>> rose: welcome to our program, tonight we begin with a former chairman of the joint chiefs, hugh shelton who has written his memoirs. >> which really believe we have to be concerned about what happens if we just pull out suddenly from afghanistan and karzai's government, corrupt or not t is a val government, it does not allow al qaeda to run rampant throughout the area. the taliban no long never control and therefore saying we'll harbor you. and if we pull ot, what happens to pakistan which is a nuclear power and right next door and a very fragile government also. >> rose: we continue with davis ghoul enheim the filmmaker. his new movie is called "waiting for superman" about american education today. >> if you work hard, you know, and you do a good job and you study, education is way out. doesn't matter if you don't speak a language or have any

money. but in america, if you work hard, education is the ticket. and when i read about the lotteries, tom friedman wrote the article about the lottery and i read it in "the new york times", i thought this is it, this is a metaphor. it wasn't spoused to be about charters although that is what some of the critics talk about. but it is about kids shouldn't have to win a chance at a great education. >> rose: we conclude this evening with clay christensen, the popular professor at harvard business school talking about life and teaching. >> then i asked the student that you also need to come to class having prepared to show clay christensen what's wrong with his theory. and as i try to engage them not just to tell me what it does, but what it doesn't do, i walk out thinking holy cow, i can't believe they paid me to learn from my students. >> rose: exactly. shelton, guggenheim, christensen. when we continue.

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from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. hugh shelton is here. he was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff from 1997 to 2001. he served under president bill clinton and george w. bush. he oversaw the military response to the attacks of september 11th. de two tours in vietnam and was assistant division commander of the 101s airborne in the persian gulf war. he was also command never chief of the special operation kos manned. his new memoir called without hesitation, the odyssey of an american warrior it chronicles his journey from a small farming community in north carolina to the high echelons of the u.s. military. i'm pleased to have general shelton at this table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. it's an honor to be here with you tonight. >> we are proud north carlinians and have great affection for our state. how is your health is the thing everybody wants to know. because you had this terrible fall off the roof. >> it was an incredible fall and an incredible journey coming back from it with the

help of the great people at walter reid but i'm doing veing well now. everything that is wrong with me is being, has been fixed with titanium rods and screws and things are going pretty well. >> what was the worst moment for you. >> i think the worst moment was knowing instantaneously when i hit the ground and was totally paralyzed from the neck down that i was, in fact, paralyzed. i was in fact what hi done to myself and i was unable to breathe. i wasn't sure i was going to come back from that. >> rose: you were unable to breathe. >> i was unable to breathe. i saw-- i was paralyzed. and i found later it was because hi damaged the vega vassal nerve back that controls your breathing. and so forth nationally after about a minute, maybe a minute and a half, air started to company back into my lungs. he was very lucky, i recovered and fortunately a neighbor went out to take a smoke on her back porch and heard me screaming help, help. and came bounding across the fence. >> rose: they got you to -- >> got the attention i

needed. >> rose: do you think for a moment, hi two tours in vietnam, i have seen many and women die and here mi fallinging off a roof. >> you know, i probably thought about that. but the thing i really thought about at that time was after 4-- 450 parachute jumps from up to 24,000 feet at night in the middle of know where, and coming out unscathed and now mi dying after falling fifing feet off of a ladder. just this is unbelievable. and i wonder if my dear wife is ever going to understand how this happened. >> rose: and there was a moment in which they said look we've got this procedure. the downside is you may die. the upside is if it works will you walk again. >> this young guy on, in the emergency room who had just finished the only doctor in the army that had been trained in this special procedure at john hopkins

happened to be on duty that morning at walter reed. they called for him. he came in and said here is what i can it i can raise your blood pressure up to astronomical levels for six or seven hours. we will force blood in around the injury and if we are lucky, long term it may help you. you won't feel it immediately. and i said what's the downside. he said a massive heart attack or stroke, one of the two. he said but you got a strong heart. you know, what do you think he said we got to hurry. i said the let's go for telephone. my wife said let's go for it. >> rose: is that your philosophy, the game favors the bold, let's go for it. >> i always operated under that principles and this was no exception. it was time to take a bold move. >> rose: there is really an extraordinary story. how did awe approach this. because there is candor, there's appraisal am you didn't pull away from making judgements about people. >> i was planning to tell the story the way it unfolded. a very frank and candid manner. i did not like saying

anything disparaging about anyone but there were occasions when the truth exposes people for the way it was. and that was the approach i took with it. >> rose: didn't you believe that -- could saddam could be contained. >> i thought saddam was contained. >> rose: you didn't need to go in there. >> exactly. early on in-- in my tenure i went to the president, president clinton and we laid out a matrix for this, for the president. said we should not let this guy get away, saddam, get away with a free shot at our aircraft. every time he shoots at us this violation of the u.n. he ought to pay a price. we ought to hit him. and so we worked out a strike matrix so that when our aircraft would go in. >> there a no-fly zone or over the no drive zone, every time he would fire, depending on what he did, maybe he would just cut on his early morning radar, violation of the u.n., he will pay a price for that and that price would be some predesignated targets that

we had already determined, if he does that here is what we will hit and we had the right munitions on board. so for about two years, two and a half years, we had been almost three years by that time, we had been hitting these targets. he didn't have much left to hit to be very can date. -- can dismted he was harm unless terms of his ability to influence anyone outside of iraq. now in terms of the way he treated his own people, he was a bad day and he deserved to go. i think everyone would agree. >> rose: but how much do you think the fact that you invaded iraq contributed to the situation we're in in afghanistan today? >> i think is the primary contributor where we are. because it is one thing i learned early on in washington working for bill crew, chairman of the joint chiefs when i was a young big a drear, it was that we do one thing very well in washington, we with but when we start doinging two things we tend to lose focus on one or the other. and when iraq was the-- when

afghanistan was the front-page story every day, when the focus was on afghanistan we were making real progress in afghanistan. but the minute we diverted our attention into iraq, not only did the military say u oh now we have two wars to fight and therefore we've got to be satisfied with a lesser number of troops even though things aren't going that well, but in washington we started looking at the war in iraq, particularly when it didn't go billion when we tried to do it with two-- and so afghanistan started going downhill. now i fault the military to some degree because it wasn't until stand mcchrystal went in and looked around and said, and stan is a great war fighter. and stan said we have to have more troops. we're losing this. that we suddenly saw that we had to surge and get 30 or 40,000 more troops in. so but that is, that put us behind about five years in my opinion in afghanistan and has left petraeus with an awfully tall order to leave a stable government

behind if we start pulling troopings out. >> and it looks like the new deadline is 2014, doesn't it? >> it appears, i think what we're going to see in the next, this month possibly and certainly by the end of january is a revisit of afghanistan. and where we really-- . >> rose: where we are and what we need to do. >> where we are and what we need to do and what a realistic timetable is for coming out. >> rose: more and more you see people stepping forward saying why are we fighting for a corrupt president who may not even want us there. >> yes. well i'm quite concerned about it. needless to say. but i really believe we have to be concerned about what happens if we just pull out suddenly from afghanistan and karzai's government, corrupt or not t is a central government it does not allow al qaeda to run rampant throughout the area. the taliban no longer are in

control and therefore are saying-- and therefore saying we'll harbor you. and if we pull out, what happens to pakistan which is a nuclear power and right next door and a very fragile government also? i'm concerned about that region. pakistan and afghanistan. they have a linkage that they didn't have when musharraf was the president of pakistan and when we first went into afghanistan. so i think we really have got to think our way through that very carefully. >> theres with a time in which there was a plan to get a bin lad nen your book. >> yes. >> rose: and the state department vetoed it. ri convinced you could have gotten limb? >> there were a coup ef-- couple of times there when we were turned down on the actions that we had planned because of the-- the feeling was we should-- that's a nation state, the taliban is corrupt and as bad as they might be, they were the legal government f you will, of afghanistan and therefore another nation state. and the feeling was we need to-- first and if they don't

comply then we'll hit them. but it happened again a second time. we demarsh them again. i felt like we should have hit them early on. could we have gotern osama bin laden, i don't believe we ever had-- actionable intelligence that would have allowed us to strike with the accuracy we needed to assure us we could get him on that strike. we came close one time. we didn't do it because we would have killed about300 people along with him and if we had not gotten him it would have looked like we were terrorists ourselves and killing -- a lot of whom would have been women and children that we were the terrorists ourselves. it turned out to be a good decision not to hit him but it was painful to make that because we thought we might have a slim chance of getting. >> what do you think is going to happen now, things in north waz irstan. >> i think what ultimately goinging to happen is we goinging to get him. you know, we've got too much, too many of our intel resources that are focused

on trying to find him. he'll make a mistake. he's very good. i once toll secretary of state if we ever get him i want to carry him to ft. bragg. and she said why would you want to do that. and i said because he does everything just the way we teach our guys to do to survive when they are behind enemy lines. he is very good at it he moves every night. he moves, he has doubles. he does it all. >> has doubles? >> and he also does not use communications. he only does messengers. >> do you believe he needs a dialysis machine or that is not a true story. >> you know, everything that i have seen says he is not in any better health as many have said he is. and i don't know for sure. >> david petraeus is a great general. >> he is. >> but stan mcchrystal was too. >> he is. >> stan mcchrystal had built up relationships with people there. >> charlie, i'm a real fan of stan mcchrystals. >> you had his job earlier. >> and stan had worked for me on occasion. and i think the world of

stan mcchrystal, still do. but whenever you, you know, our rule is pretty simple. civilian --. >> did he challenge that? >> well, i think from a disloyalty standpoint. the fact that his team, the people are very close to him, made those disparaging comments about the president and about the people back in washington, showed a disloyalty that was hard for president to tolerate, particularly in view of the fact that he had been blindsided earlier by stan asking for the additional troops over in europe rather than coming back through, at that time, dave petraeus and back into the secretary and the presidency. and i need more troops but rather kind of rolled it out for the world and said i need them and i need them right now. there's a right way to do it, there's a wrong way to do it and i think those two things put together said he probably, the president no long her confidence in him and neither did the secretary of defense. >> although i'm told that secretary of defense was hoping that he would be

retained and did not know until stand mcchrystal had the meeting with with the president. >> and that could be. >> rose: secretary of defense had hope approximated in the beginning that the organizing for it. and the president had the idea of petraeus and so it was a different story then because petraeus knew was the person who could step in. >> yes. >> rose: because of the experience and because he sort of knew as much as any-- about koubt insurgency and counterterrorism. >> but you know the truth is when we had mcchrystal in there and petraeus, we had the best team we could have had. >> rose: i rest my case, your honor. >> we did. we did. no question about it. >> rose: so wiki leaks, what do you think of all this. >> you know, men and women fight for our first amendment rights. i'm a big believer of first amendment and speaking out. i've got a couple funny stories and one of them is in the book about my belief in the first amendment.

but having said that, you know, i think that what we've seen a sang err do is just one step-- assange do is one step short of what i would classify as treason against this country. i mean in terms of the damage that he has done to our reputation, we've seen secretary of state flying around the world trying to repair that damage. from a military standpoint, just the fact that he would divulge something as simple as what the president of yemen told dave petraeus behind closed doors. i was in many meetings in these heads of state that would tell you things about what they would within willing to do to support our country and strike against iran or strike against iraq or strike against whoever, you know, what without happen if the north core wrans attacked, whether they would support us, that they would not want their own people to know about simply because they find themselves in a very bad neighborhood and they, you know, they are in a ten just position and are concerned about what the radical elements in their own country might do to them. and so it hurts us from an

intelligence standpoint and from a national security. >> rose: they will not speak as candidly next time. >> i don't think so. i really don't. >> rose: so what we heard from so many of them was oh, all the arab countries coming out of wiki leex something you have heard them say which is the consequences of bombing iran and the consequences of them getting the nuclear capacity. >> yes. >> rose: what do you think about it? >> yes, well i think everybody in that neighborhood is very, very conditioned about iran. they always have been. they fear iran. because they are concerned about their power. they're concerned about their, the armed forces. >> rose: what should we do? >> you know, i think we ought to again we use the diplomatic and political and economic tools. we use our, the united nations. we lean on them as hard as we request. and i would say just like i would have argued in iraq that we try to make this, if sothg's going to be done to iran, that we make it

part of a u.n. action, not a unilateral u.s. action or not an israeli action but the support of the u.s. >> can we ever get that through the support of the security council snil. >> we need to start. and we will never know until we really press it. >> with china there? >> well, it's hard work but you know, i think we shouldn't sell ourselves short until we have give ten our best effort. and then we can, if we have to go to war for a different reason, then we say we gave it all we've got. >> what is going to be the judgement of history about iraq? >> you know, i think that's right now is the 64,000 dollar question. i think that we where at a crossroads with iraq right now. and i think history will show that the united states gave the iraqis a chance for self-government and a chance to have an elected government chosen by the people to govern in a manner that the rest, most of the civil rised world does.

rather than the iraqi people seize on that remains to be seen. we can't stay there forever. i don't think the iraqi people want us there forever. >> did you think there were nuclear, that weapons of mass destruction were there? >> i did. >> rose: why did you think that? >> because, charlie, you know, all of the three letter agencies in washington, cia, the list goes on and on, you know, every one of them were providing data that said in some way, shape or form, they've got it. and the director of the 12r58 intelligence have pulled it all together before we had the national-- was telling us they had it. we will no reason to doubt that. we knew they had the milling capability and were trying to make delivery systems that could deliver to wmd. so. >> are you saying that we are-to believe they had poison gas and reason to believe they had maybe biological but did we have reason to believe they had nuclear? >> i-- nuclear was i think off the table from my

standpoint. i mean we thought they might have gas and they might have some type of biological. >> but nobody thought they -- >> no, i don't think. >> when they say weapons of mass destruction, be clear, there was nobody -- >> chemical and biological. >> just that. >> but i tell you everybody in washington, myself included, thought they had it. as i said in the book, i don't think anyone, i think colin powell believes he was set up on this thing today. but you know, i said nobody could have presented that information any better than colin did and he did it based on what they gave him. >> rose: so he was set up. >> in my opinion he was, for sure, by the intelligence community, providing the data to him that he wanted to braeft u.n. on because he had such great respect and was an admired man. >> rose: two quick appraisals. one, you are complimentary of george w. bush. >> i am. >> rose: you are saying he was an intelligent man, was in every conversation you had trying to dot rye thing.

>> i think so. >> rose: what else would you say about him? positive or negative. >> i think you could say he was loyal to a fault, to the people that worked for him. >> rose: meaning dick cheney, donald rumsfeld. >> exactly. but when you work for president bush, you really felt like you were a member of his team. that you didn't have to worry about your vi o clock, as a fighter pilot would say. that was very kind of reassuring ringz what is behind you. >> what is behind you, protecting your sides. i mean a very, very intelligent guy. very astute. >> rose: very intelligent. >> very intel ghent, could pick up on, take a very complex military plan and immediately ask about the things that posed the greatest risk in that plan. and what are we doing to make sure that we've got those risks covered or whatever. and i would also say very concern approximated about america's men and women in uniform, about their lives,

and making sure the decisions he made were not goinging to-- you know, were going to pose the least risk dush -- risk. >> i liked president clinton, i do. >> rose: how was he? >> the same way. he was very good to work with. very good to work for. very intelligent, needless to say, could pick up these very complex plan approximates. i saw that when we did the haiti operation long before i claim the-- became the chairman. very complex army, navy, air force, marine, coast guard operation. briefed him on it and immediately without any cards or anything, he fired back about three or four questions and got right to the heart of where the risks were in the operation. and i saw that time and time again with him. and always making a decision based on what he thought was best for america's men and women in uniform. regardless what the political fallout might be. >> rose: i once asked him if there was any experience he wish he had had that he thought would have served him well as president.

he said yes, having served in the military. now you tell this powerful story of him in tears right before he's leaving the white house, saying to you -- >> it was a very moving experience, saying to me, basically, that he felt like that first of all that he appreciated the great job that america's men and women in uniform had done during his tenure as president. how well they had served him. and to a degree how he felt he had let them down because of the incident that had occurred in the white house. that he hadn't lived up to their standards. but he greatly appreciated me and our-- standing by him throughout those hard times. and tears were forming in his eyes. and you know, i thought that showed an awful lot of character for a man that, to be able to say that. >> rose: this book is called "without hesitation" the body -- odyssey of an american warrior from a small town in north carolina

to the ultimate military advisor to the president of the united states. general hugh shelton. >> rose: david guggenheim is here. he is the academy award-winning director of the documentary an inconvenient truth. his latest film waiting for superman focus on the state of public school education in this country. it follows the stories of five bright children vying for spots at highly coveted charter cools-- schools. here is the trailer for the film. >> i don't know what college i want to go to but i know i want to be a teacher. >> i want to be a nurse. >> i want to be a doctor. >> how come? >> because i would like to help somebody in need. >> you wake up every morning and you know that kids are getting a really crappy education right now. >> so you think the most kids are getting a crappy education right now. >> i don't think theying are,

i know they are. >> even the kids are getting stupider every year or something is wrong in the education system. >> i do pie best at school and make my grandmother proud. >> among 30 developed countries we rank 25th in math, and 21st in science. in almost every category we have fallen behind except one-- kids from the usa rank number one in confidence. ♪ don't want to be an american idiot ♪ ♪. >> i think about 60,000 people have gone to the school in four years. 40,000 didn't graduate this is the damage this school has done to this neighborhoods. >> a child that doesn't finish high school will earn less and be eight times more likely to go to prison. >> i want to go to school. >> for these kids, their only chance at getting into a great school depends on whether their number is picked in a lottery. >> so if francisco doesn't

get in is there another chance? >> no. >> your children, the future generation are on the bridge of the titanic and everybody is going to drown. >> someone is taking an interest in you, someone loves you and they recognize the importance of education. and the first student selected 20. >> 9. >> takes alot of outrage and a lot of good examples to say yes, we can do this. >> when you see a great teacher, you are seeing a work of art. >> i want my kid to have better than what i had. >> 18. 10. 12. >> 2. >> and the last number-- . >> rose: since its release this fall the film has attracted a lot of attention from supporters and critics. whatever your opinion, you can to the deny that this movie has people talking about education. i'm very pleased to have davis guggenheim at this

table for the first time. welcome. >> nice to be here, charlie. >> rose: with great reference for your father, one of the great documentary filmmakers we ever had. how did you come here, because you had already made a film about education. >> well, you got to go back 11 years ago. i was destined to direct a film at a major studio with a major motion picture star and i got fired, charlie. i was supposed to direct this big movie and i won't tell you what it is but i got fired for all the wrong reasons. and i was so heartbroken and so up set at all the people and how they behaved that i went and bought a little camera and said i will make a movie about people i like. and i followed five first year teachers. the first film i ever made that was mine through the first year, five public schools. and after spending that year with them, their struggles, their triumphs, the heroic story of their lives, i was like this is the story of our time. and i promised myself that if i ever made another movie, i would talk about the dysfunction outside their classroom. that the system around the

classroom is pressing on these great teachers and it's pressing on everyone, all these kids. so this movie is about the dysfunction and the kids who are at stake. >> so how did you go about selecting these five incredible kids who want to get into charter schools and have parents desperately want them to be there because both believe it will give them a key to the future. >> well, it's a story, you talk about my father at the kitchen table that if you work hard, you know, and you do a good job and you study, education is a way out. you doesn't matter if you don't speak a language or have any money. but in america, if you work hard, education is a ticket. and when i read about the lotteries, tom freedman wrote the article about the will the ree and i read it in "the new york times". i said this is it, this is a metaphor. it wasn't supposed to been charters although that is what some the critics talk about. it is about kids shouldn't have to win a chance at a

great education. so different cities, different, we wanted different ages. and it wasn't hard there are families in every neighborhood in every district n every city of our country looking for a great school and they're not always finding it. in these cases they had a chance. >> but it's not just charter schools. charter schools is not the end hand all. >> i don't believe that at all. >> they are such a small percentage and not all charters are doing well. only a small percentage. >> rose: the performance for all charters are not better than all public schools. >> charters are a new experience, since the '90s, they are very new and many fail just like regular schools, bad teaching, bad management, poor use of money. but the high performing ones, the kip schools the ones that-- they are breaking the sound barrier. and that's what, i used the metaphor in the movie. >> rose: tell us about the choice of superman. because that am coulds from jeffrey canada. >> well, he tells, in all my movies, inconvenient truth, al gore, i was in his house and interviewing him and i

said why, why, we were having an argument. and he said it was an inconvenient truth. same thing with jeffrey canada. he said at the core why you do this, why why jeff lee do you this, he said you know, the saddest day in my life was when my mom told me that superman was not real it wasn't because santa claus wasn't real t was because no one was coming into his neighborhood that was powerful enough to save him. and he talks about how long it's been, more than 50 years, charlie, where our schools have been failing kids. >> rose: and what superman in education. >> i didn't want to say. to me it is a metaphor. and i have traveled all around the country with this movie. and everyone projects their own thing on to it. i don't want to pin down the metaphor. but there is an idea of waiting for something. there is an idea that there is this thing coming, is it real, is it us. i want that conversation to continue. so the hardest choice i made, charlie, was to say are we going to talk about some of

these that woulds that no one wants to talk about? the idea of criticizing a union, i'm a leftie. my father, you know, we were sitting arnged the table like this and talking about how unions were the great moment in america. and workers got the right to defend themselves and have recourse. but after i made that first film i would-- this is 11 years ago. i would be backing-- packing up my equipment, and the principal would lean against my car and say you know, we'll never fix this thing without changing the union contracts. it wasn't just the union contracts. it's also these district rules. you know it's also the relationship between unions and the democratic party. these are things, these are uncomfortable that woulds that i decided to put in the movie which meant we took a lot-of-hits. we took a lot of criticism and controversy. but i think it was worth. if it was worth taking those punches because what it means is people are talking about it in a fresh way. >> you want to change the debate. >> absolutely. >> so what ought the debate be. what should be the debate sm.

>> well, the first thing is and when we talk approximated about making this movie three years ago now with participant media was how do we get people to talk about it. this is an issue that was lying very low. it wasn't on people's minds. you know, very few am of experts were talking being, in the paper but people were turning the page. that was the main goal. and i think if you were to judge the movie on that, even if you disagree or agree with it, people were talking about it, that was the number one goal. but you know, i think you have to be able to talk about the role of unions here. you've got to. where are they spending their money. how are they, are they on the right side of the thing or the wrong side of the thing. there are some unions like in delaware which are doing a wonderful job. in colorado they are doing a wonderful job. but there is such thing as a healthy union, and an unhealthy union. >> so what opinion would i have of randy watching your film? >> i have, well, a lot of people would say she is a ville ann in the movie and that is-- you know. >> do you reject that idea. >> i do. i mean but i know her an i

showed her the movie personally and said i want to you see this movie. i asked her to write a chapter in the book that is on your desk. i said look, we're not going to agree on a lot of things. but let's agree on some things. let's agree on having a healthy debate about this. so she has been great. we've had panel after panel where we debate this thing. >> why were there not more examples of successful public schools with very effective teachers shown? >> so i knew that the lottery would be a metaphor and so we looked for district schools, noncharters that had lotteries. and i do have them. but they wouldn't let us shoot. because district schools, some of it is just a bureaucracy. some bureaucrat halfway up says you can't do that. others say we don't want to show only serving some of these kids and not others. >> what is it. >> i would have done it if i could have. and it never was meant to be charters are the answer. never. >> and to those who say it's anti-union, you plead guilty to that?

>> not anti-union. it's we all have to change. the unions, and i think randy winegarten more than nea. there are two teachers unions. aft, american federation of teachers and nea. >> i wish randy would go further but she is starting to make the new contract she made with michelle reid in dc is on the way. the one she made in new haven. the one she fought for in colorado is rethinking tenure. and that was not there. that was not on the table before we made the movie. tenure was this locked down thing and now they are talking about tenure being a more flexible idea. and that's fantastic. >> here you have joel klein who is chancellor here in new york. just wrote a piece in "the wall street journal" saying we can fix public education. he's right. >> yup. i am more excited than i have ever been. >> the debate is in the air. >> the debate is in the air and there is a new generation of reformers. a lot of them came out of -- >> and these were teachers. >> michelle reid came out

didn't she. >> yeah. a perfect example. a teacher goes into baltimore and starts teaching. >> these are people who are not necessarily trained to be teachers. >> that's right. they come out of an ivy league institution, generally a very exclusive, it's harder to get into teacher of america than most law schools and they become a teacher. and they go wait a minute, this is a disaster. we have to do more. so those teachers have become the fueled a new generation of reformers. and they're not airy fairy. they're not idea will-- idealogue or republicans or democrats. they are prague magazine tests. what is michelle ri. >> she is luke, she is the korean american luke. >> and does she have a future here in terms of what she wants to carve out for herself. >> no doubt. and not just the debate. there is a debate which is essential. but these things are decided at the negotiating table. chancellor klein, now black sits across the table from

the head of the union. and now it will be michelle there. and she had have the muscle and money to say wait a minute, someone's not talking about the kids here. so you know, and she's-- in her "newsweek" editorial she said she has made some mistakes. but man, she is, no one is fighting for the kids. >> rose: before i show one clip of one of these kids tell me what it is that jeffrey canada, he is the go-to guy four, what does he believe? >> well, like everybody else in the reform movement, enough is enough. we have to make change now. and his special thing is get them early. don't let them get behind. and also you can teach every kid. and it's an american story. my relatives came off a boat. they didn't speak the language. they didn't have the money but school was an elevator. and he is saying the excuse of poverty shouldn't be an excuse, it's real. so there is, you know, what dianne and others will say is poverty is a heavy pole.

you can't ignore it. and it is absolutely true. >> rose: she's write about that. you can't ignore. >> and i agree. it is a downward pole but to me the thing that is the upward lift is a great school and jeffrey canada proved it. >> rose: here is one character, daisy, a fifth grade frere los angeles. >> i want to be a nurse. i want to be be a doctor and i want to be a veterinarian. >> she chose her college and she wrote a letter to the administrations asking them to allow her to attend their college. >> i want to go to a medical college or a vet nar can-- veterinarian college because i really want to become a surgeon. >> daisy's path to medical school begins with 8th gradall go bra which she will need to take when she moves up to stevenson middle school. by the time they sleeves-- leaves stef everyoneson only 13% of her klaas mate-- classmates will proficient in math. stevenson feeds into

roosevelt one of the worst performing high schools in los angeles. only 3 out of 100 students at roosevelt will graduate with the classes necessary for administration to a four-year university. and 57% of daisy's classmates won't graduate. >> is your mom or dad told you about the lottery? >> the lottery? isn't that when people play and they win money? >> daisy and her parents have found one other option. 8th graders at kip l.a. prep get triple the classroom time in math and science. and by the time they finish 8th grade they will have doubled their math and reading scores. judith and jose have decided to enter datesee into the kip lottery. >> go like this, cross your fingers. i got a good feeling about this. >> the spaces for the xs are for the fifth grade students that are moving into the

sixth grade for next year. >> raymosso andrew. >> come on, daisy, cross your fingers. >> rose: i want to show one other clip from this film. it's bill gates who has put his money where his ideas are in supporting education. here is a clip from bill gates. >> at the end of 2009 the unemployment rate was almost 10%. but the high-tech industry could not find enough qualified people to fill their jobs. instead, they had to go halfway around the world to recruit the engineers and programmers they needed. >> with the only really proven thing to make an economy work well is to have a well educated workforce. and people get panicked about the economic success of this country. well, there is one thing that will determine that,.

>> bill gates was so worried about the state of our schools he testified before congress. >> we cannot sustain an economy based on innovation unless we have citizens well educated in math, science and engineering. if we fail at this, we won't be able to compete in the global economy. how strong the country is 20 years from now and how equitable the country is 20 years from now will be largely driven by this issue. >> rose: dow feel now optimistic? >> i do. >> rose: the tide has turned. >> the tide has turned and we know what works. ten years ago when i made the first film there was this feeling, you can't go there. you can't teach those kids. or those parents don't care. now some of those things are still real. there ready kids that come in with real problems there are parents that aren't partners but the kip schools and jeffrey canada schools have proven that you can do it. so we have, we have the proof that you can do it we've got smart people who are seeing that it's

possible. and the third piece i think is us. clamouring and saying we have to do this now. >> rose: what stands in the way. >> i think there is entrenched forces. the system what michelle rhi says, the system is built for harmony amongst adults. the union is one piece, the centralized bureaucracy another piece. and some cases the politicsment when the democratic party has been getting tons of money from the unions for years to do very little. i think obama is changing that. race to the top has changed that. >> rose: he is looking for a place where he can stay to constituents i'm prepared to take on traditional constituencies. and you say then where, and he would say schools. >> i think the most courageous thing obama has done is his position on education. because it flying in the face of his biggest supporters. but that's what the film is about. people will debate that i got this wrong, you know, or this is unfair. but bringing more people to the talk and saying this is

an outrage. a kid shouldn't have to win the lottery to have a great school. we've had such a great response to this movie. it's become, you buy a ticket and you are saying this matters to me. and people are,ive sea been to 25 cities. and people are buying the book. it's now on "the new york times" best-seller list and they are coming together around the movie and the conversation is changing, charlie. and it is the most gratifying, best job in the world. >> davis guggenheim, thank you. >> wonderful to be here. >> rose: thank you. clay christensen is here. he is a professor of business at the harvard business school. his work in the field of innovation has had a huge impact on how companies stay competitive. today he's applying those same theories to health care and education. he's also a teacher who has lead his students to ask questions about how they conduct their lives as well as their careers. he wrote an article in the july august issue of the harvard business review called "how will you measure

your life" i am pleased to have clay christensen back on this program with me here in boston. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. great to be here. >> rose: so you wrote this piece called "how will you measure your life" just for a moment, you have been living with cancer. on top of that, you suffered a stroke. >> yes. >> rose: tell me about it. >> you know, charlie, it has been both an extraordinary experience and a wonderful experience. and in ways that i never imagined before as i've been treated for these diseas disease-- diseases. i just can imagine tens of thousands of people who have given their lives to understand how the world works. and how god put everything together.

every one of them dedicated to move just some little piece of this system together. and i can think of them in a funnel. and all of that energy just funnels down to poor little old clay christensen. the benefit of all of those wonderful people who dedicated their lives to help me. and in the same way, people who cared for me enough that have prayed for me that i might respond to this. so even though it has been hard to just think about in our world how, in ways that aren't clear at the beginning, we're all helping each other is something that i just never had thought about before. >> you but also thought about you how you measure your life. >> yeah. i-- you know, i've seen big people and small people and i have been on the small side of things.

but one day i was my stroke causes me to-- sometimes the words just don't come out. but they pass me over for an important new assignment. and i just wondered if i don't get that, what will i be? how will god measure my life at the end? and then i got an idiot simple insight. and that is that you and i because we have limit capabilities, if we tried to understand was's going on, we have to, we have to count things. and so a corporation's c.e.o. is in a bigger position than a lower level c.e.o.. and the bigger we preside over bigger things, the more important our life is. and that's the way we think.

but god doesn't have to integrate above the level of individual people in order to have a perfect understanding of how the world works. and what that means is that when we, i come to the end of my life and i have my interview with him, he's to the going to worry about what positions i had, but rather he's going to say klay, let's just talk about this situation that i put you in. can you talk to me about the individual people whose lives you blessed by the talent that i gave you. and let's talk about what you did in that situation to help individual people be better because of what i gave to you. and because god measures only at the level of the individual, the way he will measure my life is the extend to-- extent to which which bless individual

people with my love and what god gave to me. and that's how i came up with the idea of the article that how will god-- how will we measure your life. >> rose: and did you write this hoping that we would come to that conclusion before we reached the end? >> that's right. to know why we're here-- . >> rose: while we're here. >> that's right. is just of critical importance to guide our life. i just, i talk about this with my students every semester, one-on-one as a whole group. and so many of the very best people are going out to sea in a boat that has no rudder. as the storm is coming, if you don't have a sense for why are you here and why you are-- where you're going and how you manage the ship, it's a very difficult life

that they are embarked on. >> you had the capacity to challenge the students and have the students challenge ideas. where did that come from? just a technique of teaching sm. >> if you think of your students as research assistants, as opposed to your being the teacher and their being the student, you can learn so much from each other. and so the way we organize our class is there are two pieces. one is i ask them to prepare in advance a theory about some dimension of management and every manager is a consumer of theories. because any time you do something you are using a theory that says if i do this, this will be the result. and so we have them read the theory. then we ask them to read a case and put the theory like a set of lenses. and examine this case to figure out why did this

company get into this situation. and what action does the management take to solve the problem. >> right. >> pirro: . >> then i ask the student that you also need to come to class having prepared to show clay christiensen what's wrong with his theory. and as i try to engage them not just to tell me what it does, but what it doesn't do, i walk out thinking holy cow. i can't believe they paid me to learn from my students. >> rose: exactly. there is also this. you have given commencement speeches on the idea. question. what's the theory? >> well, i'm not the first one to think of this. but man, if you don't ask the right question, you will never get the right answer. and yet so many of our teachers have decided that the way we perform is by telling them what with the questions are. and then getting, and

measure them by their ability to give the answer. and if they don't know to define the question they will never get the answer. and this is, it 457s at the national level. -- never think about asking the right question. we just assume the question, so that we can get to the answer. and take us into horrible opportunities that we never would somewhere imagined going into had we done that. and all the way down to our engineering classes. >> rose: einstein said that getting to the right answer, 9 a-- 95% of it is asking the right question. >> yeah. i was a white house fellow earlier in my career and for some reason they gave us an opportunity to meet with richard nixon for four hours. and we decided that ten years earlier he had opened

relations with china. we asked him, why did you do that? because it was very counterto what most of america believed needed to be done at the time. and nixon said you know for my study of foreign affairs, what i realized is that every time america had tried to isolate a totalitarian regime, isolation caused them to become stronger. because it gave them the opportunity to control what people could know, and to blame america for everything that is wrong. >> rose: so they can say the reason are you suffering is to the because we are inept, but because of america. >> exactly right. and every time we had opened up our interaction with twhem, first for diplomacy and then ultimately to commercial interaction, always the totalitarian government collapsed.

and he said you know we've been isolating china since 1959. mao just became stronger and stronger and we just needed to weaken him. and look what happened. we got rid of our most power wfl foe without killing a person. by interacting with them. you look at where america continues to try to isolate people. it's north korea, cuba, myanmar, iran, and we just do it over and over again. and the current, both the bush and obama administrations are thinking that if we just isolate iran somehow we'll make them be, weak. and they don't ask the right questions. >> with the idea that you approximate first famous for was disruptive innovation. >> uh-huh. >> rose: what was that? >> we always had assumed

that when an established successful company stumbles and gets killed it's because the managers were just incompetent. and i realized oh pie gosh, that's not true. they succeed because they do everything right. and somebody comes in and takes a piece of the market that the leader doesn't want to-- and that's what always kills them. >> so they give because they are so good, they give an opportunity for somebody else to come in and to build with different margins and different success. >> that's right. >> that was with the disruptive idea. so now you come along and you have written the innovaters description, a disruptive solution for health care. what's the solution for health care we need? >> well w it's important to ask the question we have these extraorbd hospitals,

staffed by extraordinary specialists. and do we think that health care will become affordable and accessible? by expecting the hospitals to become cheap? or the pet specialist to take pay cuts. it just won't happen so what we have to do is bring technology to outrage clinics so that we can do in that setting more and more of the things that today we had to do in a hospital. and then keep driving that technology so they can do pore and more. and then bring technology to doctors offices and patients homes. so you can do more in those venues that previously had to be done in the clinic or a hospital. and in the same way we need to bring technology to personal care doctors so that they can do pore and more of the things that today they have to refer to a specialist. and technology to nurse practitioners so they can do

more and more of what today require a doctor. so it is enabling lower cost venues of care and lower cost caregivers to be able to do more and more sophisticated things. that's the way health care become as fordable and accessible, not by expectinging expensive ones to become cheap. >> rose: great to see you. >> great to see you, charlie. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> god bless you. >> rose: mar vard business review, this piece how will you merbure your life by clayton m christensen from boston at public television station wgbh, see you next time. vi captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org