friend. >> and i think that's how she felt about the american people that she was a good friend. >> and the american people returned that? >> absolutely. >> and it is a generational change. we will be moving into the youngest couple moving into the white house with the kennedys and we look forward to learning about how the country continues to change. that's it for our mamie eisenhower program. our special guests, we thank them for your work. your book is available. the general's first lady. if folks would like to learn more. thank you so much for your time. great to have you in the audience. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013]

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ladiesseries on first continues monday with the life and times of jacqueline kennedy. with tv becoming central to american life, her time as first lady was defined as never before with images. a young family entering the white house, international fame, and the tragedy of a grieving widow, all within three years. traveling in other countries, she spoke french and spanish. president kennedy once referred to himself as the man who accompanied jacqueline kennedy to paris. one of the people that she interviewed was her future husband, senator john f. kennedy. one never directly addressing reports of her husband's infidelities, she once offered her own advice about marriage. "it is a trade-off. there are positives and negatives to every situation in life. you endure the bad things, but enjoy the good."

lifeus for a look at the of first lady jacqueline kennedy, monday night on c-span and c-span three, as will a c- span radio. -- as well as c-span radio. and we are offering a special edition of the book "first ladies of the united states of portrait presenting a of each first lady and comments. it is available for the discounted price of $12.95 at c- span.org/products. and we have a special section about the white house, produced by our partner, the white house his store coal association. it chronicles life during the tenure of each first lady. find out more at c-span.org/f irstladies. tonight on c-span, actress goldie hawn talks about ways to improve childhood education.

ther that, a look back at 2008 financial crisis and how it was handled by lawmakers and government officials. later, a discussion about the health care law and its impact on hospitals. next, actress goldie hawn talks about childhood education. she spoke at the national press club in washington, d.c., where she discussed her foundation. it aims to improve academic performance among children by alleviating stress and promoting a positive classroom environment. this is one hour. >> this is the tale of a local girl made good. the story begins a few miles away from here in downtown washington, where our guest today won the audience over with at montgomery blair high school in silver spring, maryland. [applause]

four decades later, goldie hawn is one of hollywood's most awarded stars, with some any award nominations that if i listed them all we would not have time to hear her speak. when she is not acting, hanging out with partner kurt russell, spending time with her kids, or gushing over her grandchildren, she is wearing about everybody else's kids. alarmed after the september 11 terrorist attacks by rising suicide, depression rates among young people, hawn who practices buddhism became interested in brain science. she designed a school curriculum involving mindfulness training to keep kids focused, manage their emotions, and reduce stress and conflict in their lives. we are honored to have her here at the national press club here in 2001 to talk about the beginnings of that effort. she has written two books, a

memoir, and "10 mindful minutes," giving children happier lives. at publishers weekly review of the second book called her, "a gentle heartfelt approach to mothering and a mission to help charter and develop -- children develop help your lives." when sheer first break was 22, for which she was nominated twice for emmy awards. [applause] showed flawless comedic timing, which nearly always guaranteed a laugh or applause from the audience. one of her most memorable lines might even get a laugh today. she said, "i don't see why there should be any question about capital punishment. i think everyone at the capital should be punished." [laughter] [applause]

since then, she has acted in more than 30 films, winning a not therefore -- winning an oscar. her roles have run the gamut from comedic as the jilted ex- wife with unnaturally bloated club" tofirst wives the classic thrillers. the list goes on. you can even hear her voice now in "phineas and ferb." giving a warm and press club welcome to actress goldie hawn. [applause] >> thank you so much. i am amazed that you found that. it is great to be here. i am so happy to be here again and honored. i get to speak about something very close to my heart. thank you for that wonderful

introduction. i would like to welcome my beautiful family, who is sitting over there. giving me support and love like they have always done. [applause] and also our wonderful group, our ceo, and all of you together who are now working on our high school curriculum, just beginning the process now. what i would like to do first of all -- first of all, i apologize, i don't have a script because i don't like to look down and read. i like to be able to talk to everyone. sometimes i might just skip around. i don't know. but what i would like to do first is i would like to introduce you -- re-introduce you to me. gee, probably a mile away from here at doctors hospital. i was brought home to a duplex house on a dead-end street in takoma park, maryland. that is where i lived for 19 years.

i lived in halfway house, which is a palace to me, and i had a beautiful father who was a musician who played every inaugural in washington, from roosevelt on. and camestaple here back with some pretty fabulous stories. being a musician, you not only have a great sense of humor but also a great eye for i guess you could say satire. my mother worked, also. school.ted a dancing we had our own shop and she ran that. i had two working parents. but i was a happy child. i remember my first day of school, and i went to silver spring intermediate school, and in that school we had very challenged children in the basement. they had cerebral palsy. integrated with these

children. the first, had gone to school, i noticed we were having lunch with children who could not move well. i made my best friend that day. his name was barney. he was someone who could hardly speak who smiled all the time. he became my friend all the way through to sixth grade. -- oh, perfect. at any rate, i then took first grade. we had all of our coloring to do. i color the apples and the ears and the p grapes. i colored them all yellow. my teacher said to me, goldie, why did you color everything yellow? you know that a grape is purple. i looked at her and said, because i like yellow.

iat was the first inclination did not follow directions all that well. [applause] [laughter] then we got into second grade and i was not bringing home a reading book. my mother said why didn't you bring your reading book? i said because i am into purple balls, mom. she said, that is great, the purple balls reading group, what does that mean? i don't know, i just think it is good because i'm the only one in it. [laughter] she went to school and found out it was the worst reading group. so as we went along, my mother realized i was not really learning to read that well, so she helped teach me to read. ien we realized at that point was not really retaining information to well. that did not stop me from exerting my personality. and even though i did not finish my homework or my papers, i signed them all "love goldie." [laughter]

at which point my mother decided that maybe she should check my iq. [laughter] i came out with flying colors, i just want to let you know. but it did not help my reading. it did not help my retention. and i think it was probably an indicator that i was mildly dyslexic. therefore, i had my challenges. and i had my challenges in school on many levels. one was that i was jewish. i got teased. , but not call it bullying i had a resilience because i had parents who cared. and i knew that i was proud to be jewish. but some kids did not look at it that way. but it did not get to me. i was teased because later i was flat-chested and skinny. that was ok because my mother said, you just wait. [laughter]

now, i went along at my school and i was a very sensitive child. but i was building other things, other levels of resilience, other talents. no, i was not going to be a rocket scientist. i was not going to be some of those things parents think their children are going to be, because my parents knew what i could do. i could dance. i enjoyed life. they did not want to be the one to stop me from progressing to feel good about myself, to do the things i could do, and to work at my strengths. something happened in sixth grade. i went down to the visual aids room. the visual aids room was the most fun place to go. we would go downstairs.

we would watch and agricultural film. so i sat. the lights go out. i was sitting there, waiting to learn about iowa and farming. and we sat there, and on the circle.omes a big black 6 --until it hit zero, and then there was a huge crash. the atom bomb went off. and what i saw changed my life for good. panned to mothers and children crying. [baby cries] perfect cue. [laughter] looking at annihilation, blood, panic. i started to shake.

i was 11 years old, going on 12. i was so frightened that i cannot stop shaking. because that was going to be me. i was going to die. i knew that the russians were going to bomb us and that we had no way, and that ducking under a desk and turning your head away from the light was not going to work. teacher, can i go home, please? she said, goldie, you never go home for lunch. i said, i know, but my mom told me to. i walked to school everyday. of course, that is the way it was then. that is the way it was. that is when we used to lie on the grass and look up at the clouds and think about what they look like. our doorld never lock

because everyone was welcome and we were never afraid. or we would sit on the stoop instead of burying ourselves into devices and figure out, what do you want to do. i don't know, what do you want to do. i don't know, let's crack open rocks. let's rake leaves and jump in them. i was a good sleeper, life was good. it was all wonderful. i can't called in from dinner, played until dark. until this happened. can ran home. i called my mother and i said, mom, we are all going to die. we are all going to die. my brain had in printed this horrible scenario, and it stayed high school. ended i cannot hear a siren without going into panic attacks. my mother came back to the house and called the board of education immediately and said, why are you showing children this?

why is it that you think they can absorb this? they can't. it needs to be told differently. if they are going to duck and cover, do it differently. you have traumatize my daughter. whythen explained to me russia was not really going to do it because of our leadership. as we had people talking. because the bomb would annihilate everybody and everybody would die, and nobody wants everybody to die. guess what -- i had some cognitive theories about that because of my mother. i was able to learn how to understand, but it was a lasting fear and lasting panic attacks. that was the time where we had conflict, a lot of it. civil rights. we were marching. we had people killing each other. of ourassassinations

great leaders, boulevard leaders -- he loved it leaders, one after the other. we had the bay of pigs. we live through that. imagine my fear in history class at 11:00 when we did not know if we were going to be hit or not. but we did not have the red and blue problems we have today. because eisenhower was talking to kennedy. that was a purple situation. and he was really helpful, any once you help -- and he wanted to help. and the decision that was made was the right decision. so we got through it. we got through some of the hardest times, where people had a voice. kids got up and spoke. we had some tragedy inside of that. but we thought we could make a difference. that is what was great. laughing. we thought we could make a difference.

just by opening up this conversation, saying things, colleges, speaking out. we had an opinion, a point of view. we mattered. now we cut to today. instead of watching four channels, six channels, we have hundreds. we have news that is running on cable, reprocessing the same information. we are being in printed with this information and it is usually information, grabbing eyeballs, it has to be controversial. this is a different world we are living in. and i was noticing this, as time has gone on, looking at what was happening to the fiber of our communities, the fiber of our world. it did not start with taking

this off or creating liberation, because that is an internal feeling, not annex paternal -- not annex turnoff. when we began this time, leading up to all of these decades i have lived through where we actually felt we mattered, i don't know how much we think we mattered today. and i don't know how much our children feel they matter today. nine/11, september 11, i was getting my child off to school. and we saw our twin towers crumble. and we were in shock. this couldn't happen to us. we've gotten through so much. we won. we spoke out. we mattered. now what is happening is we are being taken as prisoners of .ear, of terrorism, of hatred

of things we cannot wrap our hands around. ds around, destabilizing us, creating uncertainty in our lives and our future. i sat there. we all gathered as a family. we went together and sat in our rooms together in our house, all the children came back home. i could not think of what to do. so i went upstairs and i got my knitting basket. and for a week, i cried, watch television, and i knit the merrigan flag. i did not have a pattern. , asst did it as i felt it we moved through that week and into the next. and while i knit this flag, i wept for our children. because i knew they were going to inherit a world that would

change forever. their little worlds were going to change forever, just as our world was changing forever. we had uncertainty. we do not know what was going on. the difference is is when i was afraid, and i don't with that fear, -- and i'd tell with that fear, today i don't know how to do with this fear. all i could think of is, what are our children going to do, what are they going to inherit. they're watching the news over and again. their brains are being processed , processing is consistent falling, falling, falling. they don't know this is not happening a thousand times. is anybody looking at the development of our children's brains? is anyone looking at that? ofthere was this sense purpose i had. my career is wonderful. the idea i get to be here today

to talk about my movies is great. was in service doing that. i feel i was great service doing that. if something happened to me 12 myself,o, and i asked now what are you going to do, goldie? what are you going to do? so i went to vancouver. we sat there, and i was there because my son wanted to play hockey, and we were going to help. and i would sit quietly in my room and i realized all the studies i had done on the brain -- i am fascinated with the brain -- all of the understanding of contemplative practice, all of the standing -- understanding of social, emotional, positive psychology. and i thought to myself, why are we teaching this in the classroom? by the way, the phrase social emotional learning, i had no idea what that was. all i knew was our children

needed help. a needed tools for the 21st century and it was not going to be learning math better, it was not learning to read better. it was learning to cope in this world with the toolbox they need to have to move forward, to be socially responsible, to be empathetic, to clear their minds, to understand how to reduce stress, because our children experience stress. and we don't think they do? oh, yeah. i started looking into statistics about where children are today, discovering in 2007 we had 8 million children on psychotropic drugs. that was 2007. i connected the stats today, but i can tell you -- i cannot get the stats today. i am not here to say the drugs are bad. they have helped seriously impaired children and people with mental issues. but we have a mental health crisis in this country, the likes of which i have never seen. now in ourasking

educational system to succeed. we want to bring these little widgets inside of a classroom and make them get a's, and we want them to innovate and create and change the world. how are we going to change the world when our children are in silent distress? can you think when your brain is in frenzy? can you make the right decisions when you are panicked, when you are in confusion, when you don't understand? and what we are doing is imprinting these great goals on our children, when in fact we are not really looking at the state of mind that our kids are in right now. if we have these children on drugs, by the way, these drugs continue to go -- it is a $9 billion industry right now. in which case, has anyone ever asked, is there a longitudinal study done?

do we know the effects of these drugs on these children for a lifelong -- a lifetime? have we checked out the developing brain? doesn't impair development? doesn't mean they might be addicted after 20 years? are we creating an addicted society? these are dramatic things i am saying, but i do ask the question. and i know through practice and understanding of how to work children's minds and do what their brains, we can fix that. but we have to pay attention. it is time now to pay attention. so what i did is i created the hawn foundation to develop a program called mindup. it is a program that is basically something i thought, if i can change one shot at this point in history, it would be a victory. and we created a small program that had four things. one is just a little about the brain.

because i said, why don't children know about the brain? why aren't we teaching them the greatest tool they have? we know enough. it should not sit in petri dishes of universities. we should be able to put that into classrooms. thechildren need to know amazing thing they have, better than any computer, to be able to develop, grow, to become good, strong, healthy minded people. we pulled did was together nurse scientists, positive psychologists, teachers, we pulled together contemplative practitioners. and i will say this -- this had nothing to do with buddhism. i'm jewish. ngis has to do with calmi the mind. this has to do with understanding that every brain needs a break and every child

needs a break. we have taken away recess. sports.taken away we have taken away -- these children are so stressed in their classrooms, we demand so much from them. and we are dealing now with children of all balances and socioeconomic status. so anyway, we created this program called mindup. actually, i was there, dr. kim, she is our researcher from the university of reddish columbia, and she did some research. -- from the university of british columbia. the school superintendent was amazing, because top-down is the way to go. she researched it. she came back and said, in 20 years i have never seen research like this in my life. becames, these children 83% more optimistic, and we all know enough to mystic child learns better. happy child is a better learner.

a child who has hope has a better chance of learning and retaining information. a frenzied mind cannot. if we think we're going to teach our children with this, we are not going to unless we relax their mind and give them a sense of safety and nurturing. thatwe found out aggression went down on the playground by 25% or more. we were not talking about bullying. we were just talking about how do we get peace, how do we get together in the classroom, how do we wrap this around math and english. which we have done. we then discovered that we did a cortisol test. i don't know there has ever been one. i don't think so. we spit in to a little plate. all the kids loved it. every hour they could spit into the plate. we sent it to germany. it came back. our children were able to manage their stress hormone cortisol better than the control group. what does that say for health care? what does that say for their ability to move through life in a healthy manner?

they're managing their stress. and about it is just traffic. children.lked we have said this will never go. you are never going to be able to take three brain breaks a day in the class. as it turned out, this was a program that has worked. it has worked. and we are now in six countries. i never believed it to be. the most important thing in my life to see that one day, we adopt these principles in every classroom in america. because if we do not give our children the chance, we are going to be in trouble. they cannot face this new world we are living in without these tolls. -- tools. la