>> the book is "presidents of war", 750 pages, a tribute to its own michael beschloss that you'll wish it was longer. thank you very much, michael. >> it's been a pleasure. >> thank you. [applaus [applause]. [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. we're going to begin. i am professor of cultural education university of texas at austin and i'm excited to be with you today and to have the opportunity to moderate what i know will be an exciting and provocative panel. i'm thrilled and honored to

talk with lenore chu and justin driver about their books. their work presents two compelling portraits of schooling. one from the context of the everyday nature, and challenges of the chinese education system, and one from the important role played by the supreme court in the u.s. school, in u.s. schooling around students' rights. both of these treatments highlight the power of schooling and the value that people believe had it to define life chances and opportunities to have a flourishing lives and depicts another side of schooling, the barriers, practices and conditions that sometimes fail to respect and value students in humanizing ways. to give you a context how the session will operate. we'll begin with a discussion of both books and afterwards open the floor for questions from the audience. i need to remind you, if you have a question you'll need to go to the mic to ask the question since we have life

streaming, and also, the authors will have-- will be signing books at the adult signing tent on congress avenue immediately following this session. so, i'll begin with their bios. lenore xhu is-- lenore chew, her book "little soldier" about china's education system won a 2017 nautilus award and the top 18 nonfiction prize and short-listed for stanford university's international prize. internationally recognized expert on chinese education, lenore has appeared on npr, cbs cbc and her articles in op-ed have been published in the wall street journal, the cut, business insiders among others.

and a native of houston, texas, which we share that honor and distinction, lenore holds degrees in engineering and journalism from stanford and columbia. >> justin driver a professor of law at university of chicago. previously he was at university of texas at austin school of law. he's a graduate of oxford, are he was a marshall scholar and harvard law school where he edited the harvard law reform. he clerked on the supreme court for sandra day o'connor and justin stephen breyer. and the wilson cromwell prize he was a distinguished publication record in the leading law reviews and written extensively for lay audiences including pieces in "the slate", "the washington post," the "the new republic" where he

was a contributing editor. he served on the board for the constitution society, a counter wait to the federalist society. his work has been cited in many popular publications including the new york times, the new york times magazine, usa today, "the washington post," and los angeles times. driver has already received a master's degree in education from duke and this i was most excited about, he has taught civ civics to students. please welcome them. [applause] so will you do share with the audience the core argument you present in your respective pieces. what led you to these projects and why do you think they're important in this con temp ray moment. if your background speaks to how you got to those pieces as well.

please elaborate. >> thank you. so, the core argument of my book is that the supreme court has played in the central role in shaping the nation's public schools and, indeed, that it's difficult, if not impossible, to understand the public school without thinking about the supreme court. you know, my interest in this work goes back a long way. i'd say it either takes me four years to write this book or three decades to write this book, depending how you count. i grew up in washington d.c., southeast d.c. and i started travelling a long way to go to high school, to school starting in the fifth grade. it involved, bus and two different subway lines and a long walk and i started thinking about, why am i doing this long journey in what am i gaining as a result of going to fifth grade in the most privileged segment of

washington d.c. and conversely what are my neighbors losing out as a result of not making that same pilgrimage. and i also learned about brown versus board of education, thinking there were many schools that were all black in washington d.c. some 30 years after brown versus board of education. so it stugd to me at a young age there's often a gap between life on the books and life in the streets. as you suggested i got certifi certified for public school and rendering for teachers what students rights actually are. students have a whole host of constitutional rights that exist in the nation's public schools, including freedom of speech, due process rights. the equal protection clause, you know, religion, thinking about free exercise and the establishment clause ab it's my supposition that many teachers

have some awareness much how the constitutional rights work, but i wanted to explain the orbegins of these cases, the contours of these cases and offer my guidance in how the doctrine should shift going forward. >> i grew up in houston, going to public schools. i was raised by parents who happen to be sitening the front row, but they were chinese immigrants to the u.s. so -- [applaus [applause] >> i was raised with a confluence of chinese parenting values. and could say tiger mothers, but i could say i had two tiger mothers in the house. i was in the american school system. and my husband and i went to shanghai, we're both journalists. it was a monumental time

because of a test, they go to 70 countries and ranks 15-year-olds in math, reading and science and lo and behold shanghai, where we just handed, chinese's trophy city came in number one in the world. and president obama said asia rise is our sputnik moment. and arne duncan said this is a wakeup call for americans, happened to be in shanghai with a kid in public schools. i wanted him to learn mandarin, but it was the circumstances that wanted moo me to pull back the curtain on how much discipline is too much? do we need to memorize the math facts. what are chinese do that americans need to look at because we're worried about our public schools here, it's a globallized marketplace, 3

million children, chinese studying in america. and very few the other way. the chinas are learning about our cultures and systems here the way we are not. i'm concerned about our public school system maybe coming at it from a different way than justi justin is, but i think our goal is the same. >> thank you. so schooling looks vastly different across the two national spaces that your brooks address. how do societal culture shape the unique school you examined? >> how does society shape? teaching is a cultural activity, education is a cultural activity and it struck me, being an american in china, that the chinese very much look at schooling as a way to shape a proper chinese citizen. and it's all really about the collective, what's good for the classroom, what's good for the school, what's good for the country by extension and what we in america do so well is the

value of the individual, individual rights, individual interests and when put that societal value in the classroom, we're so good at here is cultivating the curiosity of students, and electives. thinking about that. this is something that doesn't exist in china. just the idea you can for one period every day select something you're interested in, rock climbing, or debate, or going a little further in math, this is something that the 250 million students in china don't have the opportunity to do and that's something i think we should be thankful for here. >> i'm in complete agreement that the public school is often a reflector of the larger society, that they are contained in and, indeed, many of the sort of cultural clashes that exist in our nation reach their sort of, i don't know, highest temperature point in

the public school. let me give awe example. in the 1960's, in des moines, iowa, there were students who wanted to wear black arm bands in protest of the vietnam war and school officials in des moines get wind of this and they say, oh, no, that's too hot a topic, and there was a graduate of des moines public schools who died over in vietnam and he still has classmates who are here so if you're permitted to wear the black arm bands, there are his friends who are going to take it like you're dishonoring his legacy. and that's a clash. do students have the freedom of speech, do they have free expression is this this is the thing that gives me the title for my book where justice fortis says it be hardly be argued that students rights in

the schoolhouse gates. and argues that it's not a distraction, but instead a vital part of the educational process itself. that was not unanimous. justice black wrote a vehement opinion, students are there to be seen and not heard and teachers command and students obey. and many americans agreed with justice black in the 1960's and would have disagreed with justice fortis's decision, but the decision in tinker had consequences in shaping our nation's public schools. >> if we think of schools as expressing the deepest societal values that we hold about our posterity and who we emergency ourselves becoming in the future, what do your examinations tell about the future shelves, from the

cultural context to examine, what are we preparing to do and become and what are we not? >> let me answer that question by telling a quick story. so my older son was three years old when we enrolled him in a local school system in shanghai. number one in the world system. if you look at the pisa test. the first week of school my son comes home and says my teacher forced me to eat eggs. take me a while to get the story out. she lined up toddlers, three-year-olds and basically spooned eggs in their mouths until they swallowed, they had no choice. my son spit out the first three times which i was quite proud of. the fourth time he swallowed it, this kid hates eggs, i could never get him to eat them. me being who i am, i marched

off and talked to teacher chen, and you forced my son to eat eggs. i'm from america we don't force them to eat eggs. >> who you do you get him to eat eggs? >> we present them option a, and option b. >> she says do it ever work. and she said don't ever question my authority in front of ta child again. and i talked to her as they were coming out of the classroom. and that's the respect for teachers that they have there. if teacher chen was teaching here she probably would be in jail. to me, this opens up an avenue to explore how much respect for

teachers is too much. have teachers lost complete autonomy here in the classroom because in my reporting i started interviewing teachers here in texas, minnesota, boston area, new york, some high performing districts as well as low performing districts and they feel they've completely lost respect and autonomy, especially the teachers teaching 30 years ago and the difference between that and now, not only are the students speaking out against them, but also the parents. and i think that's that's a trend that i find troublesome in american education, while the chinese go overboard, i think that's something we need to look at here. >> yeah, i have grave concerns about the messages that are being communicated to our youth in schools today, and no issue am i more concerned about than corporal punishment in the nation's public schools. the supreme court had an opportunity to rein in this practice in the 1970's out of a case that dealt with really

egregious facts. james ingram was a middle school superintendent in miami, florida, he's on stage with some of his buddies and he's instructed to depart the stage and he does so with an insufficient sense of urgency and for that shocking infraction, he is summoned to the principal's office where he's supposed to get five licks, in the parlance, with a two-foot long wooden paddle. and when his turn arises, he said it wasn't me, and offered resistance. and two assistants bent him over the principal's desk and he receives not five licks, but 20 licks and this beating is so savag savage, he has to receive medical attention. the doctor prescribes pain relievers, cold compresses, sleeping pills, laxatives. three days later he returns to the hospital to receive more medical attention and i found

doctor's notes that said there was a six-inch bruise that was tender, swollen, and purplish in color and indeed was losing fluid. this is part of a reign of terror at this junior high school, an all black junior high school where students were beating for sitting in the wrong seat, having untucked shirttails, you know, just incredible minor infractions, and the school district in their effort to defend it ended up making it worse. there was a principal in miami beach who says, no works don't use corporal punishment in this school, and our students are majority jewish and understand oral persuasion, and this meaning that the black students only understood corporal force. and the clause didn't grow out

of criminal conviction, a. ,. . corporal punishment still have the practice and just five states account for more than 70% of instances of corporal punishment. if i have any single goal for my book it's to elevate the sail yensy of this issue and hope that the supreme court will revisit this issue because i feel that the jurisdictions that retain the practice at this late date are not going to abandon it on their own. >> so, i love the title of this session, "how we learn" because it cleverlily points to different kinds of learning that we know take place in schools. children learn from textbooks, by content mandated by the state and tested by the state, they learn unintended knowledge, that teachers aren't aware that they're learning, or

not specifically teaching this knowledge and in teaching we call this unintended curriculum. i wonder if there's unintended knowledge that students learn about themselves, it may be positive knowledge, it may be things less savory. are there any that come to mind in terms of the context you look at what the students learn about themselves and player place in the world? >> yeah, so tinker, the case i mentioned out of des moines, iowa, was a real breakthrough for the freedom of speech and it was a wonderful decision, in my view, of affording students the freedom of speech. however, it didn't go far enough. in one of the ways that it didn't go far enough, the test that tinker articulated, if teachers have a fear of substantial disruption in public schools then they can punish students for the speech.

and this could be understood as reading into the test what first amendment mavens would refer to as the hecklers veto. this is an idea that particularly sensitive listeners, if they object vociforously enough can quiet speech. and they can be around even those they disagree with. a couple of opinions where, for instance, when one school in california students were told they could not wear clothing with the american flag, and that they had to turn their t-shirts inside out on may the 5th, aka, sinco de mayo. and what's the matter, you don't like mexicans and threatening violence. and i understand the message communicated there, i think that the stronger solution would be to have a talk with

the students who were threatening violence and if anybody has to be disciplined, it should be those students, not the ones who were communicating otherwise legitimate speech. and there are other cases involving issues of gay equality where a similar issue arises where religious speech is sort of suppressed. while i disagree with the messages communicated it's my view that students need to be able to express themselves and to disagree without turning to violence and indeed, the issue of free speech on column campuses received a-- college campuses received an incredible amount of attention. too little paying attention in our elementary and secondary schools as we've seen about being distinct. >> when i think about how we learn, i became sort of obsessed with this idea, as i saw my son progress through the

system, whether member -- memorization is bad. saying they're pumping out robots. i don't want my son to be a robot. we moved him into hybrid schooling, but he was coming back, math memorized, double digit multiplication in his head and i thought oh, my gosh, he's doing drills. the difference between rote learning and-- and i tried to unpack the idea, is that the antithesis to creativity? what i learned in my research, the creative process knowledge is still a very important component of creativity because the reason we're obsessed with creativity and education right now is because we're educating our kids for a future that is

unknown. we don't actually know what jobs will exist in 15 years. we have an idea, but 15 years ago we were wrong about what the workplace would look like now, right? so we want to teach our kids to be flexible and creative and adaptable, but the creative process has three components, briefly, knowledge is still one of them. in other words, you have to know things. ... good at. motivation in curiosity. in encouraging kids to explore what they're interested in personally. you have to have a passion component. that's also what we are really great at. which is allowing kids to come up with original ideas and practice implementing them. and in my classroom in china and in the classroom visits in u.s.,

the language is different. teachers here are saying all right kids, what you think about what we just learned? let'ss discuss. john, what you think, let's talk about it. this is not happening in the chinese classroom and that's a huge leg up for us. but what we cannot forget is that are still certain things we need to ignore. for example, the greatest dilemmas of ourin age, the cure for cancer, technology that doesn't just melt our brains, whatever it is, it always comes from a base of knowledge. it's not just the original thinking and the passion that is important. i would say that is my learning as well. relating to jostens work, he's right, the freedomth of speech n k-12 is not look at. because they don't have that in china because there is not a freedom of expression in the classroom if that is going to be the number onest obstacle to developing the students of the future in china.

>> so the word control came to mind when i thought about your books together. this was perhaps most evident when looking specifically at the titles of your books which i think are beautiful. the soldier suggests the aim or connection at school about producing -- defend the state. while "the schoolhouse gate" has images of dates and gatekeepers decide to them what can get in or must remain at bay. how did you arrive at your titles and how do they speak to the nature of public schooling in the chinese and american context that you look at? >> "the schoolhouse gate" comes from the opinion in intake of t i think you have done a very nice job of saying that gates are letting some people in but turning sometimes others away. one of the cases i write about

that's the most important that the supreme court has ever issued that's relatively unknown, a case called -- 1982 where the great state of texas past a law that said it was permissible to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the nation's public schools. at the time it was an open question as to whether this past constitutional muster. judge wayne justice in tyler, texas, invalidated this law in a heroic decision and wonder was ultimately upheld by the supreme court of the united states. some constitutional law professors have suggested this case was relatively an important because texas was the only state in the nation that had such a law they see only those cowboys down to texas would be attracted to this sort of rule. but we know today that anxieties about unauthorized immigration are far from confined to texas.

it's possible to see that case as prohibiting other states from adopting similar measures and into california tried to adopt a measure. alabama tried to adopt the same measure and in many of the stas around the country doubtless would have had the supreme court issued this decision in 1982. that decision is not trivial but is incredibly momentous in shaping our constitutional order in that it allows millions of childrenen to receive an educatn who otherwise would been prohibited from doing so. >> i titled my book "little soldiers" because one day my son came home and he was singing a song roughly translated i am a little soldier, i work hard every day, i looked off into the distance and work towards my goals. the mantra is great and unhappy that he works hard towards his goals but it was the way he was marching. like a little soldier and it conjured up the image of the

robot and i said this is not good. their summary of the parallels. that only in this longer teach in chinese schools but also the something very militaristic about the way the chinese are educated and needing to go through the school system.ey it's quite dramatic rise in the u.s. the policies are called no child left behind, every student succeeds act and whether not ts actually true, the idea is we educate educated one. one has right to an education. in china have the kids drop out of the system as the teenage level. in other words, it's okay, not everybody gets ahead. you don't pass the test you are toast. that is the chinese system. i felt "little soldiers" was either accurately to capture this sort of a cutthroat test-based system.

>> while your books export different aspects of schooling, i was struck by the lack of value that both of the system at different points seem to hold around the perspectives, experiences and the rights of students. i think we see this all of the time in education, we talk about students but we often very really talk to students. whether discussing the constitutional rights or expecting them to adopt without question, a predetermined political orientation and set of content knowledge, real regard for what students want and desire is really at the center of those discussions. do you agree with this idea, and if so what are some examples of how this plays out in your examination? the lack of value for students and placing students at the center of conversations.

>> one of the issues with the supreme court has a mighty really fallen down goes to the fourth amendment dealing with the prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. and i think the court pays insufficient he to how it would feel to be a student in a public school, for instance, required to submit to a suspicionless drug search. there's a student called lindsay earls who grew up in oklahoma about 40 miles away from oklahoma city, and for participating in extracurricular activities she was summoned to the girls room and reports about being, going into a stall and being required to give a specimen and having a teacher posted outside listening for the telltale sound of urination, handing the vessel to the teacher present and specs it for the temperature and holds it up to the light to look at color and clarity.

and again she got suspected of any wrongdoing, just simply for participating in extracurricular activities. she's given this, and so i think that if the supreme court justices placed themselves in the place of a public school student they would be more sensitive to how it feels. there's another really important case also in the fourth amendment t dealing with a strip search of the student called savannah reading who suspected of having ibuprofen tablets, not that she has been in her undergarments atno all, and validated that search but in articulated the rules they provided insufficient protection. one of the goals i have for the book is it might be possible to cobble together a coalition of liberals and the libertarian and selected vision of constitutional law that is ascendant and some right-wing circles. richard supposed to have a

certain amount of skepticism of state authority. if you think about the freedom of speech and corporal punishment and, indeed, the fourth amendment, i hope that that skepticism will appear when it comes to students right. ism n it comes to students rights. >> my area of expertise is china. they have very few rights if any at all. try to think of the -- i write about it my book. amanda, she was fortunate enough to send a year and a high school in connecticut. i would say from her's perspective, there are a lot of students that she experienced. in other words, to read shakespeare in its entirety. in her classroom was heavily censored and she was only allowed two axis snippets. one of the lessons learned from a system in her right at all? you are completely ignoring this

student's individual passions. you're completely ignoring their ability to think originally that's actually a skill that you need to practice. for example, amanda's first grade teacher said, i want everybody to write the equal sign with two perfectly parallel lines. it was hard, her hand shook a little bit so she tied to pencils together the lines would always be parallel. you know the teacher did? she took her paper and shamed her from the classroom and tossed it on the black board for the last of the semester. she had no recourse, there was no pda, she can tell her mom and her mom couldn't bring the story to the administration because the fact of life in china. that's an extreme. i would say that there's some major problems with the system. in the u.s., you'll have to talk about it in terms of haves and have-nots. some students have more -- that wouldn't happen in a certain

kid. it just doesn't. the parents are going to have avenue of recourse. >> would like to open up for audience questions. if you have a question, if you could go to one of the mike's, we will move from there. >> great presentation, thank you very much. very different spectrums. that's enjoyable. when i talk to educators, their experiencing classrooms, when i hear, is the real key to success. the relationships that develop between the teachers and the students. we all know there's a lot of things that factor into that. the two issues here, the chinese model and the model that justin is after in terms of increasing students rights, could each of you speak to whether or not you

believe that's the case, that's what we should encourage to improve the development of children in the u.s.? the other.is, how would you merge those kinds of things to enhance the kind of relationship that lead to children's learning more? with the areas that you've been most involved in your research. [crowd boos] is a good question. one of the things that highlight is the contested role that teachers play in american society. at the time of the 1980s, was an open question as to whether it was possible for school officials to violate the first amendment at all. any people suggested that teachers act. just as a parent could rummage through their child's bedroom without running a follow of the

fourth minute, a teacher could no provocation whatsoever. inspect all of the backpacks coming in. the supreme court has rejected that view. one of the things that emerges from the cases that i examine, is the way that different supreme court justices have different views about the role of teachers in american society. sometimes those who wish to have deference to school authorities offer an incredibly rosy understanding of the dynamic that exists between teachers and peoples. often that can be a role of mentoring but sometimes it is an adversarial mode. including one important those imposing corporal punishment, thinking about due process rights with respect of suspensions and another thing that the question triggers for me is thinking about the transforming nature of the public school. that is to say, in the 1980s,

it was relatively rare for police officers to be in public schools and now the presidents of uniformed police officers are especially in our urban schools. so again, i think the shifting nature of the relationship

if the child is level of problem child or as some kind of behavioral issues the teacher is required to spend two minutes with that kid during class time and her class of 28. she has 16 able to challenge kids so that's a 32 minutes of the 50 minute class out of which leaves roughly 15 minutes for teaching. not to say that about policy but what that story brings up to meet is what is good for this student? we need to make sure the pendulum rests somewhere in equilibrium so we're paying attention to both sides because they can be in conflict. >> this -- are you hearing me? let me go to the other mic. >> i don't know if that mic is on. >> thank you for your recitations. appreciate it. i read an elite private school in vermont license the kids to college with no high school.

when i moved down here what a fun is kids that go to the elite magnet schools are culturally illiterate, to wit in the past few days i've asked kids if they knew who mao zedong was? if they knew joseph stalin was. if they do with the ten commandments are. they never seem to know. they say either i'm atheist or we were not taught that, or whatever. my question both of you is what is being done in terms of both china and your knowledge of the united states in terms of having cultural literacy? kids can't function a listing of basic tenets of the background of traditions. >> that is a general movement in american education away from having to know certain things, whether it's best acts or historical facts or point of history and action committee goes to memory. in china it's a complete

opposite. well, you have the problem, the communist party dictating what they want their students to learn in the classroom but generally history is so very important in the classroom and then up on discussed it but they commit some of these things to memory. what's the equivalent of the ten commandments? what would they be learning? religion is banned from the classroom. completely separate thing. [inaudible] -- and something that has emerged in real force on over the last three decades, and many people thought for a long time that there was no right to do so. people thought its really valuable to people exposed to at least one other set of attitudes and knowledge base. and i have stumbled across some

instances of homeschooling with the curriculum is designed by an eighth grader who says i really like to dance and a not much interested in literature and math. >> sutton road on on dance but i'll dedicate the next three months. i don't think homeschooling should be outlawed. i do think, however, they should be much greater oversight and regulation of these phenomena the homeschooling advocates often say how do you think about entering a whole. but when you turn your home into a school it to me that there are certain responsibilities that come along with that pick some states don't even require notification that homeschooling is happening and so the estimates that we have are only rough. that seems like that's something, if we are trying to have people to be able to have -- him together with some sort of common understanding, that that is an area to monitor. >> our next question. >> thank you for your comments

today. i meant educated by trade, a former student of dr. brown. my question relates to students rightsci can family education rights and privacy act in the context of information technology. and you speak to any cases that relate to students able to access to the records? i'm specifically talking about the unit in texas at austin when i requested my records emails until the onlyor pieces of a given, not the whole thread, things of that sort. lastly people speak specifically to culture as it relates to african-american males if you done any research on the one out of three african-american males can expect to go to prison and a lifetime. if these trends continue the sensing project, anything along those lines. econd part first. one of the interesting things that i've stumbled upon in researching this book that i did not know was the rise of single

public schools in the nation. in the 1990s, there were very few such schools but out of concern with the achievement in the black community, many people had an effect as a last effort, have arrived single schools. i find this distressing, including the way schooling often seems to sort of further give stereotypes. i happened upon some classrooms where the schools theoretically integrated where they put the schools in -- this girls in one classroom and the boys another. there were a lot of sports in the girls classroom, there are -- i found the says act pretty at all times. if we take seriously pioneering commitments to gender equality

from the 1970s, it seems difficult to reconcile these programs to the constitution. i don't have anything to say about the question about accessing their information and everything. i wish i could help there. >> another question. >> thank you very much for your presentation. it's very enlightening. i'm a special education or by trade. i was curious, he spoke so much as to how chinese education is collective. i'm curious how they handle students with parents with disabilities how they are different with how i perceive as normal. i'm also curious with the push for inclusion in our public schools and moving away from

resource classes toward models, where you see educational wall going with regard to the spectrum of services offered to facilities? >> you talking about kids with special needs? okay. it's fairly, the process for these kids are small. i can put it frankly. i talked to activists, trying to call attention to this issue. they are nongovernmental organizations. there is nothing in the schools there that can identify kids with special needs. even the diagnosis is incredibly permissive. the policy documents say, every city with 300,000 population or more should have apostle center but there's nothing about mainstream or even justifying kids who need help.

>> i focus on students constitutional rights in the book. whereas as you know, these issues are governed by the ida, a statute so i don't dedicate much attention to that. it's a very important issue which is a source of case law at the supreme court. these days, more often than the constitution. it's not to say that it's unimportant, a constitutional law professor so we are focusing on those issues involving the constitution rather than the statutory claims important as they are. >> the spin and illuminate discussion. please join me and thinking our [applause] [inaudible