[applause] >> many in arizona know about school choice. no other state in the united states has embraced school choice like arizona. over two decades of school choice policies and in your work, you call the idea of choice the society centrality of markets. i would add competition and choice. really in arizona, put forward as if it is a little innocuous. ..

a better alternative than a bloated bureaucracy which is an efficient and which cannot be controlled and their unions involved in that. what i see in the charter movement and what i think we have all seen is that not only movement toward programs like vouchers which rely on individual choice, a rational act, but also jonathan alluded to literally the running of part charter schools and that is like, how is there not a bigger conversation that is not just by the outraged left about the problem with that? i think think that is a real issue. i hope we can all assume that a for-profit charter management organization operating exclusively in low income

neighborhood that they probably have some intention beyond social mobility and created citizens. i would like to point that all of that is very macro unless you lose live close to a community like this. we see this and lots of schools and lots of ways. one area i am passionate about is the unromantic area of school lunch. if you look at the history of cafeterias and school lunch where i believe education is happening, whatever that school is serving they are marking their authority that this is healthy food. it's like teaching algebra. we give you these tater tots, right. if you look the way school lunch has been provided over the 60 years it has changed enormously. these has changed enormously. these are federally funded programs with nutritional guidelines. it was often universal school lunch, now it has moved to be a program only for poor kids with all of the stigma that is attached to it. and new york we measure the poverty of a school with a number of free and reduced lunch kids that are there.

that also, school lunches offered to the highest private better. you'll see one example there it was a school in the south where coca-cola was allowed to provide the school lunches, in order to have the reduced cost for school lunches they had to have bending machines and schools. the teachers were encouraged to get the kids to buy as much soda as they could in order to meet the quotas to get the reduce cost school lunch. these are pervse motives here in schools. i in schools. i use that as a concrete example. there's one very conete wa that markets are invading what i would hope would be a different kind of civic space. >> i will add to that if i may. i agree with everything you just that. charter schools usually pretend they're not selective. in many ways they are. even charter schools that claim

they accept children, the same economic level as the rest of the public school system, typically they may observe that in economic terms but in terms of social capitalism and parents they are highly selective. it depends which appearance here about the school first, which parents have the navigation skills, not homeless, not about to be evicted, not fully educated, in other words it is appealing to the savviest parents even in the the savviest parents even in the poor communities. that is one thing. and then once they admit the kids that they finally made a mistake and one of their children, one of the students is causing problems, a difficult child, as all of us teachers in the public school have, at least

a few kids like that in every class, those are the ones i remember the longest. the longest. i always like those kids the most. but if they run into kids like that who may be interrupting the scripted proto, military lesson, what do they do? they counsel him out. they said mrs. jones, your little boy, he is a lovely little boy, he drives us crazy but he is a lovely little boy. we think he he will do better in his old public school. so then you compare the test scores. which school is going to look best? the public of the charter? it is a rigged game. the only other the only other thing would add to that is that nine tenths of the charter movement is not so much of teaching, it is promotion. they are geniuses at pr, public relations. i'm speaking particularly of the profitaking change, so-called emo's, is that the term?

education management something. one of those terms years ago when this movement was just starting, private firms trying to make money off of poor children. i saw a stock perspective for one of these companies, i will not say which one, but a friend of mine on wall street, yes, i actually do, i actually do have a few friends on wall street, a friend of mine showed this to me, she dug it up and in looking for support, financial backing the firm's founder said, if we can open up the market competition in the public system, the k-12 market is the big enchilada. well, whoever thought that poor children would prove to be so helpful to the appetites of of wall street billionaires, anyway

they are good at promotion. typically they renamed their schools so they sound like new england prep schools. they are picking for people. they will change it to an academy instead of a school, it it is now latino leadership academy. there is a chang called nobel schools. poor people think may be tony mars is teaching that, it may be nobel lawyers are sponsoring the school, baloney, they have nothing to do with it. they are very good at that. there is one called up academy. there's one called success academy. that is a big chain in new york city which has had scandals recently. so i don't know, the market apply to public education, market competition, wall street values brought into public

schools, and business partners even for the regular public schools are starting to dictate the curriculum. i do not see why we should trust bankers and brokers on wall street who just brought the world into a worldwide recession, destroyed the economy of the entire western world in any case. i do not see why we should trust them to improve the quality of the education for our children [applause]. >> this is going to be our last structured question and then we will allow you an opportunity. i want to give the out audience

and opportunity, a diverse set of topics to think about. i will have you both talk about language policies were moment. particularly in arizona we have a policy where we segregate our english language learners for four hours. on much the same argument that we have been making for 100 years and that is they can learn english, we also have a circumstance where you write a lot about language policies get co-mingled with with the idea of culture and even patriotism. i think a question many have is, given today's society and the current political environment, why why can't we move toward a healthier approach where we have the ability to learn more than one language? >> i'm going to the fastest because i want to hear natalia. we had to come so far across the country when we grew up, people were miles apart. here a couple of things i'll say i will say about it. first of all, i would have given anything when i was growing up to be able to earn english and

another language at the same time. arizona and much of the southwest is missing a precious opportunity. instead of being the object of satire all over the country now because of prohibition on ethnic studies, we could be a model for the nation, you could be the one stated america that actually comes close to switzerland in developing a entire population that is fluent in two languages. it is a huge missed opportunity. the other thing is just dropping kids cold into an all english environment and blocking out for hours every day to segregate them, into this in my mind, the most destructive way to introduce them into the english language and anglo-american culture, the mainstream culture.

not only because of the language prohibition, but also because the point david just made that it comes along with a cultural prohibition. that is the part that troubles me the most. trying to lock out the tremendous cultural heritage of latino poetry and literature. i just cannot believe it when i saw isabella monday was prohibited here, i just cannot believe that, not just, some of the other just great latino authors, the irony is that all of the authors are read in the top white suburban schools in the united states because the parents there want their kids to learn early on the world they really live in.

so they will be able to navigate this inter- global market that it is today. so for the wealthy kids, yes let them have all of the treasures and for the poor kids, narrow it down to the smallest possible parameters. i will just add one other point to this, it is this, it's not just banning cultul richness, treasure, there are also banning books that have anything to do with critical thinking, that is the worst to me. there is suppression of the independent voices of young people so they can think for themselves, crushing their morale, they will never be full-scale citizens if they do not learn critical thinking

because that is the way you grow up to be an active citizen in a democratic nation, that is the way you grow up to see through the false promises of politicians, dumbo politicians who just rant and rave, otherwise you could be seduced by demagogues, that is the whole point. so it hasn't just been latino cultural treasures but lots of books that have to do with thinking hard about the country we live in. i notice, you know know how i notice? because they been to my book. two. i swear it has been read by about 2 million white high school kids in america.

they are signing and all of the wealthy high schools and ap classes, although so kids will know how privileged they are. millions of americans and adults have read it and it has not brought down the republic yet, the english language i might say is still doing very nicely in america, despite the fact that many cities do encourage latino literature, shakespeare is still selling pretty well. was he afraid of? what are they afraid of? okay do you have a comment on this. >> first of all for mentioning spanish i think that is the underlying assumption here because i'm latino and we still have such challenges and the issue is pressing. as jonathan brought together both the conversation about structured english immersion and the

studies and it really make sense to bring those two together because language and culture are intertwined. this segregation and i mean that word for all of its connotations, the segregation of english language learners away from other kids have everything to do with much more than just learning to speak english. this is about cultural exclusion. i want to point to want strange but perhaps optimistic historical example to conclude, when i started the research on the history bilingual education in california in the southwest, i operated from the assumption that spanish bilingual education this is like one of those lefty, progressive issues that goes along with other kinds of progressive education issues, as it is today, what i discovered in california with that in the late 50s and early 19 sixties, republicans even conservative republicans were actually onboard with wanting to implement spanish language by cultural and cultural education

in schools. ronald reagan got into trouble in california because he wanted to get rid of the english only statutes early on. a guy name max was a buddies with barry goldwater and he was the state superintendent of california education in the 1960s became a glenn back media figure. he ran from republican center for california. in 1964 he is running these big conferences, the education of the mexican-americans, he is sending adversaries to meet with the mexico. and he said every anglo student has as much responsibility to learn spanish as a latino kid has to earn english. that a conservative republican would not have said that in the mid-19 60s and now we are so far from that, in some ways i

like to think that it is a possibility for thinking that things do not have to be the way they are, we do not have to be rooted in these ideological poles where the presidential candidate announcement that an entire cultural link with the group's criminal and racist and should not be predictable. we should push back on that and i think the schools are good place to start. >> [applause]. okay you have given us a lot to listen. you we have two microphones to take questions. let us know know your name. we have 15 minutes left we will start the site. >> hi, my name is leah. i went to public school and i was in the gifted and talented education for most of my education, i'm in the honors college here at u of a, i was wondering how you feel about

gate because i don't think i got into the gate program because i'm gifted, i think i got in because i had parents who read to me when i was little and they have a college education. i think a lot of it is based off of the privilege that we have. i benefited a lot from that, so i don't know how you feel about that. >> first of all i'm sure you are very gifted to don't sell yourself short. you are realizing some of the structural issues that contribute to the place of privilege that you are able to tame. i think the issue for me is not so much getting rid of programs on accelerated tracks or enrichment opportunities, but not closing the door especially so early for so many children to be blocked out of them. that is really the problem. of course we should have more enrichment and gifted and

talented programs but we should not make it so hard to get him best on a test you take when you are for that means essentially nothing and is dictated largely by your parent's ability to sign you up for it or have read you when you were little. >> or send you to an expensive preschool. >> i agree with you completely on that. the only thing i would add is this, if we are to have gifted and talented programs that have got to be much broader, in a way i wish we could have the gifted and i wish every classroom was the gifted and talented classroom. all i would say to any of you who do believe in inclusiveness and think it's a good value in america, look at a school that appears to be racially mixed and integrated school, there are some in america and then look at the gifted and talented. you will will not find too many latino, african-american kids there, it is always heavily white, same with ap courses in the high school.

in those schools that look racially mixed on paper, the naacp calls this in school segregation. it is really embarrassing. i know lots lots of white kids who get into those classes i will tell me honestly, they said i i felt embarrassed. i wondered where all the black kids were. so if we are going to have that type of program i say don't do it by purely test scores, don't start testing for admissions to those programs anytime early in their school career, and also don't test them at all until you provide all low income children with the same terrific, marvelous pre-k that rich kids are getting otherwise it is worthless. >> thank you, appreciate the question.

>> i think we recognize that our public schools have big problems, the question for me would be what steps should we be taking to integrate our schools, make cheating a respective, at active profession and i think in me the most important thing, how do we also reduce class size? >> i would just are by saying i think money is one possible solution. [laughter] [applause]. i say this because i have wealthy friends in new york, some of them still like me. they invite me to dinner parties , they're always nervous because they are afraid i might ruin the party but i'm usually polite. exhibit for desserts. at some point they will ask me what is happening to those kids in the south bronx? i will say 30 in a class, day

four and a class kids who really need help most, i walked into a high school in los angeles, 40 kids in 11 grade history class. more kids than there were chairs in the room. i tell that to my friends and these are people whose kids go to either they go to the top suburban school like manhattan outside a new york work class-size is probably 18, or if the kids are old enough and they send them off to new england prep schools like andover, which is $60000 per year, average class size of andover and they will look at me at the dinner party and say jonathan, can you you really buy your way to better education? and i say can you really solve

the achievement problem for those children by throwing money at it? i always say yes, that is the best way, throw it. drop it from a helicopter, give it to me i will bring it myself. i do not know better way to do not know better way to take a class of 34 children and put it into a class of 17. they will say well a great teacher ought to be able to, a good teacher to be able to handle any size class. i will say there are a few geniuses who could probably pull it off. teacher who is pretty good with 34 is going to be spectacular with 17. >> i also want to add to that. i come from higher education i think there's there's something to be said for teacher education and for the history and future of the schools, it is no secret that all of these statistics that lower qualified students go into education professions, i

think that has to do with the money problem, they are not in ties to buy big salaries but it also has to do with the structure of higher education. schools of education have moved farther away from the more prestigious disciplines in the last decade. so what does that mean, if you're you're serious about history you go and think about you don't go to be a history teacher, we need both of those things, we do not need both of the division and a real looking down the nose from the disciplines. i've seen it from both sides for people who study education. i think that attributes a lot as well. >> thank you. great question. [applause]. >> speaking of throwing money at problems, i am from washington state and the gates family has a huge influence in terms of human money and expecting certain results. do you have any comments about

things, particularly about the gates foundation and its impact on education not only in my statement across the country? >> i will make a very brief statement about it, will probably never get a great from the gates foundation because i oppose almost everything they have been doing for the past ten years. first of all, the idea that private money can solve the problem is very dangerous to begin with. ultimately that is charity. charity is a lovely thing, i never turn it down, but charity is not a substitute for systematic justice and equality. [applause]. it is unreliable, charity is inherently promiscuous, this decade might be low-income children in predominantly black latino school the next decade it

could be turtles on an island of latin america. that is one problem. the second thing is, gates has been one of the primary forces in advancing the entire test and accountability agenda. it has place much much emphasis on that instead of placing its emphasis. see what they doing their shifting, not just gates but the whole neo-, liberal conservative, liberal conservative group that has brought us where we are today instead of talking about the quality and input into our schools, that is to say enough teachers with small classes, well-paid teachers so we are getting the top caliber college graduates. beautiful infrastructure and terrific pre-k.

instead of creating equality and put their turning their back on that and just saying, we demand equality of outputs. anybody in the manufacturing industry knows that is impossible. it's amazing. so gates does not put a huge amount of emphasis on output and very little on input. i've never heard them speaking i've never heard bill and melissa gates in public saying it is a crime that after all of these years we still have an education funding system in america that guarantees that will never have an honest a meritocracy. there will always be hereditary a meritocracy because we still have these savage unequal schools. >> with that, we have to close. thank you very much [applause]. thank you.

>> a couple of things. natalia will be here please sticker round to get a copy of her book and get it signed. if you enjoyed the session if you'd like to invite great authors back, become a friend of the book festival, thank you very much. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] [inaudible] >> we are in the gallagher theatre at the campus of the university of arizona, this is where the book festival is held, about 100,000 people are expected over today and tomorrow to be here on the campus, about 200 authors are brought into the tucson area to talk about the festival, we will be live all weekend, today and tomorrow, you

will have a chance to talk with a lot of authors, we have already talked with brinkley and a just a moment jonathan coastal who you heard will be joining us here on are set at the gallagher theater to talk with us. we'll also be talking about the supreme court at guantánamo bay, sports and money. lots going on, you can go to book tv.org if book to be.org if you'd like to get a full schedule of events. you can also follow us on twitter, at book tv is our twitter handle, now in just a minute we'll put the phone numbers up so you can talk with jonathan koza let's well, 202(202)748-8200. live coverage of the tucson festival of books. on the campus of the university of arizona jonathan coastal we have been listening to you talk here on this panel, here at the gallagher theater, george w. bush used to say and talk about

the low expectations as a form of soft bigotry when it came to education. was that a statement in your view? >> no. to me it was a force for him to make that kind of statements in the space of the high bigotry which perpetuates wildly on equal funding for our government and which also perpetuates and intensifies racial isolation, in other words, here we have a system that more segregated than any time in 68 and wildly on equal finances, that is hard bigotry in my opinion, and instead he is a turning the entire plainfield on allegedly

low expectations, i must know thousands of american teachers right now have the highest expectations for low-income children and that is why they will stay up all weekend, certainly all sunday night writing lesson plans to try in any way they can to motivate the poor children. >> let's take an example that has been in the news recently and that is the detroit public schools, if you were to go in tomorrow to the superintendent with detroit, what are two things that you would do immediately? >> the first thing i would do would be to create a metropolitan school district so that instead of having almost all of the black children in

detroit go to virtually total apartheid schools, we would create an integrated school system within a very short drive of central city of detroit. now now there are people i know watching who will say, oh, jonathan you arse duck in the age and still talking about fussing. well, i do not care whether he uses buses or beautiful limousines, or helicopters who integrate our public schools, i am very proud in the age of martin luther king, i still believe that a segregated education is a guarantee that we'll never have an equal school. the first thing i would would do then is to do anything in my power to create a

metropolitan school system as opposed to simply a city of detroit school system. the second thing i would do would be to get rid of two thirds of the testing agenda, as a miserable and drilling kids and terrified school principals to the point where they are afraid to let their teachers do anything, apart from pumping the test scores which has turned elementary education into a dreary, anxiety filled experience for children, i would get rid of nine tenths of those test and i would take all of the money that we are pouring now into the testing industry which is a multibillion dollar industry, i would take all of that money and instead i would poured into giving every child

in detroit three full years of the kind of marvelous, rich developmental preschool education that my harvard class makes. >> jonathan did you go to public schools growing up? >> yes i did, i started in a marvelous school system, suburb of boston. it is a very progressive school system, my fifth-grade, my fifth grade teacher had actually studied with john dewey, i love the education i received, they did not horrify us with test, we must've had some tests but it was mostly learning and teaching instead of testing. when i was older my father sent me to a new england prep school where i did learn one thing at that prep school, i learned what it is like to have a very small

number of students in my class. i have never had more than 15 or maybe 18 students in my class, boy with teachers i know in inner-city schools, what they would be able to do a a terrific job instead of having 30 or 40 kids in a high school class they could teach 15 or 16, maybe 20, that would be a blessing and financially that is what we should be doing if we want to close the achievement gap. >> will be talking about public education with activists jonathan coastal, he is the author of several books on education, his most recent is fire in the ashes. twenty-five years among the in america. in 2005 he thousand five he wrote the shame of the nations, and savage inequality, children and america's schools

came out in 1991. first call for jonathan from arizona, please go ahead with your question. >> caller: okay we are about 50 miles from tucson arizona. my children were educated in tucson. two are now now teachers. my son teaches children i link will children but he cannot -- they do not understand what he says in english he he cannot translated to spanish according to the school district. can he hear me? i don't think so. >> host: you're talking about bilingual education. are you in favor of it or not in favor of it. >> caller: what i'm saying is that in arizona schools i have a son that teachers teaches. arizona schools do not let him

teach the by lingual students if they do not understand what they say in english they will not allow him to translated in spanish. i asked him why and he said it's just part of the arizona come this is public school not private school, okay, we got the point thank you. >> i really identify with your son, i think it is sort of a try into xena phobia, of almost inexplicable tear of foreign language that in this state and much of the country we are compelling latino children to listen to what we are saying in english even at a moment in their lives when they do not understand a word that we are speaking.

it is a brutal and punitive thing to do. i have been following this severe right wing agenda for a long time now. all i will say is in my experience of bilingual experience is always the best way to introduce latino children , as well as many of the other foreign language speaking kids who are coming into our eastern cities, it is the best way to introduce them to the english language without crushing their sense of cultural pride in who they are. i would just add to that in states like arizona and california, we are actually missing a terrific opportunity because if we were really wise we would look at these and say wow, here is an

opportunity, where all the children in the state can grow up affluent into languages, business leaders have been telling us for years it is important. united states is one of the few nations in which our students row up with almost no fluency in any other language, it is a precious opportunity to do what they have done in switzerland for centuries. instead, they're missing that opportunity in order to defend some kind of pride in the anglo-saxon tradition. i do not know what it is. all i will say is the scientist, because of the spanish language in the state they are suppressing any hint of latino culture. i think that is a disaster. look, all over the country we have kids who in the affluent

suburban schools they learn foreign languages, a lot of those white kids are growing up with intense instructions in spanish. they are are also immersed in great spanish literature. it has not destroyed the english language, the english language books are still doing very well in the bookstores, the public has not -- i do not know what they are afraid of. it is some kind of xena phobia, i wish we could rise above it. >> host: the next call is elizabeth in burlington vermont. please go ahead. >> hi, thank you for the body of your work, first of all. i would like to ask you to expand on the inequality of

input that you mentioned any quality of inputs leading to inequality of outputs. i personally believe that school accountability is a misnomer that society is failing the families and asking schools to do what actually takes place elsewhere. i would like your views on that, thank you. >> guest: i would just say that before we hold people accountable and elementary grades and the teachers also holding them accountable for test scores, i think we ought to hold our politicians accountable for cheating those children of an equal education in the first place. it makes no sense to test children in those early grades unless we are enabling them to compete on the leveling playing

field. there is no level playing field number one those children have virtually no preschool education at the most may be one year, while other kids have some kind of early learning situation, the second thing is that the testing agenda has given out almost all what i would call cultural from the education of low-income children, and by that i mean all of the subjects that are not reducible statistically to numbers on a standardized. it is only a very narrow slice that can be reduced to metrics. you cannot measure the ability of children to write creatively

instead of placebos. you cannot attach a number two thinking you cannot attach a number two artistic sensibilities. so what is happening is we are reducing education to a tiny region of learning, a narrow slice of learning and within that look narrow slice of learning we are trying business methods, the same methods business people would use, punishment and a sense to boost the sales record and auto dealerships, something like that and saying children are not automobiles or products, although i must say these it business leaders who have influence over schools who speak

of the children now as products, i actually heard that word they will say the purpose of education is to drain these children to increase our productivity when they are grown-ups i don't think that fair. i don't think the purpose of education should be to stop corporations, -- i think certain education should be to and out every child with a love of learning, lifetime learning and empower every child to enjoy all of the treasures, all of these cultural treasures, the

classics, to revel in all of those treasures, to love to learn, not to learn how to fear that they will get a low number on their four head. so learned because it is a way of enriching your soul. we also asked about the role of the family when it comes to education and perhaps i will take her question a little further and say, and make perhaps the role of the family as less than too much as opposed to the school system. >> guest: here is my response to that. that may be true in general and so i regretted. but that argument is real usually raise not an away they

raised it it's usually raised in regards to the parents, typically of saying what is the matter with those parents, i read to my children by the time they were one years old, six months, and it doesn't matter that the person speaking may go on to wesley college or the university of michigan, it sorta of forgets that, what is the matter of schoolchildren, what's the matter with a poor parents, that's a brutal. typically the mother of low-income black or latino child went to the same type of schools their children are going to. instead of beating up on the mother, why not to the sensible thing, you cannot turn back the

clock but you can come up with a big chunk of money, national wealth, real wealth of america and give that kid a spectacular early childhood education starting not just when they are two and a half or ideally when the child starts at birth and inception. that is when a good democracy. >> host: you might want to hear your ear piece in so we can hear the next caller. >> caller: well good morning sir. i am so honored to be able to talk with you again. i have visited you and your home, i am from a town a town very close to where you live.

it was years ago, we also have a mutual friend, so low, wonderful teacher and principal. first, do you believe that the teachers of america are being taught well enough and the attrition rate of new teachers i believe is atrocious when they get into school and start their years teaching, i think it is very high for the first three years and merrimack college in our area is addressing that with a new program that really should be done i believe nationwide to help the attrition rate drop. my son was just awarded an outstanding teacher award in the pioneer valley of massachusetts in his first year teaching. it was a wonderful surprise.

>> host: karen we are going to have to leave it there. we have a lot of collars on the line. teaching teachers in the attrition rate. >> guest: in my belief the many reasons the high attrition rate which is much higher in intercity schools that is of the suburbs, i think the average is three years or less, i i think the main reasons, the obvious reasons to me are enormous class-size, awful teacher conditions, decrepit infrastructure, all the problems that come with insufficient funding and also the fact that in the schools they are see children who had no preschool education i would ask one new reason, the number number one reason i hear nowadays from very good teachers who are quitting after a few years is that they say i cannot stand the testing,

i cannot stand being told that i have to drill my students and methods similar to those of skynyrd, either fear, punishment or reward, a strict message and i cannot bear to do this anymore. i'm going to quit, suburban school where we are not allowed to do that, the other point is the way we educate teachers, i would love to see her schools of education incorporate a much more liberal arts into their preparation, unfortunately they are going the other way now because of the testing pressures.

a lot of schools of education are being told that they will lose their unless they adjust their teacher preparation to these high-stakes that's the wrong way to go in my belief. >> the next call is ronnie in houston texas, thanks so much for taking my call, i am here here in the state of texas, the birthplace of choice. i have felt that was an enticement to the breakup district funding and pull parents into the latter resistance. now that i have children of my own age five and six, the idea of district school versus charter school is real. do you suggest we explore these charter school options as they are our exported exploring where should we fight to keep the

dollars in the district? >> host: are you considering sending your kids to a charter school? presently they are and the charter school based on the high-stakes testing. my district school received very low scores. so we did choose the charter school which received high scores in the area. so should i support my local schools or continue with the charter? >> to be realistic, if you are in a school district that is having a lot of problems and you are one of the lucky parents, savvy parents who can get your child into one of the relatively few charter schools that is relatively good i don't have it in my heart to continue. that's just apparent doing what comes naturally. but it is a

matter matter of public policy i think it is very dangerous. here is my reason, the charter schools have been introduced to the nation as a softer, sweeter version of the right wing voucher plan that was advocated years ago by mostly naches conservatives but the far right wing of the united states. by groups who want to dismantle the public education sector, and that respect i think that is very dangerous. the second point i would make is this, charter schools make up here and claim to be admitting children of all levels, but that is almost never true. here is why, the parents we hear about the charter school first,

the parent parent who is well connected, who is savvy enough to hear which charter school is a scam in which appears to be pretty good, that is self-selected to begin with. we're talking about parents who even in poor communities have more social to them than their neighbors. it's like elbow pushing skills. the same mother who may be gets her job into a scarce shot was not around for anybody else and you know those are parents and a mother who can do that may well be the one who gets their child's name at the top of the lottery for the charter school. what happens? first of all that means enrollment in the charter school is a group of children easier to teach because they are the ones

with parents who advocate best for them. not the homeless mothers, not the mother who is phone keeps getting caught off, not the family where there is hunger in the home, where there is simply not enough food or nutrition for young children, they are getting a self-selected then if the child, despite all that still proves to be a problem, is hyperactive or whatever label they want to give the child, they are very good at counseling the parents, this probably is not the best place for the child and after your sending their child back so comparing test scores to the right school and what the regular public schools and finally, one of of the worst things that happened once we

like that charter system is that the parent gets her his child into the charter school, no longer advocates for all of the children in the district because now she's fighting for that school and maybe the 120's kids to go to that school with their own child, it's natural but regrettable because now there are parents who have who ought to be the greatest assets are narrowing their agenda. what it amounts amounts to is a narrowing of civic virtue. i don't think that's a good thing. >> host: diane in san diego, please go ahead. >> caller: my question is this.

i am a latino myself. i was raised in new york, i know three languages, three languages, i taught in chinese schools in cantonese. i also taught in san diego and southeast san diego where there is mostly latina and bilingual school. i have a great issue issue with by the good schools because what happens is a cultural ghetto is created and these children are not prepared to go into a multicultural world. number two, when i would would go into the classrooms for my students i see the teacher sitting at a computer, and then when i was in class i would find that you had to be creative, and spelling of the worst students became 100% in spelling, you had to be creative and writing and parents were proud to get a response. i found that the creative and

lack of professionalism among teachers especially in these types of schools, that's it. a right diane, will have to leave it there, the cultural ghetto because of bilingual education,. >> guest: i disagree. what are callers describing is that school whose teacher is unlike most of the teachers is not standing up there walking around as a teacher should, i'm in talking to the children, she said she found the teachers sitting at a computer. she is describing bad teaching, i don't see it as criticism of bilingual education. i have seen marvelous bilingual all over the united states, and this lady comes from new york, i have seen wonderful, i was bent

some years sitting in on a bilingual kindergarten and first grade, i thought it was terrific. the kids learn learn quickly. they were not all isolated, it was not the ghetto population. it was anglo kids, black kids, and latino kids learning both languages together. i thought that was a wonderful model of what america could be in the future. >> host: jonathan, thank you for taking calls for audience, we, we appreciate your time. but tvs live coverage continues now. up next is a panel entitled women in washington. you you will hear from two authors, one written about ruth bader ginsburg and one who wrote about michelle obama. that is is what is coming up next. >> ..

we will handle the book signing in a different wave than we are used to. peter slevin will go to the bookstore kent in the mall for sales and signing following his presentation. linda hirshman will be taking calls and doing an interview on c-span so she will be in the same tent but half an hour after

the presentation is over following that appearance. it is our pleasure to welcome you she year and we want to thank c-span and cox communications for sponsoring this venue and we thank the national institute for civil discourse for sponsoring this session and i hope we will have a lively discourse about these wonderful subjects. make sure that if you are enjoying the festival and not already at friend of the festival, check out our area, up to become one and there are special benefits including earlier access to tickets for presentations like this so i encourage you to do that. it is my pleasure to introduce to you our analysts today, linda hirshman has broad historical perspective and deep analysis of controversial headlines and social movements to readers of her books and columns in the new york times, washington post,

newsweek, the daily beast, politico, glamour and sell lawn. her most recent book, "sisters in law," sandra day o'connor and ruth bader ginsburg went to the supreme court and changed the world. was published in september of 2015 by harper collins, she received a ph.d. in philosophy from the university of illinois in chicago, a doctorate from chicago law school and bachelor of arts from cornell. linda predicted the supreme court ruling of gays and lesbians, constitutional right to mary three is in advance of the widely acclaimed victory of the triumphant gay revolution, her earlier books, the manifesto for women in the world, hard bargains, politics of sex and a great guest on 60 minutes, good morning america, cnn, nbc, npr and the colbert report.

before becoming a writer, at brandeis professor of law, chicago college of law and visiting professor and north western, focusing on labor law, in garcia versus costanza switch to find the line between the federal government and the state. peter slevin is a professor of the motel school of journalism, a veteran national and international correspondent who spent a dozen years at the washington post before coming to northwestern. he teaches politics and the media, the u.s. role in world affairs and interviewing techniques and oral history to create a count which he will be discussing today. peter slevin takes an approach to storytelling that the best journalism flows from the research before the first question was asked. her career as a reporter was

taken around the country in the globe and allow him to tell stories with the voices of the people involved. he will be discussing his most recent project, "michelle obama" a life for which you receive the pan award nomination. his career included small afton newspaper in hollywood, florida and the miami herald where he served seven years as european bureau chief, in central europe and the soviet union, in cuba, haiti and mexico, move to washington as chief diplomatic correspondent, crossing the natural staff on sign for the bush recount and the clinton presidential pardons scandal. at diplomatic correspondent after the 9/11 attacks and wrote about u.s. foreign policy and the iraq war. he wrote extensively about barack obama and michelle obama and covered the 2008 campaign and political jules and policy

debates across the country. he remained a contributor. he had an undergraduate degree from princeton and master's in philosophy in national relations from oxford university. join me in welcoming linda hirshman and peter slevin. [applause] >> we are here to discuss powerful women of washington, we will start remarks with a comment on that. discuss the source of your subject's power and how they employed it to the best advantage. >> i think my subject, sandra day o'connor, born in 1930, ginsburg in 1932. derived power from a combination of social change that happened a round them, reach their maturity

and good fortune and what was of most interest to me, their character. hundreds of thousands of women went to college in the 1950s and hundreds if not thousands of women went to law school in those years but only they made it to the supreme court and changed the world and attributed that distinction to their traits of character which enable them in a hostile the environment and friendly environment. >> such a strange job being first lady. you arrive in washington, you are not the one summoned to washington laura bush and others, if you become first lady on the vote of one man one vote, michelle, you arrive you have no armies to command, no salary and people willing to her 0 from absolutely all directions, michelle obama was no exception.

she had to reinvent herself, gave up her 20 year career, gave up the power if you want to use the word she had come in chicago, to recreate it in a way that was meaningful to her and it wasn't easy, under those circumstances. what she figured out was one of her forms of power was her voice. she delivered messages and needed to figure out what would those messages be, what was it that would matter? what would move the needle was the phrase used, she turned to themes that animated her ever since she was young, theme is of inequality, seems connected to young people and mentoring and she found that voice and i do argue in the book, she found it at the school in north london where she recognized that the

power of her own trajectory was one of the strongest cards she had to play. >> we have a serious contender for the most honorable position in washington, that of president of the united states. yet there seems to be a problem with her connecting with female voters. she may break the glass ceiling but is struggling in that one demographic. what experience or advice from your subjects might be instructive if hillary were to call them? >> sandra day o'connor was a politician in the arizona state legislature and she ran for and won the seat on the state judiciary before she went to washington. so she is regarded as that natural politician on the supreme court, the most natural

politician on the supreme court, up one of my sources told me after the book was written, so aggravating, that was going to be in the paper. sandra day o'connor had a laser like sensitivity for people's emotional state, it she could read people better than anyone else had ever met. i don't know, if she were asked to tell hillary clinton what to do that she could explain to clinton what it was she could do. it is like magic, it is like magic. there is a reasonable word charisma is related to the concept of magic. if i may take one second i have a wonderful anecdotes about this. john came up to interview with o'connor for the much coveted

position of the supreme court clerk. from the chambers of ruth bader ginsburg, the liberal d.c. circuit judge. with ruth's recommendation. to get into a position, the republican appointee's chambers. they are chattering away like old friends and o'connor said did you like working fur judge ginsburg? it was so wonderful to clerk for a judge where you agree with her. on every single thing she said. she told me she said to herself oh my god. what did i just do? so so comfortable had justice o'connor magically made this

smart, sophisticated rising young legal star and o'connor said to her how would you feel about working for at judge that you don't always agree with? and not being stupid she said that would be fine too. o'connor hired her on the spot which is a beautiful reflection of o'connor. i don't know if you can teach that. it was something she had when she was very young. ginsburg has figured out something hillary could use, how to relate with younger women. they have made her an internet mean, the product of a lesbian

woman. i am not outing her. i asked her before, i quote her in the book who comes from a very great lesbian tradition of using the internet in a powerful a and she couldn't have turned me into someone who would appeal to a bunch of 12-year-olds. there is a reason she succeeded so well with ginsberg and that is ginsberg is the same all the way through. every molecule of ginsberg is consistent with every other molecule of ginsberg. her opinions are coherent, her philosophy is coherent, and so they market her 2 youngsters who value authenticity above most things very readily. i don't know that you could survive in an alleged oral system much less down the road that hillary clinton had to walk

and have the kind of authenticity and coherence ruth bader ginsburg had. having life tenure means never having to say you are sorry. [applause] >> if that word authenticity is so central, if hillary clinton were to call michele obama and michele obama were to say what she thinks works for her, she would say no who you are, be that person, be that person very consistently, be authentic, be mindful to politics and michelle obama had to move that lesson. be mindful of your audience, be mindful of what is possible, ultimately stick with it and don't be cowed. there was a moment not quite too years ago when my angelo died,

michelle went to winston-salem, n.c. and spoke at her memorial service. michele recalled in her remarks moments when she said she felt very lonely in ivy league classrooms and lonely on the campaign trail where she said my very womanhood was challenged, where people doubted so much about her. you remember how people said she wasn't patriotic and wasn't an american and she said in those moments she thought of my angelo and the phenomenal woman and how much that meant to her and she said at the time the things that made my angelo so meaningful was she was comfortable in her own skin. that is a piece of advice michele would say has worked particularly well for her and she would pass along and indeed does to audiences all over the country. >> we are in the middle of a crisis having to do with the

supreme court right now. what could your subjects add to the equation if they were going to wait in on it or give any advice? >> what is intriguing about the way michele obama looked at the supreme court and the way barack obama looked at the supreme court they have great deal in common. this notion of bringing to the courts real-life experience, remembered the conversation in 2009 when sonia sotomayor was chosen and barack obama talked about empathy which he talked about on the campaign trail, he would use the example of ledbetter and lee ledbetter worked in alabama, found out surreptitiously when someone passed her a note that she was making less than men for the same job, she sued and five justices on the supreme court said you waited too long. that was a travesty as far as barack obama was concerned.

in working on a book about michelle obama i spend a good deal of time at harvard law school where she spent three years in the mid 80s talking with her professors and it was very clear she was not the sort of legal scholar who cared how many angels would sit on the head of a pin. as a mentors told me she cared about outcomes, cared about results, asked what the law would mean in day-to-day life, something barack obama talks about. david wilkins, one of her mentors and a law professor at the university at harvard said in fact she wanted to know what would be fair and just and what would matter to actual people. i fear that we hear that, what barack obama says about what he is looking for. >> sandra day o'connor who is now retired has been asked and

has answered that she thought that the senate should participate in the nomination of the replacement judge, she disagreed with the party that got her. i think that reflects her reverence for the court as an institution. she was so wonderful colleague. when i interviewed justice stevens, justice stevens sat on the supreme court of the united states almost throughout the tenure, there before o'connor came and left five or six years ago and sat through most of ginsberg's tenure. i was trying very hard because i am a journalist and a human being, to get into it say something bad about sandra day o'connor with whom he disagreed

politically on very serious matters like the death penalty. he really disagreed with her. i thought i am going to get him to say something nasty about her and i am going to have if you pardon the question a scoop. but he wouldn't. he is an old friend of mine. he leans forward and said she never cause us any trouble at all. what was so wonderful about that moment is you knew the men on the supreme court were waiting for trouble when a woman came. she surprised them because she never cause us any trouble at all, and without causing trouble she actually made a lot of social change. it is a wonderful combination. it is sort of mysterious how she did it. she would cast the decisive vote, reserved the right to

abortion with her vote in 1992 but they never went after her the way they went after justice flatman. she was good at getting things done without causing any trouble at all. ruth bader ginsburg is different from the obamas. she is a true liberal. she was taught by robert pushman, a liberal from cornell in the 1950s and she has a well worked out liberal jurisprudence philosophy which is america is the story of increasing inclusiveness. it started with a bunch of rich old white men, some of them slave owners in the 18th-century. and the great story of america to ginsburg is the story of how that experimenter widened and widened to let in white men who didn't own property to let in black men, to that in women, to

the equal protection clause she was the author of that movement. and to at middays and lesbians to full citizenship just recently. and so she it would be as she said, you could not now appoint a justice to the supreme court like me. she is a clear, coherent jurisprudential liberal end if i could have one wish it would be the someone could appoint a justice like her. to the supreme court. >> shifting gears to talk about the research project for research process for your book. you were not allowed direct access to your subjects for interviews for purposes of these books. how do you approach your research and handling of that situation and how do you make the work authentic and respond

to critics who might raise that point? >> i covered the obamas for the washington post in 2007 and it was during the campaign i was based in chicago, ice started to dig deeper into the my barack obama had led, the work he had done in chicago and started following michelle obama around the country, here was a person who deserved to be at the center of her own narrative, not just wife of the more famous barack. i was looking forward to the chance to write about her story and her remarkable trajectory and the history in which she lived. in starting the book, i started the way one might start any biography which is always start with questions, not answers. not to assume i knew very much and to ask what are the influences on her life? i worked through her life story,

often from her own words because i didn't want my voice to be dominant in the book, the voice of people who knew her along the way. and the thing that was so rewarding in many ways is there were dozens of people who knew her at different points in her life who were able to reflect on her, to tell a story, to help me paint a picture that in some ways was a painting where there are many data points and voices-add up to this one thing. it would have been great to talk with mrs. obama for the book at a certain point she and the president said we are not helping authors with books. is not personal. we will do our own books, thank you very much. in many ways my was also very fortunate because not only had i done interviews before i started working on the books, i was able to draw on interviews my

colleagues and friends had done that had never been published and due to the wonders of the public presidency and public white house essentially every word mrs. obama has spoken in public is transcribed. i read the hundreds of thousands of her own words that i assure you most people did not wade through and found great anecdotes and worked hard to have her voice be in there. even though it was not her voice that directly spoke to me. >> i learned a lot about michele obama from reading your book and it made me a better social commentator and i want to thank you for doing that. justice o'connor and justice ginsburg have a narrative that they have been expressing in essentially the same words for decades. i know from having interviewed other powerful and famous

people, when people get to western level, they get a pattern and is almost impossible to break through that narrative line. i don't think -- i have read the writings of people with access to o'connor and ginsburg and they didn't get any material that was different from the conventional narrative. i actually don't feel bad that i didn't get to interview them because i don't think -- i don't pride myself that i would have been able to break through that and being liberated from it, enables me to ask myself what i think about them, and if you read the book you will see that i have are a voice in it and i also got to ask the people who live with them from the time they were really young, because people live a long time now.

i got to interview the man who hired ruth bader ginsburg for the aclu in 1970. i got to find out from him, that 40-year-old, 38-year-old woman look like to him in 1970 before she was anything? it was a brilliant interview. so i feel fine about it. it is also exactly as you just said that their words are public. thanks to the miracle of the internet there are 1,000 million billion hours of youtube videoss of them speaking. being justices they do their most important work in the form of their written opinions. all of that was available to me as well as the briefs ruth wrote with the course when she was a

lawyer. there was a tremendous amount of archival material. i just read as i had heard that ginsberg is going to write the foreword for a collection of her speeches and letters which is gathered together by her authorized biographer, sunday future biography, wendy williams. i said to myself i am going to make a bet with myself. when it comes out i am going to put it down next to the mountain of material in my home office and i promise you i will have had pretty much every single thing that is gathered in that book because it has been so widely covered for a writer. >> there's a certain amount of rigor and forced when you don't have full access. you have to work that much harder to figure out what has

happened at a particular moment or what a particular thought might be whereas you might have the illusion in doing an interview that you know all the answers because that is what the person told you. david maraniss is a former colleague of mine at the washington post, and bumped into him in chicago in 2012, at barack obama's victory celebration. he had been a wonderful pulitzer when he was writing a biography of bill clinton and barack obama that he and i will be talking about here tomorrow and he said if you get an interview with michelle obama it will be the least important interview that you do. don't count on it being that much because there's a certain degree of comment by road. one thing that made the book possible was if you ask her a question she will give you an answer. often a direct answer but it wasn't the worst thing ever not

to have her. >> need this is a question that answers itself but was there when guest that you wanted and could convince that person to talk to you? >> in my case i would have loved to talk with michele's closest female friends. much like hillary clinton she has an array of intensely loyal, fascinating, accomplished women with whom she spent time to let down her hair, one in particular in miami and washington. if i had my wish list and it couldn't have been her mother, the most interesting person in the book, it would have been one of those friends to hear a the more about how michele made this transition in life from the person who had gone to princeton and harvard and had a successful career to being for better or worse wife of how she navigated. >> that is interesting.

i am afraid god intervened with my most desired subject, i would have liked to have interviewed martin ginsburg. ruth bader ginsburg's husband, and the best husband since the invention of monogamy. >> only if he could have cooked for you during -- >> correct. she was a great cloak. when he died the supreme court, the supreme court published a book called supreme shaft which has his recipes in it. he was a tax lawyer so his recipe for french bread ran dozens of pages. i bought a copy of supreme chef. his recipes r martin ginsburg

telling you how to make the various things as if he is they're talking to you, not only obviously a wonderful cook but a very funny, very smart, very loving man. i would have loved to have heard his version of his wife and how early he recognized how valuable she was. she said he was the only boy she ever dated. was 17 when she let all the other options ago. how much time does the rest of their male population have? the only boy she dated him valued her for her brain. all minority groupswho valued her for her brain. all minority groups value for attention between assimilation and celebration of diversity. comment on this inert personal lives and professional careers. >> my subjects have an

interesting contrast. sandra day o'connor i always believed and said in a speech that i read, that once she got in the door she never had any further problems at all. once she got to the arizona state legislature, nobody ever doubted that she was competent to be at state legislator and she became the majority leader, first female majority legislator. her position was if you will just let me in, i can do any job just like a man could. she always said that of whites female judge and a wise male judge would come to the same conclusion. ruth bader ginsburg always said that she was agnostic on that question. [laughter] >> this is actually answering your question because it is the

historical continuum. in 2009 when sonia sotomayor was nominated for the supreme court, it was quickly reported that she said in a speech that a wise latino woman in a bonus of her experience would come to a better decision than a man who had not had such an experience. wind she said it and when they were pouncing on her for saying it ruth bader ginsburg spoke out from the supreme court and said sotomayor was right. and sotomayor had to eat her words to get on the supreme court of the united states, a complete be defensible behavior. once she got on, having life tenure, remember, means never having to say you are sorry, what was the first thing she did? she wrote her story and she shared the fullness of her experience as a wise latino woman with the rest of us and we have seen her doing it ever

since. of ginsberg's project of america becoming more and more inclusive is beautifully rendered in this evolution of the answer to your question. >> michele obama is walking a fine line, required to walk as fine a line as any black woman has had to walk. she says i am a statistical anomaly. she says i am not supposed to be here. race and racism is at the heart of her existence. she is many other things than a black person and many other things that a black woman. there is an extraordinary focus on that and she is mindful of that experience. it comes from her earliest days, the examples she had in her life, the people she touched and the way she thought about race as she went first to a charter public magnet school, princeton,

harvard, where as you remember from her college thesis she said i felt on campus so many people saw me as a black person first and students second. you have seen in the campaign what she has had to deal with even as she has sought clearly to the a first lady for all americans, not just african-americans, but it has required her to do a very very delicate dance. it is interesting the issue she has chosen, often have to do with any quality, racial inequality and gender inequality. her efforts now on pushing and encouraging, hugging young girls to get to college here and around the country is indicative of that. the talks she gives around the country and the places she gives them shows how much this perception of perceptions about

race and gender and economic inequality, class inequality are central to who she is and her message. >> what do you think was a key, early experiences, what was key about the early experiences each of your subjects have had and how did they influence the development of personal power and power in the office over time? >> sandra day o'connor was raised in a remote ranch in southeast arizona where there was as my mother told me happened to her but i never believed it, no electricity and no running water. she was an only child until her sister was born when justice o'connor was 8. i always think of her as a wild child, growing up in this remote place where everybody has to pull their weight or the whole

thing will crash, very dry and economically very marginal and she didn't have siblings, she was alone with her parents basically and no one ever told her she deserved to be inferior because she was female. by the time she heard it, which of course she heard it no where else when she couldn't get a job, it was too late, she was ruined. because she could not internal ice it, she didn't believe it. she didn't ask it. it made her the perfect first. justice ginsberg was also an only child. her sister died when she was very young. she grew up as an only child. she was -- here is a wonderful jewish immigrant story. her mother went to work when she

was but teenager to put her brother through college. when ruth bader ginsburg died -- when she graduated from high school her mother died the day before ruth bader ginsburg graduated from high school and she found out even in those lean times of the depression her mother had set aside money for her to go to cornell. so i believe, in stirring from those facts, that her mother placed all of her own ambitions as immigrants so often do on her brilliant, beautiful musical child. >> michele obama grew up with electricity and water. chicago had those things. chicago had those things. she grew up in a bungalow and

says all i became happened in the four walls of this house, this apartment above a house that her brother told me if you said it was more than 1100 square feet i would say you were lying. her heroes were people they could touch. they were not astronauts or singers or performers, they were her relatives, people she knew in the neighborhood, in part together people who she heard stories at home, her parents and grandparents came north in the great migration and they found the time in chicago that was not easy for black people. wasn't easy for very many people but in particular her paternal grandfather, frazier robinson jr. to seek his fortune, fortune was pretty hard to find. she once said if my grandfather were born white he would have been a banker. he left the family at one point,

went into the army, he became a postal worker which was a path to the middle class as you know. this father, grandfather with so much to say at out how the deck was stacked said your destiny is not written before you are born. you can make it. she heard this lesson in the world her brother called the sean rowlock of bringing in this neighborhood on the south side because her parents were so close and the family did so many things together. those lessons of the south side are the ones that stayed with her most powerfully and her father got a job in the democratic machine, work shift

work at the city water plant. the father who taught her how to box she has pointed out. she can throw a mean punch. these were the lessons of people surrounding her. i also found any number of relatives who had fought the good fight. a great aunt who sued northwest in university for discrimination in the year 1940s, a great great and who was in trouble to integrating spiegel, the catalog stores and department stores and in the 60s spoke to lyndon johnson's labor department and so on. these word the people populated michelle ng obama's youth and our with her in many ways in what she is doing now. >> if you haven't read the book, one thing i would commend to you is this rich description of the history and life of the south side of chicago which i wasn't as familiar with as i should have been but it is a wonderful aspect of the book and the six

degrees of separation from michelle obama is pretty astounding too especially in terms of civil rights leaders recognize either a connection or are related to her, pretty amazing and thank you for your research on that. those who have questions make your way to the microphone, we will cover two other areas and open up to your questions. i want to start with linda hirshman. why do you think it is that justice ginsberg has been so co-ceo in forming friendships with people who are so ideologically different than she? >> people ask me that a lot. who besides justice scalia do you have in mind? >> justice o'connor. >> let's talk about some more interesting things, her

relationship with justice o'connor. when i started writing the book, it went to lunch together, and went to the store. i wanted a shoe guy at the store near the supreme court. that would have been a scope. endeavour sneaked out to lunch together. i asked every person who believes in their vicinity whether they see jobs together. they would not be -- they had an affectionate alliance. one of the lessons i hope people in general and women in particular take from my book, you can have an affectionate alliance and make more change in either one of you could make a loan. you don't have to be bffs. there was no justice on the

supreme court who mattered more who have a lot of power than justice o'connor because she revered o'connor and for being the successful pioneer she had been an she knew o'connor's life would change when the second woman came. she wanted it to be in a good way. that relationship seems to be subtle and productive and interesting. in the 22 cases involving women's issues they heard when they sat together from 1993-2005, they disagreed on two of them, 1/22 of the number. everyone asks about scalia so that we give you the executive summary. it represents an interesting task in america when people with different political views could still go out to dinner and put it together as they said.

it is interesting because that seems to be an era at that is now gone. the second reason, you know what they say. they shared a common love of the language. they always say they shared a common love of the constitution but the constitution that she loved and reconstitution he loved were only the slightest resemblance to one another. therefore it is a little weird. sort of like marty, he was funny and gregarious and he sort of played that role for the rather inward looking ruth bader ginsburg. i think the better question is about the two women. >> peter slevin, one of the things that struck me this week was michelle obama's gracious comments and condolences of nancy reagan about the effective mentoring she received from mrs. reagan which i suspect of lot of

people don't know about. can you comment on the fraternity of first ladies and how michelle obama has been able to use the benefit of that advice in her service? >> she spoke with every single first lady who was living when she got to the white house in 2009. she was particularly interested in advice on how to raise malia and sasha in the public eye. in 2007 when they started running, sasha was turning five, malia was turning 9. was one of her greatest worries, would she say to barack obama we are going to do this, you can run for the presidency, so she sought advice on that and living in this completely bizarre world, the strangest world's ever. you walk into the white house and you live in the bubbled as it is called lee can be seen

what she said she would most like to do? she wants to drive a car with the windows down. barack obama said he would like to sit alone on a park bench. this is the world's a in had been. each of the first ladies were unanimous in giving her one particular piece of advice, escape to camp david as often as you can. get out into your own world as much as you can. it is intriguing she was mentored and had relationships with these first lady's because mentoring is a central part of who she is. there's always a sense that she too will reach back, give back, be part of that sorry. >> what is your question? >> for linda hirshman and peter slevin. linda hirshman, i stay awake wondering about ruth bader ginsburg's health. how is she?

can peter slevin, michelle obama has stated she would never run for office but do you think there's any hope that she would? >> hoping against hope. barack obama was asked if you woke up after a long sleep and learned michele was running for president what would you think? he would say i would think she had been abducted by aliens. he said there are treating it -- three things in life, death, taxes and michele not running. he has made clear in every way you can imagine that she really doesn't want to do that. can you picture her in a room with mitch mcconnell? intriguing. this is not her world.

>> i have no inside information. when i saw ginsberg four years ago she looked fine. her friend was quoted today as saying she was still doing pushupss. she had gone horseback riding when i was working on my book. i have no reason to believe she is in any imminent danger. win live a long time. i hope that will be true of her as well. >> what is your question? >> requests from linda that she speak to justice o'connor's first job in law after she graduated and what she had to do to get that job. i am sure you know the story. >> justice o'connor was

determined to get a lot job. went gibson law firm said we can give you a job, you can be a legal secretary. she said no thank you. many years later they invited justice o'connor to speak at the 100th anniversary of the founding of their law firm and she went and she reminded them of their first encounter. she later told david letterman it was the most fun speech she had ever given. so she had heard the district attorney in california where they were living while john o'connor finished law school had once hired a women, and asked if she could work for him and had no money to hire her and said she would work for nothing until the guy is next appropriation

and he said he had no room to put her at a desk and she thought his secretary would share her office with the future justice o'connor because they got along so well. the secretary said okay. and so sandra day o'connor went to work for nothing, sharing an office with a secretary so determined was she to earn her living as she expressed it, with the training i had gotten. she always looked out at the world and didn't say i am a woman, why am i going to have trouble? she said i have a law degree i will get a lot job and do whatever was necessary to make it happen. it was one of her great strength. >> i would like to ask the panelists if they have questions for each other. >> from a clean getaway. >> in working on the "michelle

obama" book i got interested in work/life balance, how to decide between professional accomplishment and what is required to do that and living a fulfilling satisfying home life. you remember how many people in certain groups found their teeth grinding when she described herself as obama in chief. i think my most important role on this planet is to raise grounded, happy girls. i believe feminism is about the right to make choices. i am really curious what you found in justice ginsburg and justice o'connor and how they balance those worlds. >> justice ginsburg and justice o'connor are only two years, part with ginsburg the younger. ginsberg spend a little time -- international guard or the army

or something. she graduated from law school in 1959 where o'connor graduated from law school in 1952. that is a big gap. by 1959, the world was starting to change. you had the poets in san francisco, brown vs. board of education in topeka, kansas, came in between o'connor entering the world and ginsberg entering the world and i believe all those varicose in age, their social histories are very different end their attitude towards blow role of marion and raising children and having a fulfilling career are very different. o'connor i think would agree with michelle obama that being a feminist is all about having she leases a doesn't matter what choices you make. ruth bader ginsburg would never

say that wishy thought the choices you make mattered and she thought for a woman to be able to use their capacities in the public world was part of a fulfilling life. so she was very different from o'connor. interesting to hear the o'connor's point of view from the mouth of someone young enough to be her daughter or younger. o'connor married john o'connor who she met in law school and had three children and at one point her nanny quit her job and stay home five years with having justice o'connor as your stay at home mom was probably not the best experience because she had such unbelievable energy and never sleeps. she decided in addition to running the junior league and being co-chair of the republican party organization, that she would cook a different meal every single night. even martin ginsburg didn't do

that. finally, she says in her classic o'connor way to get away from being president of the junior league she went back to work. >> michelle was born in 1964, different generation, 30 years after justice o'connor and she had the choice to stay home when she worked at the university of chicago and said it would drive her crazy and she clearly has worked hard to balance things. she has a drive to make a difference, she has a drive to succeed along the way and it has been intriguing how this played out and also like a reject test how many different groups received her choice is and how many different ways. an example of how the first lady without your power has influence and inevitably forever under the spotlight. >> first ladies are under the spotlight not because of who

remembers, it is the rare first lady who is that were shack test and object of such interest. eleanor roosevelt comes to mind. why is eleanor roosevelt, pardon the expression, hillary rodham clinton and michele obama. the answer, roosevelt and clinton and obama, a part of a social movement so women became important and what they fought and did became important and that put the spotlight on them. i don't ever remember anybody arguing about what is her name? laura bush's decision whether to be the mom in chief because we didn't actually -- when i say we i mean me, don't care about laura bush.

[laughter] >> seems like a nice person and was a librarian which was a great job when she was working but they are for shack tests because they stand for social change and that made it hard for michelle obama. >> that is right because she felt, this would not come as a surprise to any prominent african-american woman either that you are meant to represent, that is one of the great challenges but it is a role that she has thrown herself into and when one thinks about her legacy it will be about her message and what she tried to do in terms of inequality and it will be -- it will be awhile before of first lady feeds kills ships to comedian stressed in drag. i will make a fool of myself to get the message out if that is

what i have to do. i think that she has made extraordinary strides in figuring out this job that when she came in made no sense to anybody. >> i give her enormous credit for doing this unbelievably difficult job, no question she had the finest line to walk that any first lady did. astonishing how hard it was and i give her enormous credit for doing it. i think at the end of the day the question is what is the message you are getting out? she did something like what sandra at did which was by being there and being successful at it, she got a message out that has very little to do with cale in my opinion. but she was the icon as was sandra and it took in her case as it did in sandra's and ruth's

cases an unbelievable amount of self discipline. >> i think that is an interesting place for us to end. we are out of time. thank our authors today. [applause] >> we will be adjourning to the bookstore sales tent and signing area booth number 153. peter slevin will be there shortly and linda hirshman after that. thank you and become a friend. [inaudible conversations] >> booktv live coverage of the tucson festival of books continues. we are cheer on the campus of

the university of arizona, the gallagher theater, the campus is quite large, just a little bit away from downtown tucson, beautiful day out here in tucson, the sun is shining, is in the 70s, the chamber of commerce is very clean, 100,000 people attending this festival in its eighth year and this is a two day festival and booktv is live, we are covering author panels as well as doing call ins in a minute or so, you will be able to talk with linda hirshman who you just heard on the air talking about her book "sisters in law," sandra day o'connor and how sandra day o'connor and ruth bader ginsburg went to the supreme court and change the world. the numbers if you want to talk about the supreme court, with linda hirshman who is an attorney,