Pantechnicon; B.U. (Boston University?) Desegregation

Good evening and welcome to Pan Technica, GBH Radio's Nightly Magazine on the Arts, Entertainment, and Ideas for New England. I'm Greg Fitzgerald. Later in tonight's program, Jerry Miller will talk with Dr. Miriam Classby, who is co-director of the Boston University School desegregation program, a program that was mandated in an order by Judge Arthur W. Garrity when the first desegregation orders were handed down. But first, however, Louis Lyons with his Friday evening news and commentary. December's brought us a seasonal reminder last night with winter's first hard strike. The temperature's down under 10 degrees here. It left elaborate frost patterns decorating the window panes like old-fashioned lace valentines that resisted the morning's bright, hard sunshine. The evening's electric storm created a brief spectacular of lightning flashes through the snow-filled sky.

It left only a dust of snow here, but they had three to five inches in northern New England. The news from Buffalo makes us realize how easily we got off. Three storms there in three days to pile up nearly three feet of snow, and close down practically everything. Schools, banks, stores, the airport, even city hall, closed after the mayor proclaimed an emergency to order traffic to make way for snow plows. President-elect Carter, this afternoon, announced his first cabinet appointment, Cyrus Vance, to be Secretary of State. And he confirmed the earlier report of his fellow judge in Burton Lance to be budget director. Carter withheld other appointments that had been anticipated at his press conference. It was widely assumed that his gathering of economists and business leaders this week at Plains to discuss the economy, included those he would be announcing for Treasury, Commerce, Labor, and Defense today. But that seems to have been just what he described it, a meeting for economic advice.

The economy itself made news of his most urgent problem today with the Labor Department's announcement that the unemployment rate in November had gone up to 8.1%. In October, it went up to 7.9%. Judge Minnie and other labor leaders called on Carter to act to stimulate the economy. He said it will probably need some kind of stimulus, that it's in worst shape, even then he said in the campaign. But he'll wait to January to decide on what form of stimulus. As the Cyrus Vance, he's had extensive government experience in Washington abroad. Now 59, he became General Counselor of the Defense Department in 1961, and then Secretary of the Army in 1962, that was under Kennedy. President Johnson appointed him as partnered with April Harman to the most important diplomatic task of the Johnson administration to negotiate an ending to the Vietnam War. That was the conference that was bogged down in endless dispute as to the shape of the conference table in Paris.

That was Q's technique to deadlock the conference. With an election coming up, President Johnson failed to take the advice of Harman and Vance to call on two to Fisher cut bait and get on with a settlement. Instead, the Johnson administration let the Vietnam War drag on into the Nixon administration. With that and other experience, Vance has had abundant opportunity to absorb some of the wild and wisdom of Harman, our most experienced and sophisticated diplomat of the last two decades. Vance had become a partner in a leading New York firm before his government service. Both the outgoing and coming national administrations have made it plain that they feel the economy has been sabotaged by the power of steel. The steel leaders exploited the weakest link in the American government system to announce a price increase at the low point in government authority. The President-elect is without power to act. The lame duck Ford administration is in process of dismantling. The Republican administration's chairman of the stabilization board says steel tried to jump the gun with an unjustified price rise.

By jump the gun, he means set up a new price level before the new administration could establish controls. Tip O'Neill, the incoming majority leader of the house called the price rise a below the belt hit at a new president. Senator Mondale called it very ominous for the economy unless administered price sectors show restraint he said we can't handle inflation. They all see in the rise a threat to set off price rises generally that will push inflation higher. Carter's press secretary says the press elect has done all he can. He got two Republican congressional leaders to seek to have the industry roll back the increase this failed. Congressman Morehead, Democratic chairman of the subcommittee on stabilization, says the Congress will not stand idly by and see the economic recovery dealt a near lethal blow through administered price manipulation by some industries. And he's called a hearing of his committee on the increase for Wednesday.

Republican and Democratic economists and officials were caught by surprise with the steel market week and its production farm below capacity the last condition to invite a price rise. But the steel strategy as they see it has been to anticipate what the demand will be six months from now and get the prices up now before our new administration is in a position to act. Public opinion has a minimum effect on the steel industry for it does not sell its product directly to consumers but as a basic component of manufactured products. So it need have little concern with public relations. Senator Mondale says there is no way to escape the conclusion that the steel industry was taking advantage of the fact that Carter does not get an office. Another price rise basically hits the economy at the same time the federal power commission authorizes a six and a half percent increase in the price of natural gas. And then a further one and a half percent retroactive to last summer to take effect early next year.

And they say that the holding down of gas prices by controls has caused a decline in gas production and that there's needed an incentive to discover more gas resource. This too is a move made in advance of the new administration and reflecting the philosophy of the Nixon Ford appointees. In contrast to the urgent problems with the domestic economy stacked against him Carter has an encouraging prospect for the start of his foreign relations. President has responded to Carter saying he'd give immediate attention to the stolen arms talks. President have sent the president elect a message by Treasury Secretary Simon who was visiting Moscow that he will seek to avoid any crisis with the new administration. Carter is reported very appreciated for this attitude. The arms conference had been suspended during the United States presidential campaign when President Ford retreated from Daytona under Reagan's attack. Arms control is the great big issue but the Russians also have a keen desire to see it trade treaty with the United States completed.

Senator Jackson has succeeded in having them denied most favored nation treatment on credit and tariff until they remove restrictions on immigration. This the Soviets regard as interference in their domestic policy. How the Carter administration can manage this conflict between its relations with Moscow and its relations with a powerful senator will be a double test of its diplomatic capacity. The United States and Russian trade and economic council is just winding up their annual meeting in Moscow. President have had appealed to them that the Jackson amendment so-called inserted in the 1974 trade bill to deny most favored nation treatment to the Russians was discriminatory. Half the 400 council members are American businessman and officials. Its last action was to pass a resolution urging repeal of the Jackson amendment as President has requested. Mexico inaugurated a new president this week, the attendance of Secretary Kissinger and Mrs. Carter in the United States delegation, drew attention to this neighbor of 60 million people to the South.

As with Canada we become aware of Mexico only through some crisis there. The Mexican crisis has been in land, the outgoing President Esheburea as his final act authorized the expropriation of more than a million acres of greater states, which some 32,000 landless peasants had already appropriated. Land reform in Mexico as in much of Latin America has been an unfulfilled promise of the politicians. In Mexico the promise dates back to the 1910 revolution. Esheburea's belated and partial move to head off a peasant revolt was followed up by a successor, Lopez Portillo, who in his inaugural last forgiveness by the dispossessed for not having lifted them out of their misery, his language. The entire country is aware and ashamed of our backwardness in this respect he said. The necessity of greater social justice was the keynote of his inaugural. He said his government has a double responsibility to obtain sufficient production to feed our people and to do justice to all workers.

He asked for national unity against panic to support stern economic measures. The government has just devalued its PSO by 11.5% to expand the market for its exports. The Supreme Court in ordering postponement the execution of Gary Gilmore in Utah Monday ordered the Utah officials to respond to the question that Gilmore's mother raised about his competency to waive his right of appeal as he had in insisting on execution. The Supreme Court's decision this week to rule on Louisiana's mandatory death sentence or murder of a policeman calls attention to the uncertain state of the law and capital punishment. For last July the court struck down the mandatory death penalty of Louisiana and North Carolina while accepting the discretionary capital punishment law of Georgia, Florida and Texas. To look at the Louisiana law again suggests the situation is not yet clear the decision against it last July was a close thing five to four.

The court had ruled 72 that the death sentence is not inherently unconstitutional and had defined the limits within which judge and jury may exercise discretion in imposing it. Many states have revised their laws to meet that ruling. The Ohio Supreme Court the other day affirmed an automatic death sentence for the murder of a policeman. Another attempt is shaping up in the master's legislature to enact a law the courts will accept. Pornography is another problem that is frustrated the court for years to define an illegal control. Cities have been struggling without much legal authority to prevent their central areas slipping into skid rows and red light districts. New York has been stumped to stop the further deterioration of time square. In Boston the near equivalent of a red light district was created for the action or inaction of the redevelopment authority permitting the concentration of the pornographic industry in what they assigned the euphonious name of the adult entertainment area colloquial called the combat zone. This they say they did to meet the concern of residents and businesses of adjacent areas that the smuts on would spread to infiltrate their neighborhoods.

The police and crime have got out of control there and police and prosecutors in Boston in a conference this week pronounced as a failure the aim to protect the larger community by tolerance of a pornographic industry in one district. But Detroit has hit up on what they see is at least a partial answer going the other way in zoning and the Supreme Court has upheld the Detroit zoning requirement that keeps such enterprises at least a thousand feet apart. And working on such a plan to dilute the concentration of the so called adult entertainment industry in Boston's first step of the conference this week to do something was to secure agreement of the licensing board to enforce the laws that they can exercise control over over bars. I'm speaking with Dr. Miriam Klaspy. Dr. Klaspy is co-director of the district one collaborative.

When Judge Arthur Garrity signed his now famous order for school desegregation he mandated a great deal more than busing a little known in unpublicized aspect of the order called for assistance from Boston's business cultural and college communities in the process of school desegregation for the first time a federal court mandated involvement by the private sector in the processes of education. Judge Garrity didn't specify the nature of that involvement in his order he said the approaches taken by the paired partners may include staff development the design of educational material etc. A choice will depend upon a joint estimate of what is needed and a determination of how the capabilities and interests of the colleges and universities can best serve these needs. Boston University is one of 25 educational institutions in the greater Boston area involved in the collaborative program with recently desegregated schools. Dr. Miriam Klaspy is co-director of the BU effort. Dr. Klaspy what is the district one collaborative?

The program is an effort to bring together three partners in the job of developing programs within the schools and that is the district school office with its administrative staff and its school personnel, the district advisory council of parents and other partners in the process plus the university personnel. So with the three way relationship attempting to bring new resources to schools. You work in school district one in reading the material I understand that you work in about 16 schools with some 7,000 students in keeping with the judges order how do you go about determining the needs of the school district and matching those needs to the resources of the university. That's been a very important part of the whole process when the pairing was originally announced a year ago, April, a group of parents and teachers administrators and university people met at the summer for a workshop to define special areas of need.

Since then we're constantly engaged in examining those and more particularly in developing programs for this year we had a nine person planning team again representing the three groups who attempted to define what the priorities were. What are those priorities? For this year our priority areas are the basic skills which include our math and reading work and then multi cultural programs efforts to provide opportunities where children can inter-relate and interact to understand the various cultural backgrounds. Are you attempting to address the issue of racial, not I don't want to say violence but racial prejudices. I think that's basic to our efforts because it's one of the underlying needs that must be addressed.

However, most of our programs focus primarily on substantive school work because this is what our mandate is and this is where parents and teachers are looking for help and for some success. And we hope that through this effort the increased understanding and mutual respect will grow. You mentioned a number of the programs. Could you tell us what other specific programs there are that have been implemented as a result of the meetings this summer? As a result of the meeting of the core planning team we during the last spring which now produced this year's activities we have two programs at the Brighton High School which are specifically designed for minority students. There is a education program for the Chinese students and a language program for Spanish-speaking students and Chinese students using a mobile lab.

One of the things we are pleased with is that many activities carried on now were initiated voluntarily last year and they've shown their worth and they're continuing the Chinese career education program as an example. Another program of that same type is an adult language program that was started last year at the Tobin School to teach English to the Spanish-speaking. That has now been developed to a point where there are three classes at the Tobin for Spanish and then another course for Spanish parent. There are three courses at the Tobin. One is to teach English to Spanish-speaking, another one is to improve the Spanish literacy of Spanish-speaking and another one is to teach Spanish to the English-speaking people. In addition we have courses which are being offered at the Lion District Center which is providing another opportunity for English-speaking people to learn Spanish.

So that need for the language training is a new step building on some of last year's activities and sense of need and again indirectly it's responding to your other question as to ways of increasing understanding. The language facility is one of the best ways. How are these efforts funded? There are set of programs which are funded by state monies where state funds under chapter 636 racial imbalance law which have supported number of efforts. Like any good federal program it eventually expires. What happens when these expire? Does Boston University have the financial commitment to keep these things going? That's a critical question and we've been conscious of that problem from the very beginning.

One of the things we've done is to make very pointed efforts to try to develop a relationship that will continue even if those state monies disappear. One of the things we're convinced of is that there are many many resources within the university that can be made available at minimal cost that there are many ways in which the university can do what it does anyway but do it with special emphasis and special focus on district 1. BU was not part of the original school to segregation suit. As I understand it, I'm confused then as to how federal judge can mandate you to do much of anything. Is this a legal obligation you have or is it more a community obligation or perhaps a moral obligation that the university has to assist? The definition of the pairing does occur in the original court order and I suppose to that degree it has legal base and it has been supported in the appeals that have been made.

I sense however among the people who are working in the universities and now I'm speaking not just of BU but of the other institutions who those coordinators meet regularly. There's very much a sense of moral and personal commitment that Boston and Boston schools are not strangers or outsiders. This is part of where our work is, part of where our concerns are and that there is a very basic commitment to making whatever contribution is possible. Is there any way at this point in time to ascertain what impact all of this has had on the educational attainment of minority students? That obviously is going to be a difficult question and one of the things that we're always concerned about is how do we define success.

It seems to me that one of the things that the university coordinators as a whole resist is being pushed to being accountable for the learning outcomes of students. This is a very minor program in relationship to the total school program, one of many. We are accountable for the funds expended but we are accountable for funds expended but those funds are only a tiny fraction of the overall school budget and we cannot assume responsibility for making a major and significant and sudden difference in students. Do you feel that you can really make progress toward aiding the educational process of these kids? Is this program large enough to make any significant impact five years from now? Given the fact that Boston University is working in a district with somewhere over 5,000 students, I believe that over five years we are in a position to make a significant difference.

Are there any quantifiable standards against which you'll be judged or this program will be judged, let's say five years from now? Things that can be actually measured? That is the problem of evaluation is a very serious problem and we discussed it a little bit earlier and I am not yet comfortable that we have been able to define precisely what those are. One of the problems in terms of receiving state funds for a certain program means that the narrowest form of evaluation is to say you are providing this service, did that service achieve its result. I find that true, I have to be evaluated only in terms of a narrow program, doesn't provide an opportunity to get a whole picture of what the whole relationship was, what are the ideas that got started, that wouldn't have got started if people didn't mix, what are the ways in which teachers may think differently about children now simply because they had conversations they wouldn't have had. One of the resources that BU could probably best bring is the development of curriculum or program designs to sensitize teachers to the needs and the very special needs of low income students be they black or white.

Are you doing anything in that area and has the school administration through the district office accepted your initiatives? One of the things that we have to strongly avoid is the notion that a university has the answers of dealing with various multicultural groupings or socioeconomic groupings those are not easy things to do with and I don't believe there are any firm experts at the time at this time. We have feel that one of the important things the university must do is not attempt to come in as the the outside expert but to develop by a working relationship at the classroom level and be primarily concerned with building the staff competencies internally within the school. One very neat piece of our program this year I think is that we are carrying over an activity from last year where 12 teachers engaged in two full weeks of developing a district curriculum guide for reading.

This year under our contract those teachers will be released two days a month to work with other classroom teachers in developing and providing support. That notion of instructional support I think is far more important in developing a cadre of teachers than if one shot or a two shot workshop or weekend where the outsiders come in. I would not disagree with that but it strikes me that many teachers middle income white and black teachers have very negative images of poor children. It would also seem to me that there is a need to deal with that. The level of self esteem of many of the children are negative to begin with. It seems to me that if teachers don't realize the impact that their own attitudes have on the child's level of self esteem then the educational process may really go by the boards because these kids may not be able to hear what these teachers are saying to them in terms of reading writing and arithmetic.

I guess I still don't know what it is you're doing with regard to dealing with these racial feelings of teachers. Obviously we're not confronting them head on and I would be the first to admit that. I think that one of the things that is basic to the programs that we're offering is an effort to provide a whole set of alternative ways in which a child can experience success. For example, with the theater program that's in the fifth grade at the Tobin, this classroom activity offers children a chance to speak out and I happen to think the fact of speaking in a classroom is as important as an indicator of child's sense of itself as being able to read at a certain grade level. So that by one of the things I think we're trying very slowly to develop is a whole array of different opportunities that children have to sense success and through these options.

I think you create a climate in which teachers then see them succeeding in different ways and come to know that the teachers themselves don't need to be totally reliant upon very narrow measures of cognitive achievement. And the teachers have cognitive achievement in the test scores. Jerry Miller, talking with Dr. Miriam Klaspy, co-director of the Boston University School Disagregation Program. For Pan Technicon, I'm Greg Fitzgerald. Pan Technicon is produced in the studios of WGBH Boston by Greg Fitzgerald.

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