feel like there is one that is requiring more attention now than another? >> what do you teach? >> capital city -- >> what? >> i teach history. >> so i'm sure history must be the right answer. [laughter] >> do you think there is a subject that requires more attention? your book is, obviously, entitled multiplication, so do you think math is the area we should be focusing on as

educators, or do you think all of them? >> well, you know, that's ironic that multiplication's in the title because i am -- my mother was a math teacher so, therefore, i avoided it at all costs. [laughter] but i think, and this is partially because of my own orientation, you know, in which i believe that people should have enough math to be able to find the chapters this books. in books. [laughter] i'm kidding, i'm kidding, all you math teachers out there, i'm kidding. [laughter] i worked with bob moses on an algebra project. [laughter] but i do believe that critical literacy is extremely important. but, see, i think that connects with mathematics. because if you look at math, where our kids aren't -- they actually, i don't have the data in front of me, but they

actually do better than expected on algorithms and things with, you know, problems, just the -- with numbers. where they fall extremely short is critical reasoning and thinking and estimation and word problems and anything that has them trying to put together facts and come up with an answer. so that, to me, is critical literacy. whether it be in text or in numbers or in thinking about history. but i think it's the whole idea of you are a thinking being, and you need to use your mind and not just use facts. and i know everybody says that. but oftentimes people don't realize what they're doing in class rooms.

one of my students, she videotaped a class, and she thought she was having a real conversation with her kids, and then she played it back, and she saw she was talking a lot, and the kids had one or two-word answers, and she -- even then she would answer a lot of the questions herself. [laughter] and she ended up changing her whole way of teaching. but often we don't realize, i think, as teachers how much we're feeding, feeding the kids and not allowing them to do the thinking. >> thank you very much. >> uh-huh. >> good evening. my name is jamila, and i'm a middle school assistant for bishop public charter school here in the district. and if you could expand a little bit about how african-american children are not worn with an achievement -- born with an achievement gap, if you could expand on that. >> right.

jamila? you have depressed me greatly. because you are an assistant principal, and you look like you're in high school. [laughter] >> i'm almost 40, but i'll accept that. [laughter] >> i mean, at one point the teachers kept looking younger and younger, and now the principals are looking younger. [laughter] but i will. and the answer to that is in the lighter note, but it goes the other direction. all the research that has been published has shown that children of african descent -- and that's in the first chapter of the book -- are more, very, much more highly skilled in cognitive as well as motor

skills, and they can do -- they -- so much so that the pediatricians, you know, charts about what babies should do at certain points actually be an african-american child or a child of african descent is right on the money on that chart, it's quite possible that they are having developmental delays. because if you only looked at the children of african descent, the chart would shift way to the right in terms of being able to do things or left much more readily -- much earlier than, um, than white kids. now, and that's been, the studies that i quote in the book, one is in car in the 1940s, michelle joubet who was doing research was the effects

of malnutrition on development. what she found out was that the children she was studying in uganda were so much more ahead even though they were mall nourished than european children that they blew on every scale she could test them on that they blew the european scales out of the water. there's also research by two pediatricians in this country in the 1990s and most recently, i think the one i quote, is phyllis ripyoung who did a dissertation and found the same thing, that african-american kids -- now, they tend to even out around the fourth, 4 years old, 3 or 4 years old, and then once kids get to school, the trends actually start to reverse. now -- >> why is that? >> well, you know, no one has studied that question. maybe that's a question we need to study. but that's what -- that's why

that statement was there. thank you. >> hi. my name is tiffany mitchell, i'm a seventh grade teacher, and i wanted to touch a little bit on the change you brought up. in your book you talked about the pushing out of veteran teachers and more of an influx of younger teachers, and i was curious about your thoughts on the profession particularly for minority teachers, education being a long-term, viable option where it seems now a days, you know, most young people don't stay in the same profession, or the longevity factor is not there, so i was curious for you to speak more to that. >> tell me the question then now? >> the question is could you speak more to the problem of education where more veteran teachers are being pushed out of the class room, and there's an influx of younger teachers?

>> right. well, the thing that i talked about in here was actually teach for america. not because there are not absolutely wonderful young people who are involved in it, but my concern is that they only make a two-year commitment. by the way, some -- the ones who stay often are excellent teachers. but my concern has been that they, that the whole program in many cities they are hiring tsa teachers or not just tsa, there are other organizations as well, while pushing out veteran teachers. and that's certainly in new orleans after katrina. all of the teachers were fired. and that has a tendency reduce

the numbers of african-american teachers and increase the numbers of young white teachers, but many of whom, unfortunately, are leaving quickly. so i believe that our most vulnerable population which are children in inner cities and urban settings, are those who need veteran teachers. which is not to say they may not also need young energy, but they need a combination, and they need young energy that's going stay long enough to become really excellent at the job. and i think most of the research suggests that it takes about four years to become really good at teaching or to reach one's kind of potential as a teacher. and so what i would like to see in that is, you know, young people making a commitment for more time and, also, having more of an opportunity for them to

work with excellent veteran teachers. not just -- i am not naive enough to believe that veteran teachers are the answer by themselves. but there are some excellent veteran teachers, and we need to make sure that we focus on those. >> thank you. >> uh-huh. >> hi. my name's anthony, i'm a pundit. >> hi, anthony. >> i also happen to be in a family of educators, you know? pretty much everybody in my -- >> yes, i am too. [laughter] >> so growing up when i was a kid mostly i heard the same statement over and over again. anthony would be a great student if he would apply himself. [laughter] and, you know, my response, i mean, i wasn't eloquent enough to tell anybody at the time, but i'm like, i'm a kid, i'm stupid. kids do stupid things, they don't apply themselves. we're not taught in a scenario where education is built for

children in their -- and their inability to stay still, hyperactivity, things along those lines. i was wondering what your thoughts are about catering education to children and their issues so they can learn beforer based on the fact that they're kids and they aren't to -- supposed to sit down, you know? >> well, i mean, yeah. interesting question. i was just thinking if we went to a pediatrician, we would think that they would focus on children. so as educators of children it might be a good idea to focus on children as opposed to just focusing on a curriculum. and the best teachers i know actually say i don't teach a curriculum, i teach children. and we do, part of the reason why the overidentification

particularly of african-american boys especially in special education is because we restricted so much what's acceptable and reduced so much of what kids like to do like the arts and athletics and sports and music and all that that we make it even harder. i mean, the response for kids not doing well in school is to take away recess frequently. and, you know? for a -- okay, the kid can't sit still to sit in the reading group, so we're going to take away recess. [laughter] you know, it doesn't make sense, what we do. and i've had my child who i refer to as having an army of one is, has had all the issues that any kid could have in school from adhd to just many of

them. and i was very aware that we need to rethink this notion of everybody having to learn in exactly the same way. on the other hand, i want to make sure that when you have a multiplicity of the ways that kids, that are acceptable for kids, we still need to make sure -- okay, let me just explain this. in one classroom i went -- the teacher, the kids, like, everybody was sitting down doing their work, and there were four black boys who were running around doing nothing. and i said, okay, what's going on with them? oh, that's their learning style. [laughter] no, no, no, no. that's running around. that's not their learning -- oh, yeah, they're kinetic learners. so i think we also at the same time have to be extremely

careful about insuring that in the name of -- that everything we do with children is in the name of academic achievement, not just because it's easier. does that answer? okay. >> hello. my name is myron long, i'm an assistant principal at a middle school, so my question is around how do we as educators create, um, a space where students can begin to have conversations about race? particularly because i want to begin to transform this conversation that adults are having to allowing and empowering my students to be able to facilitate this conversation amongst themselves and just kind of seeing if you would be able to give any insight into how we can create that culture in our schools. >> well, do the teachers in your school converse about race? >> we do. [laughter] >> okay. and is it a mixed group of

teachers? >> yes, ma'am. >> and are they uncomfortable talking about race? >> i think et goes from the building trust and kind of going from all of those stages of relational trust from beginning to more advanced. so i don't want to say they were uncomfortable -- i think initially there may be different levels of comfortability, but as the year progresses, they get to a more safer space. >> so have you had the conversation with them about what -- how they would like to have a conversation about race with kids? >> i have not. >> i would start there. because you're going to find people having a lot of worries about bringing up the issues. and i think in conversation is the best way to handle that. i also think you can't -- are the -- what ethnicity are the kids? >> [inaudible] >> okay. so i think you also need to let

parents in on what's going on because i will assure you that you have a conversation in class, at least five kids are going to go home and tell their parents something that they heard, that they thought they heard -- [laughter] that was not in the conversation, and you'll have five people at, screaming at you as assistant principal because the principal's going to disappear at that point. [laughter] since it was your idea. [laughter] so i think it's really important to raise some issues in the -- i mean, it sounds like a relatively small charter school, right? enter. [inaudible] >> yeah. that we're going to be having some, that might be difficult conversations, or we're going to be having conversations about whatever it is you're having a conversation about. and, um, it might start with

we're having a conversation, for example, about the civil rights movement. and we're going to ask parents to come in and talk about their experiences during the civil rights movement both black, white, whatever. or if it's about immigration, we're having some conversations about that, and we are going to ask some parents to come in and lead that conversation with our kids about their experiences. not their attitudes, their experiences. i think then you begin to create an environment. and like you said, it takes time to build that trust. how -- it's middle school? >> we have elementary and middle school, but i work mostly with the middle school. >> okay. the elementary kids, it's actually easier because they have a fine-honed sense of fairness. and the cippedder gartners --

kindergarteners will tell you in a minute what's not fair. [laughter] middle school it begins to get, upper elementary and middle it begins to get more difficult because the kids are bringing in more societal attitudes, and so they need conversations. but i think, you know, involving parents, um, talking to your teachers, first, having them have a conversation, then involving parents and also perhaps finding a book like avery was reading the watsons go to birmingham as a sixth grader. but a lot of the walter dean books might be interesting ones, too, to talk about. but some books. and then use et as book discussions as -- use it as book discussions as well. it kind of defuses it a little bit when kids can bring in their own experiences related to the

text. does that help at all? >> it does. thank you so much. >> okay, you're welcome. >> thank you. >> hi, my name eat barry -- my name's mary -- i teach ninth grade world history, and one of the ideas from your previous writings has really struck me as the idea of background knowledge, and there are a lot of times in school what we do is basic skills are really things that are taught at home and, audiotape, dominant cultures, white families. thank you. and then a lot of students of color are bringing critical thinking skills into the class room aren't necessarily honored. so i'm wondering what advice would you give to teachers in how we think about planning to better be able to tap into the knowledge and skills that each of our students are bringing into the classroom? >> what grade? >> ninth grade. >> ninth?

>> yes. >> lots of writing. the kids doing lots of writing. open, very open-ended kinds of discussions, observing kids, asking kids questions like what do you think most ninth graders think about x. and i'd start it like that because then they don't have -- you can start the conversation with them without them having to feel they have to defend a response personally. which always is a good way to, i believe, to begin the conversation. um, i think that it's -- let's see. we were talking about finding out what kids know. yeah. i think those would be -- at that level, those would be the answers that i have. you know, i've seen some

teachers say i want you to teach me x, y or z, and you have to figure out how to do it as a student. and sometimes that also helps get us into both how they are thinking about a topic, but also what, um, what it is that they know to bring to the table. yeah, it's really just talking to them, it really is. i mean, that's how i learn a lot from the children that i work with, having some opportunities to talk, to sit and have lunch with three or four of them about something. >> thank you. >> that would be my answer. >> thank you. >> okay? >> my name is jenna ott, i'm a first-year teacher, and i was just wondering what is your best advice for someone who is new to the teaching field? [laughter]

>> yeah. um, the thing that helped me feel a little bit more secure because i was scared to death thinking that, i mean, i felt like these people are leaving their children with me? [laughter] you know? the first year that i taught, and i think it was really useful to put in my head that i am going to give them all that i can, but i am not going to be -- but maybe their next teacher will fill in some of the gaps that i might not have known about this year. and that nobody is excellent, i mean, across the board in their first year. the thing that kids -- a lot of kids love first-year teachers if they know how to, if teacher

can, as the kids say, control the class, you know? if everybody's not jumping all over everywhere, they love them because of the energy that they bring. but if they, but they do need to understand and get help with, from other, from more veteran teachers, you know, what do i need to do with this group of kids when i first go in to try to establish the environment that i want to have. maybe the best thing i could offer, and i'm, you know, speaking off the top of my head, but the best thing i could offer was to say make sure you set routines in place, and put them in place early. [laughter] thank you, tears, thank you, thank you. and i think talk to some of the people who are here about things like that. again, veteran teachers and principals. but once you have some routines, it's much easier to put things in routines than to have wonderful, great ideas and no

routines. so maybe that's what i would say. >> thank you. >> uh-huh. >> hi. my name is carlos morales, i'm a pediatrician. >> oh! [laughter] hi, carlos. >> a couple of days ago i was talking with a colleague regarding the s.a.t. test, and i was sharing my views on it and how, you know, i've read a lot about it being a biased test, that it selects people of higher economic status into universities and higher education, um, and then this issue you mentioned about race and discrimination came up. i was trying to talk to him about how this is a racist test, and it keeps people of minorities out of the universities or out of the higher institutions. he didn't really want to hear it. um, so just your views overall on the s.a.t. process, on the selection of students for higher

education. thank you. >> right. there's a book a young scholar has just come out with called, um, "filling in the blanks." and it really is about people of color and she's a psychoma tradition, so she is somebody who's a numbers person. so her analysis is different -- it's not a social analysis as much as really looking deeply at the numbers and the processes of how things are normed. and it's an interesting little book because of that. so i would recommend that book. but i would also part -- a lot -- well, a lot of things are going through my head. a lot of the problem is that the s.a.t. certainly does measure a lot of the cultural kinds of things that people learn outside

of school or any standardized test. the biggest one to me, the most obvious one is let's say somebody speaks ebonics, and that's the language they learned at home, and it's not, it doesn't indicate any less intelligence, it just happens to be the language that they learned at home. and some people who speak ebonics are extremely brilliant people. i know some. but then you're given a test on english grammar, and if you speak standard english, that test isn't measuring much except how much you speak -- the fact that you can speak standard english. now, if you speak e bonn bics, it's -- ebonics, it's just as if, in many ways, you were

taking a grammar test in another language which has nothing to do with your ability to learn and the fact that these two groups are -- you're not measuring what was taught, put it that way. you're measuring something that you brought from home. does that make sense? so i think that's one example of it. the argument i would rather, i mean, the thing i would rather do is say, okay, we need to think about the fact that there are differences between what african-american children and many -- not all -- many african-american children and many white children -- not all -- bring to school, and we need to make sure that school is responsive to teaching them the things that they may not have gotten which, for me, includes even more field trips, for example. because the kids, you know, from poor communities often -- how

can you understand some text about a zoo if you never been to -- if you've never been to one? how can you -- and all down the line. so i think we need to really think more carefully about what the students that we are teaching need, and then we may be able to get them to the place where they have learned a second language, a second meaning, standard english, learned some -- become culturally familiar with a lot of the things. so it's two pieces. it's the deaths, but it's also what kinds of things we might be able to do in schools to help change the way that we're teaching. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> hi. i'm cynthia greer, and i'm associate professor of counseling at trinity washington university, and if as you know,

schools of education are now under attack. and what would you say are a couple of the best practices in terms of teacher preparation and, also, what do you think is the future of the public school system in this country? [laughter] >> well -- yeah, right. in 20 words or less. i don't know. i don't know what the future is. i do know that the path we're going, i believe we're going to hit a brick road pretty quickly. and then, i mean, hit a brick wall. and when we hit that wall, i think there are going to be another -- you know, i don't know how long you've been in education, but i've been in it long enough to see all the pendulums. and, you know, when i look at new orleans, for example, which is privatized and charterrized almost all the schools, and i'm looking at that, and there's no

central -- somebody is going to say this is stupid, we need a central administration, and you're going to remake, i think, you know, some kind of school system all over again. i think the privatizers are going to run into a problem because -- especially -- if nobody makes them educate all children, then they won't run into a problem. if thug kind of push -- if they can kind of push some kids out, the way it's been done at some charters that i'm aware, at some charters in new orleans that i'm aware of, is the if child -- they will set these kinds of things like if you, oh, you know, wear the wrong color t-shirt, you can get under your clothing, you can get suspended. and then the people in if charge will tell the parents, well, i

know -- we don't want to really suspend your child, and we don't want this to be on his record. so if you would just take your child out voluntarily, then it won't be on his record. you can put him in the school down the street. and so a lot of schools will preen kids that way if they want to get rid of them. >> [inaudible] what are some of the best practices in preparing teachers? >> with yeah. the thing that -- i don't know what's going on in a lot of teacher education programs. the thing that i would like to see is just teachers having the opportunity to learn more about the communities that they're going to be teaching in, learning how to identify the strengths of children, not just what they don't know, but what they do know as well. and i don't see a lot of that happening.

>> i'd like to ask you a question. >> come a little closer to the mic for me. >> okay. i'd like to ask you a question. >> yes. >> why do you think the african-american -- [inaudible] >> say that again? >> why do you think the african-american cannot progress successfully in this country? why? >> well, the short answer is that -- well, some have, and as long as there are a few who have -- >> no -- [inaudible] >> okay, you're right. but i'm saying folk use the few who have as an excuse to say, look, they're doing okay. but i think the general answer to that question is that there are still stereotypes held about people of color in this society that say that they are less than, they are inferior mentally, they are a whole bunch of other things.

>> that's not the problem. do you know what it is? >> tell me what the answer is. [laughter] you should be a teacher. [laughter] >> okay, this is the answer. >> okay. >> until we as african-americans learn our slave history ourself -- >> he's right about that -- >> then we will progress and go forward in this country. we lack our slave history. >> we need to know our history, you're right about that. our own history. >> yeah. we don't understand that our forefathers built wall street, our forefathers picked cotton, tobacco, that's how the american stock exchange got started. we built them their wealth. >> have you done any writing? >> no. >> i think -- i wish you would. [laughter] no, no, i'm serious. i wish you would because we do need people who know the history to write about it. be because we don't have enough books out there. >> and so with that we're going to have to close the question

and answer to make sure we have enough time. please, give a round of applause to lisa delpit. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. what i found again and again and again while i was researching this book was that not only was garfield's life and nomination and brief presidency full of incredible stories, but the people who surrounded him were also unbelievable. you just couldn't make them up. first, of course, was charles gouteau, garfield's would-be assassin. he was a deeply, dangerously delusional man, but he was very

intelligent and highly articulate. if you read nearly any other account of garfield's assassination, giew toe is described as a disgruntled office seeker, but that doesn't cover the smallest part of it. he was a uniquely american character. he was a part of this country at that time, a time when there was a lot of play in the joint, and there was no one to really understand what he was up to and hold him to account for it. he was a self-made madman. he was smart and scrappy, he was a clever opportunist, and he probably would have been very successful if he hadn't been insane. [laughter] he had tried everything, and he had failed at everything.

the women in a commune nicknamed him charles get out. [laughter] but he survived on sheer audacity. he traveled all over the country by train and never bought a ticket. he took great pride in moving from boarding house the boarding house, slipping out when the rent was due. and even when he occasionally worked as a bill collect, he would just keep whatever he managed to collect. after the republican convention, goteau became obsessed with the president. he went to the white house nearly every day. at one point he even walked into the president's office while the president was in it. he even attended a reception and introduced himself to garfield's wife. he shook her hand, he gave her his card, and he slowly pronounced his name so she wouldn't forget him. it's like a hitchcock movie.

it's incredibly creepy and absolutely terrifying. finally, gouteau had what he believed a divine inspiration: god wanted him to kill the president. it was nothing personal he would later say, simply god's will. as strange and fascinating and nearly as dangerous as gouteau was senator rosco conkling, and that's chester arthur. we skipped a picture. [laughter] conkling was a vain, preening, brutally-powerful machine politician who appointed himself garfield's enemy. he wore -- there's conkling. he wore canary yellow waistcoats, he used lavender ink. he had this spit coil in the middle of his forehead, and he recoiled at the slightest touch.

he was famously ridiculed for his vanity by another congressman on the floor of congress. but conkling was no joke. he was dangerously powerful. as a senior senator from new york, he controlled the new york customs house which was the largest federal office in the united states and controlled 70% of the country's customs revenue. conkling tightly controlled patronage within his state, and he expected complete and unquestioning loyalty. in fact, his apartment in new york was known as the morgue. conkling was enraged when his candidate, former president grant, didn't get the nomination. but he was ap apoplectic when he realized that he couldn't control garfield. to congressling, the attempt on -- conkling, the attempt on -- >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> what are you reading this

summer? booktv wants to know. >> there are two wonderful books out now about where al-qaeda and the taliban are. steve is working on one, seth jones from the rand corporation is working on the other one. david mariner is working on another biography at this time, and there are lot of great books that come out every year by serious journalists/historians that are worth reading. walter isaacson's book on steve jobs was a pert example of that -- perfect example of that. and with good reason because of all the things we could learn from it. >> host: what are you currently reading? >> guest: i'm read ago lot of things. i read a wonderful book called "blood knots," i loved that. i'm reading about the '48 campaign.

that was really wild. harry truman and henry wallace and be strom thurmond and dewey, first election after the war. so i'm reading terry anderson and the book about george bush and how he decided to go to war. my wife just finished katherine the great which was given to me, and she picked it off, so i've got to get involved in that. i read a lot of magazine stuff, a lot of essays. i read a -- i actually opened up a correspondence with a poet by the name of donald hall as a result of something he wrote in the new yorker about growing old. so we had a little exchange, and that was quite gratifying. i'm in awe of great writers. i don't pretend to be a great writer. i'm pretty good sometimes, but great writers move me in ways that nothing else in life does. >> for more information visit booktv.org on this and other summer reading lists. >> and now