The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. In the news this Labor Day, ten people are still missing from the air crash which killed 67 in California. An unknown number of people died when a Soviet liner sank in the Black Sea. Soviet authorities said they plan to keep an American reporter in jail for ten days. We'll have the details of these stories in our news summary coming up. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: After the news summary, tonight's focuses on the News Hour look like this. First, in the aftermath of that tragic air collision in Los Angeles, an air safety expert joins us to talk about the problems of controlling small planes. Then on the arrest of the American reporter in Moscow, we get three views: from his editor at U.S. News & World Report and from two former Moscow correspondents, one of whom was arrested himself on similar charges nine years ago. Next, part one of our week long series on education. Tonight John Merrow looks at the so-called Doctor J syndrome -- the hopeless dreams of many inner-city youths to go on to big time athletic stardom. And finally, a retrospective by sculptor Henry Moore.News Summary

MacNEIL: As many as 77 people may have died in the fiery mess created yesterday by the collision of a Mexican jetliner and a small plane over the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos. The Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block said that ten people were missing from the community where the wreckage of the aircraft fell and burned. Sixty-seven were known dead -- everybody aboard the Aeromexico DC-9, including at least 27 Americans, and three from the single engine Piper Archer. We have a report on the aftermath by Peter Grauman of public station KCET, Los Angeles.

OETER GRAUMAN [voiceover]: Sixty-four people were aboard the Aeromexico jetliner when it came crashing down on a neighborhood of single family homes in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos. The plane had been on approach to Los Angeles International Airport when it collided with a small, single engine, private aircraft that eyewitnesses saw strike the tail section of the passenger jet.

Eyewitness: I heard like a big smack, right? And as I looked up, I saw, like, this little plane kind of, like, hit with the other plane. It looked like a -- it did like a nose dive, because it did one of these numbers, and just boom. And when it hit, you know, you felt it too.

GRAUMAN [voice-over]: On the ground, 16 homes were engulfed in the debris and flames ignited by the crash. Firefighters and coroners spent much of today digging through the wreckage, trying to determine how many people on the ground were killed.

GORDON PEARSON, Los Angeles Fire Department: It's difficult to tell who was in the airplane, who was in their home. The size of the remains is going to be a part of the determining factor, but the coroner's office right now is sorting through all those things.

GRAUMAN [voice-over]: Officials say they won't have a final death toll until tomorrow at the earliest. Meanwhile, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will be coming through the wreckage in an attempt to determine the cause of the crash. They'll be joined by aviation officials from Mexico in an effort to understand how the Aeromexico DC-9 and the small Piper aircraft could have collided with no warning coming from air traffic controllers. Yesterday's disaster underlines the pressure on the nation's air traffic control systems. Only days ago some 30 Los Angeles air traffic controllers were suspended by the Federal Aviation Administration, pending an investigation of alleged drug use.

MacNEIL: At a news conference late today, an official of the National Transportation Safety Board said a voice recorder from the Mexican airliner has been recovered and is on its way to Washington. He also said a transponder used to measure altitude has been recovered from the wreckage of the small plane and appears to have been operating improperly.

In the Black Sea, a Soviet liner sank after colliding with a freighter at night. Soviet authorities said there had been some loss of life, and rescue operations were continuing 20 hours after the collision, but gave no more details. The 61 year old vessel, Admiral Nakhimov, had berths for 870 passengers. Judy?

WOODRUFF: A spokesman for President Reagan said today that the administration will not let the arrest of an American reporter in Moscow on spy charges interfere with high level planning for a superpower summit. Those comments came from White House spokesman Larry Speaks after Saturday's arrest of Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for the magazine U.S. News & World Report. Daniloff's wife and 16 year old son were permitted to visit him in prison today. And afterwards, Mrs. Daniloff said she had been told her husband would be held for ten days, after which a decision would be made about whether to press espionage charges against him. Meeting with reporters in California, where the President is vacationing, Speaks accused the Soviets of making Daniloff a hostage to contrived charges, but he would not discuss any steps the administration might be willing to take to win his release. There has been speculation that the Soviets targeted Daniloff in order to arrange a swap between him and a Soviet physicist arrested in the U.S. on spying charges a little over a week ago.

MacNEIL: In South Africa, 18 people were injured when a bomb exploded in a suburban market in the city of Durban. It is the ninth bombing since the government imposed a state of emergency in June. Today the government said that 9,337 people have been detained for more than 30 days under the emergency powers.

WOODRUFF: Representatives of the so-called nonaligned nations of the world kicked off their annual summit today with the first of a series of blasts at the United States. We have a report from Michael Buerk of the BBC.

MICHAEL BUERK [voice-over]: A drum rattle in Harare -- a metaphorical call to arms against South Africa. Zimbabwe welcoming leaders of the world's nonaligned countries to a summit meeting, driving them there in 55 brand new Mercedes limousines. It's unfortunate, but symbolic somehow, they have to be bought from South Africa. Security's the overwhelming consideration here. Though many leaders are relatively unknown. Others, like the PLO's Yasir Arafat, have enemies with long arms. The Middle East and Central America are on the agenda, but the week will be dominated by ways to bring down white South Africa. Outside the conference, antiaircraft guns search the skies for South African jets. Inside, the new chairman of the movement was calling for all to impose sanctions immediately.

ROBERT MUGABE, prime minister, Zimbabwe: The apartheid regime kills defenseless demonstrators as a matter of routine, violently uproots and relegates millions of its black citizens to wretched dust bowls, and tortures and murders those whom it holds in detention. What is needed now is action.

WOODRUFF: Iran and Iraq traded claims of battlefield success as new fighting between them broke out today. Iran said it captured seven strategic hills along the northern front. Tehran radio said that Iranian troops pushed deep inside Iraq and captured hundreds of Iraqi defenders. For its part, Baghdad reported that Iraq crushed the Iranian attack and killed thousands of Iranian fighters. The war enters its seventh year this month. Military observers expect Iran to launch a major attack in the desert near the Iraqi cities of Bahgdad or Basra.

MacNEIL: Ambassador Vernon Walters, on a special mission for President Reagan, was in Madrid today on the first stop of an eight country tour to marshall support against Libya. After conferring with the Spanish foreign minister, Walters said he was talking about terrorism, but making no demands.

In Tripoli, Colonel Moammar Khadafy celebrated his 17th anniversary as the leader of Libya with a parade and a three hour speech in the central square. We have a report from Brian Barron of the BBC.

BRIAN BARRON [voice-over]: Khadafy warned the United States that his country has the full backing of the Soviet Union. He heaped praise on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and abuse on President Reagan. Khadafy claimed he would form an international army outside Libya and use it to fight America everywhere. It was Khadafy's first public speech in the capital since the U.S. bombing raid in April. And shortly after his oration, a massive show of military strength filed through the streets of Tripoli. Among the display was a float holding what an announcer claimed was a remnant of a U.S9 plane, allegedly shot down during the April raids. Columns of Soviet-made tanks followed, together with antiaircraft and ground to ground missiles. It was the largest military parade in Libya since 1984, and appeared to focus on air defense.

WOODRUFF: That wraps up our summary of the news on this Labor Day. Just ahead on the News Hour, an air safety expert talks about the dangers of small planes at big airports. Three views of what's involved in the arrest of an American reporter in Moscow on spying charges. Part one of our week long series on education -- tonight, the Dr. J syndrome. And finally, a look back at the work of sculptor Henry Moore. Sifting the Wreckage

MacNEIL: First tonight, we focus on the midair collision which killed a known 67 people in Los Angeles yesterday -- a death toll that could rise, because ten people on the ground are still missing. Besides trying to find and identify the dead, investigators are also trying to learn how the small, private airplane and the Aeromexico DC-9 crossed paths. To explore some of the questions, we have Robert Rudich, a former senior investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board and an air traffic control expert. He now works as a private consultant.

Mr. Rudich, how do you interpret what the National Transportation Safety Board has said so far today?

ROBERT RUDICH, air safety expert: I would say that the easiest way to interpret that, Mr. Lehrer --

MacNEIL: MacNeil. The other one.

Mr. RUDICH: Excuse me, Mr. MacNeil, is that there are more questions at this stage of the investigation than answers. In order for any reasonable answers to these questions to be derived requires a fair amount of analysis of radar data. This analysis will then produce a meaningful set of graphics that the investigators can look at and make a reasonable determination of flight paths, approach angles and so forth.

MacNEIL: Explain to us the significance of the transponder from the small plane that was found -- found in a switched on position, but switched also, apparently, to the code 1,200. What does that all mean, and what will they read from that?

Mr. RUDICH: Well, assuming that that is an accurate report, this means that the aircraft was on a visual flight rules flight -- that is, operating without air traffic control guidance or clearance, as it was certainly entitled to. And the code 1,200 is the specific code assigned to VFR -- Visual Flight Rules -- flights below a medium teen altitude. The fact that the altitude encoder was -- if it's a fact -- was turned off, indicates that no altitude was being transmitted by that aircraft.

MacNEIL: And it didn't -- it didn't have to in that position.

Mr. RUDICH: That is correct. It certainly is an aid to traffic controllers for all aircraft equipped with transponders to operate them, and those equipped with altitude reporting transponders to operate them.

MacNEIL: Now, in other words, if the traffic controllers had been able to notice the signal from this transponder, they would have seen that there was a plane there, but would not have known at which altitude it was. Is that correct?

Mr. RUDICH: Assuming the transponder was operating, yes, it is likely that the target would have shown up on the Los Angeles Tracon radar scopes. But yes, you're also correct; they would not now his altitude.

MacNEIL: Now --

Mr. RUDICH: They still could give a traffic call, though.

MacNEIL: Explain to us how a small, private plane can be operating so near a very busy airport without being required to be part of the -- under the control of the controllers.

Mr. RUDICH: The FAA has established at these major airports certain designated air space called terminal control areas. The shape and form of these can best be described as like an inverted wedding cake. The closer you are to the center of the cake, the lower the airspace which is controlled goes. In order for aircraft to transit the Los Angeles area without having to be in direct communication with the controllers at Los Angeles, there are shelves, corridors and so forth established in these air spaces. If the aircraft operate below the floor of positive controlled air space in these -- below the shelf, they can transit. And reviewing the instant circumstances, as far as just the location of the airport from which this Piper aircraft departed and its destination, it is very easy to envision a flight from that point of origin to point of destination which would, in fact, stay clear of these positive controlled air spaces.

MacNEIL: So does it look so far -- does it look at the moment as though that plane was flying outside that area -- the terminal control area, where it needed to be controlled. In other words, it was -- it was doing okay, and the collision occurred outside that area. Is that what it looks like?

Mr. RUDICH: Well, assuming that the collision occurred at a distance of 30 or 32 miles from the Los Angeles airport, which is the only information that I have at this point, that position is outside -- is well outside the terminal control area.

MacNEIL: Is this a satisfactory state of affairs -- I don't mean this particular instance, but I mean, as far as you're concerned, as an air traffic control expert, is it good that there should be so many private planes able to fly around busy airports so close without being under the control ofair traffic controllers?

Mr. RUDICH: Well, it's neither good nor bad, Mr. MacNeil, because if a miracle were passed and a regulation were passed that all aircraft, regardless of their type, had to be under complete and total air traffic control jurisdiction in these terminal areas, the system is totally unable to handle those numbers.

MacNEIL: So that wouldn't be a solution.

Mr. RUDICH: That is not a solution. It's an idealistic solution, but it is not a realistic solution.

MacNEIL: Well, let me ask the question in a different way. In the normal course of these things, is it a very dangerous area -- this area just outside the terminal control area with a lot of heavy private traffic in it?Are there a lot of near misses, a lot of collisions?

Mr. RUDICH: Well, this is the most dangerous area -- right at the base or the edge, either the lateral or the side edge or right at the very bottom of any segment of the terminal control area. This is -- there are midair collisions. One occurred in the New York area about four years ago. In respect to the terminal control area, the aircraft's relative position was quite similar.

MacNEIL: Can I ask you one final question? The NTSB also said that the horizontal stabilizer for the jet had been found, and it had paint scars on it, suggesting it had come in contact with the small plane. The fact -- if a collision occurred there, what does that say to you about the --

Mr. RUDICH: Well, assuming that that was the initial point of contact between the two aircraft -- and that's a big assumption -- it indicates that the airliner crew would have had no way of recognizing and spotting the threat, because it would have been out of their normal field of vision. But certainly the threat would have been apparent to the pilot of the single engine aircraft?

MacNEIL: All right. Well, Mr. Rudich, thank you very much for joining us this evening. Soviet Scapegoat?

WOODRUFF: Our next focus: the arrest and imprisonment of an American reporter in Moscow and the effect it may have on U.S.-Soviet relations. As we reported earlier, Nicholas Daniloff, the correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, remains in detention and under continued questioning by the KGB after his arrest on Saturday. His wife and his editors have said that he was set up, and they have demanded his release. Daniloff, who was considered one of the more knowledgeable American correspondents in Moscow, was finishing a five and a half year assignment -- his second there in a career that dates back to the Khrushchev era. We explore the incident now with three journalists: David Gergen, who is Mr. Daniloff's editor at U.S. News; Robert Toth of theLos Angeles Times, who underwent a similar experience when he was a Moscow correspondent nine years ago; and Donald Kimelman, just back from a Moscow tour for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mr. Gergen, let me begin with you. You've been in touch with the Reagan administration. Is there anything new to report?

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: Well, the most important new thing to report is coming from Moscow, and that is that Nick Daniloff has been given an indication that he will either be charged or released over a ten day time frame. Now, frankly, from our point of view, every hour that he spends in that jail, eight by ten cell, is one hour too long. He's been seized illegally, and he should be released immediately. But there is a faint glimmer of hope now in the minds of some authorities, including some within the administration, that by setting the ten day framework, the Soviets are, in effect, beginning to look for an option, perhaps, to release him.

WOODRUFF: So you look upon this as a sign they may be backing off. Is that it?

Mr. GERGEN: Well, they may be releasing him. Let's not -- I don't know whether I want to call it backing off or not. I think the most important thing is to get him out. And if they're setting a ten day frame, they -- at the end of those ten days, they may release him and say, "We're not going to charge him." And that, of course, would be an outcome we would welcome.

WOODRUFF: Your publisher, Mr. Zuckerman, has just arrived over there in Moscow today. Has he been able to talk to Soviet authorities? Has he gotten any further word?

Mr. GERGEN: No, he had his initial meeting with the DCM -- the number two man in the American embassy there -- an excellent meeting with him. He's also met with our new correspondent, Jeff Trumball, there, and with Mrs. Daniloff. And tomorrow he will be meeting -- starting his meetings with Soviet authorities. He's requested several, including Mr. Dobrynin, the former ambassador to Washington, as well as the foreign minister, Mr. Shevardnadze.

WOODRUFF: You all -- you, of course, have said these charges are ridiculous. Is there any chance that there could be something to the charges that the Soviets have placed against --

Mr. GERGEN: We think it's a pure fabrication by the Soviets. Nick Daniloff is a 30 year veteran of the press. He has been praised widely among the press by other press accounts. The Washington Post, as you know, had a very tough editorial today citing Nick as one of the best journalists and in the best tradition of American journalism. We think, in effect, that there may be several possible motives, but one -- and our other guests might well discuss this -- it may be a signal that the Soviets don't like the kind of journalism that Nick Daniloff practices -- that is, it's aggressive, he has a lot of contacts, he's a very resourceful reporter, he's in the best tradition of American journalism. The Soviets don't appreciate that tradition.

WOODRUFF: Mr. Toth, let me turn to you. You had a similar experience back in 1977 when you were over there in Moscow for the LA Times. Tell us about what the similarities were.

ROBERT TOTH, Los Angeles Times: Well, there are similarities and differences. Nick is getting a much rougher time than I did. He's being interrogated more intensively over a shorter period of time. He's not being allowed to go home. The similarities were that I was given some documents which purportedly had to do with parapsychology and was seized in the same manner, taken to a police station where there was a handy Soviet scientist who pronounced them full of secrets. And -- but the ploy in my case was to get me into prison to be interrogated about Anatoly Scharansky, who is the dissident -- the human rights and Jewish activist -- Jewish emigration activist.

WOODRUFF: About whom you had information they wanted, presumably.

Mr. TOTH: Well, about whom I knew a great deal, who I had worked with, who was a friend of mine who had collaborated with me, as with other correspondents. He was the spokesman for these -- for the Helsinki group, for the Pentecostals, for the democrats like Sakharov. So that he helped a lot of journalists. And it was in his role as spokesman that they were interested in. They later accused him, of course, of both anti-Soviet agitation and espionage.

WOODRUFF: But in Mr. Daniloff's case, here it was information that they arrested him for -- was apparently given to him by a source whom he trusted. It was somebody he had known during his entire tour.

Mr. TOTH: That's not clear to me that it was somebody he knew and trusted. It was somebody he was acquainted with. I mean, the person who gave me the documents had been introduced to me by Scharansky himself as a scientist who was doing some serious work in various fields and had this side interest in parapsychology. And I think if you -- if you try to search for a rationale or some kernel of truth in the allegations, you're doing Nick a disservice. Until the Soviets come through with proof of any of their allegations, I think that there's a danger that some of these charges may rub off.

WOODRUFF: Well, including the speculation that this was done as a tit for tat, because we over in this country, we arrested a Soviet physicist on spying charges.

Mr. TOTH: Yeah, but I think that's quite fair to speculate that that might be tit for tat, however reprehensible it is. Because it says that Nick is totally innocent of these charges; he's just been set up as a convenient person. I incidentally think he was set up as a convenient person because they were angry about some of his reporting, because he was aggressive, as David said.

WOODRUFF: Which is what David was just saying. Well, Mr. Kimelman, let me turn to you. Do you agree that -- with the speculation that this was a tit for tat sort of thing -- that they were -- the KGB was upset because the United States had arrested one of their spies over here?

DONALD KIMELMAN, Philadelphia Inquirer: I think that's as good a theory as any you can come up with. You can spend a lot of time trying to figure out KGB motives and go around in circles on all of that. I think that, you know, what they did is so sort of typical of the way they operate. When you're working as a correspondent in Moscow, you're forever coming into contacct with people who want to meet with a correspondent, usually to just discuss things, maybe pass on some information, and of course we're all very suspicious and very careful in doing that. At the same time, you have to take a certain degree of risk to do your job. But it very rarely comes to anything this dramatic, because the KGB isn't looking to cause incidents for no good reason. So they must have had a good reason, and Zakharov seems like the most likely one.

WOODRUFF: I mean, even though this man who gave him the documents was apparently somebody he'd been dealing with over a period of time.

Mr. KIMELMAN: Well, somebody that he had met travelling to another part of the country and had seen several times in Moscow.And just, you know, reading what Ruth Daniloff said in the papers, I suspect that this is an innocent person who Nick had had some contact with who was anxious to speak to a Western correspondent to share those kinds of things. A lot of Soviets are. But, you know, once he began seeing Nick in Moscow, the KGB had to know about that. And then it was a question of when they would take advantage of it. And in most cases, they don't bother. But here they obviously had made a decision that they wanted to set someone up, and specifically to set Nick up, and that this was very easy. They could just take anybody and turn them this way.

WOODRUFF: But you've just come back from Moscow. I mean, isn't this a fairly risky thing for the Soviets to -- I mean, what they put on the line, perhaps, is U.S.-Soviet relations at this point just in order to get even for this -- perhaps -- for the Soviet physicist.

Mr. KIMELMAN: Well, you always wonder at what level these decisions are made. You know, did Gorbachev sit there and say, "Okay, go ahead and do it"? That's kind of hard to imagine. The KGB 2s an extremely powerful institution there and seems to operate pretty much under its own control. The head of the KGB sits on the Politburo. He's a very strong backer of Gorbachev's. And they do a lot of things that really work counter to the new image that Gorbachev is trying to project. And I guess if anything is surprising abut this, it's not that it's happened -- these things have happened before -- but it's happening now under Gorbachev. And then the only question is, is he -- you know, is there another Gorbachev that we don't see who approves these things, or is it something that the KGB is essentially doing on its own?

WOODRUFF: David Gergen, what evidence is there that this was -- this may have been just the KGB acting on its own or that it was directed from the -- is there any way to know one way or another?

Mr. GERGEN: Well, we are speculating, but we do know that the KGB is riding high these days in Moscow. As was just pointed out, there is a member of the KGB now in the Politburo. Through the Andropov connection -- Gorbachev and Andropov came out of the KGB -- they're unusually powerful right now. And we know from past experience that when the United States has seized a spy in this country, as it happened in 1978 -- I spoke with someone today who was close to that case, was in the government -- our government at that time. And he said, "When we seized their spies in 1978 in New York, the KGB went bonkers. They really went to general quarters, because they're so scared of what we can extract from one of their agents." And that's why he was speculating this is -- Daniloff was seized partly because of the kind of journalist he is and partly because they don't want this guy in New York squeezed.

WOODRUFF: Well, there's some -- Go ahead, Mr. Toth.

Mr. TOTH: No, only that -- just to follow up on that -- see, they were very concerned that their agents were being subjected to interrogation. And they had tried to get their agents released under recognizance of their ambassador here. And we refused. And that's when this businessman was seized. A striking parallel exists in this case, because the Soviets asked for this physicist in New York to be released in the recognizance of their ambassador -- i.e., to get him away from interrogation by our people. It was after that that they seized Nick. And if he is released in Moscow now, it may be to the recognizance of the American ambassador there, pending a trial.

WOODRUFF: David Gergen, as somebody who's been in the Reagan administration within the last couple of years, what are the options open? I mean, there was a report in the New York Times today that they are, you know, they're going to play it tough, that there's going to be no swap. I mean, how do you feel?

Mr. GERGEN: Well, I have had the opportunity -- of course, we've been consulting as widely as we can, and I must say I've had the opportunity to talk to a number of senior officials in the Reagan administration. And I have to tell you, they've been very cooperative. They are being tough. They are actively looking at some options now, because they thought all along, "If he's released quickly, we will make some statements, but we'll leave it there. But if he's not released quickly, we're going to have to escalate." And that's the position they're in tonight -- looking at options for escalation, because they realize this is going to complicate U.S.-Soviet relations if it continues much longer. They -- the Reagan administration -- we at U.S. News, journalists in general, all have an interest in settling this quickly.

WOODRUFF: But how much can it complicate relations? I mean, let me come back to you, Mr. Kimelman. I mean. Larry Speaks was telling reporters today it's not going to interfere with these precious plans to go ahead with a summit. I'm using -- that's my word; not his.

Mr. KIMELMAN: Well, I mean, I think that's a question that only the administration could answer. You know, what are they going to do? They're making it -- they're talking a lot about it. Are they going to sort of put enough pressure on the Soviets that they'll feel enough pain to do something about it? But I think all the bad publicity in itself already has to make them begin to think about what's going on. And the other thing I was wondering about today is what is the press corps going to do? And this comes up every time we have an incident in Moscow. Some reporter is set up, is attacked viciously in the Soviet press. Should the press corps in some way collectively respond? But unfortunately, the whole nature of a press corps is we're all individuals working for different groups, and we sit around, and we have lunch meetings about it and talk about it and think about drafting a letter, and then the moment passes, and nothing is done. And I'm just kind of curious as to whether now there are a lot of reporters in Moscow trying to figure out some way to show their displeasure to the foreign ministry.

WOODRUFF: Robert Toth, do you -- what do you think about that?

Mr. TOTH: Well, it's a very good point. In fact, some attempt was made to set up a committee of the media -- of newspapers, magazines and television broadcast networks -- who have correspondents in Moscow. It would be readily available for consultation with the State Department after my case. But they never got together, because they didn't want to get too close to the government. You see, the networks and print media publications often have a different interest than do the correspondents themselves in the situation. Their interests sometimes diverge.

Mr. GERGEN: I must say, Judy, in this case --

WOODRUFF: Final comment, yeah.

Mr. GERGEN: We've been very gratified atU.S. News by the response of various news organizations in this country. Many of them have been doing things today privately. They are sending messages, they are reaching out to their Soviet counterparts or friends and saying, "You really ought to release this man. It is not in your interest. It's in everyone's interest to release him quickly."

WOODRUFF: Well, David Gergen, Robert Toth, Donald Kimelman, we thank you all for being with us. Will We Learn? -- Net Results

MacNEIL: With millions of American youngsters heading back to school, the News Hour tonight begins a week long series of special reports on education. For many kids in the inner-city, school doesn't hold much promise, and often education loses out to the lure of basketball. The problem is known as the Dr. J Syndrome for reasons that our education correspondent, John Merrow, explains. Merrow opens our series by looking at an attempt in Philadelphia to overcome that syndrome.

JOHN MERROW: Is there somebody you'd like to be when you grow up?

Student: Dr. J.

Sportscaster: They say he's getting old, but look. There's some things that you just never seem to lose. Watch this here. Two points. Beautiful play.

Student: I'd like to be Moses Malone.

MERROW: How come?

Student: Well, I like the way he slam dunks.

[clip of Moses Malone slam dunking]

MERROW: You got a hero?

Student: Yes.

MERROW: Who is it?

Student: Magic Johnson.

[clip of Magic Johnson scoring]

MERROW [voice-over]: These kids in Philadelphia are pretty typical. They have a dream to play professional basketball in the NBA -- the National Basketball Association.And they spend hours and hours every day in pursuit of it.Experts say the causes of the so-called Dr. J Syndrome include the lure of those high salaries, the glamour of playing in the NBA, and the absence of other positive role models for young blacks living in poverty.

[on camera] What do you think your chances are of actually making it in professional basketball?

Student: Fifty and fifty.

Student: Hundred percent, I guess.

Student: Fifty-fifty, I guess.

MERROW: In fact, the odds are not 50-50 or even close -- more like 15,000 to one against making it. The challenge becomes how to interest these young kids in something besides jump shots and slam dunks -- in reading and other basic skills -- so that when the dream of being a pro superstar dies, they have skills other than basketball and options other than unemployment.

[voice-over] This is not your typical summer basketball camp. Here layups and rebounding go hand in hand with vocabulary and reading. And it's been going on for 16 summers now at Germantown Friend School in Philadelphia.

DAVE FELSEN, camp director: Right here. Bring your ball here. Everyone right here. Come over here, Brian. Over here. The meaning of the word squander.

Student: Spending away.

Mr. FELSEN: Spending away. Can you add anything else to it? We have a teammate who can add anything -- something to it?

Student: Use for another purpose.

Mr. FELSEN: Use for another purpose. Not bad. Wasted.Waste is a very good synonym. Two points for shirts. Shirt ball on the side.

MERROW [voice-over]: The margin of victory was not that last-second basket, but vocabulary. The winners earned six points by correctly defining three of the day's mystery words, which camp director Dave Felsen gives out first thing every morning.

Mr. FELSEN: Jackie Robinson, who died in 1972 at age 53, has been bronzed -- another mystery word -- bronzed in baseball's Hall of Fame. And the last sentence: He was a stepping stone -- mystery word, stepping stone -- for all the black people in America. So we've got comprehended, magnitude, bronzed, opportunity and stepping stone. And any other words the counselors can think of. Okay, let's have a good day.

You catch them with a basketball, and that's the great attraction. But once you get them here, and of course over the number of years we've had increasing numbers of kids come, we've been able to emphasize the reading equally. And so that now we really can say to the kids, if you don't read, you don't play.

MERROW [voice-over]: What they read here is probably not on any school reading list: sports books and articles from the morning sports pages -- material inherently more interesting to campers than Shakespeare or Hawthorne.

Student [reading]: There were more than a few skeptics, including Baby, a former NBA guard.

JOEL WINDSOR, counselor: Does anybody know what a skeptic is?

MERROW [voice-over]: The campers are more likely to pay attention, because counselor Joel Windsor grew up here in Germantown, a poor, mostly black part of Philadelphia, and went to camp here. It also helps that he's on the varsity basketball team at Lafayette College. He's been where they are now.

Mr. WINDSOR: If I was to say, "I can to a 360 reverse dunk," and you'd say, "No you can't," you would be skeptical. You would be a skeptic.

MERROW: When you were 10, 12, did you want to be Julius Erving or Dr. J or some great basketball player?

Mr. WINDSOR: Sure. Didn't everybody? I remember playing on the playgrounds, you know, everybody saying, "Dr. J." You know, you do a nice move, and you say, "Just like Dr. J."

MERROW: Are you playing basketball in college?

Mr. WINDSOR: Yes.

MERROW: Are you going to be the next Dr. J?

Mr. WINDSOR: I don't think so, no. No, it's -- this phrase may be overused, but you know, you have to get your priorities straight. And those priorities are education comes first, and basketball is just something I do for recreation.

Mr. FELSEN: Often you give big people who have some difficulty with coordination a jump rope to jump rope. But what does it do? When you jump rope, what does that make you do? Yes?

Student: Exercise.

Mr. FELSEN: Makes you exercise.

MERROW: What do you get out of doing this?Here you are a white man, black community. I mean, do you see yourself as some sort of Great White Hope? Are you --

Mr. FELSEN: Oh, no. No way. I'm a teacher. I'm an educator. And I'm someone who just cares about helping young people develop themselves. And it just so happens that the majority of the kids in this area that need this kind of program are black.

What you want to do is dribble the ball with the left hand like this. Bring your right hand here. Two hands, head up, and shoot the ball with the left hand.

MERROW [voice-over]: The Dr. J syndrome -- the dream of being a superstar -- affects kids of all ages and abilities.

Mr. FELSEN: Left hand, Charles. O,

MERROW [voice-over]: Most of Felsen's campers will not make the NBA.They might not be good enough to make their high school varsity team. But Dave Felsen doesn't tell them that.

Mr. FELSEN: You don't say that, because you don't want to crush a kid. And it's human to dream. You have to be careful when you're dealing with kids' dreams and not -- just don't crush them and put them down.

MERROW [voice-over]: As Felsen points out, life is already pretty tough for most young blacks in the inner-city. Black teenage males are the most frequent victims of crime, and murder is the most common cause of death among young black males -- five times the national average. Black teenagers, male and female, are far more likely than their white counterparts to grow up in poverty, drop out of school and be unemployed. How to change this bleak reality stumped politicians and social reformers for decades.

[on camera] Let me be devil's advocate. This camp is really nothing but a bandaid. You help a few kids a year, but you're not really addressing the problem.

Mr. FELSEN: It's more than a -- it's more than just a bandaid. It's something that extends beyond the limits of four or five weeks of a program. I know a lot of these kids come out of tough, tough situations, but I think if you -- when we get them in here and they can participate in the program, you really have a chance to work with a kid like that and change his -- change his attitude. And I think we've done that in a number of cases.

MERROW [voice-over]: For evidence you don't have to look any farther than Jerome Mims, a former camper, now a counselor in the summer, and a student at Scranton University. He grew up here, a few blocks from Germantown Friend School, with his own dreams of being the next Dr. J.

JEROME MIMS, camp counselor: I was kind of big for my age, and I was kind of clumsy, so they used to call me ogre, and "Oh, he can't play." So what I used to do was, the lights went off at maybe around 10:30 or so. And I wouldn't tell my mama, because she wouldn't let me out of the house. And I would just come up here and shoot when the lights were off for a long time -- maybe until 2:00 -- 2:00 in the morning sometimes. But you know, I just wanted to get better.

MERROW: Again, you wanted to be Dr. J. I mean, it's that same stuff.

Mr. MIMS: Yeah, I wanted to be Dr. J. Or maybe Larry Bird.

MERROW [voice-over]: The road that Jerome Mims started down four years ago when he first went to the basketball and reading camp was not an easy one to travel. In turning his back on the Dr. J Syndrome, he was also rejecting his friends and their way of life. That's tough to do when you're 14 years old.

Mr. MIMS: One time this guy said, "Rome, you're with the Friends, man. You're a white boy. You're a prep." You know, things like that. "You go to college; you think you're white." And, you know, things like, "You think you're smart."

MERROW: You ever have guys say to you, "Hey, Jerome, that's stupid going off to school. Why don't you make some money fast?"

Mr. MIMS: Yeah. This guy did say -- I'm not going to say his name -- but he asked, he said, "Well, man, why don't you -- you should be on the corner like us, pimping, man.You'd be making money." You know, those type of things. I think, "Nah, man, you know, that's for you, man. That's not for me."

MERROW: But they are making more money than you. I hear they're making 150 bucks a week or something.

Mr. MIMS: That's true. They are. But in the long run, maybe I'll be making $30,000 a year, $40,000. I mean, at honest work. I mean these guys make, you know, sell drugs or snatch an old lady's pocketbook or something like that.

MERROW [voice-over]: Crime and drugs, poverty and unemployment -- they're what young men are trying to escape when they dream of playing in the NBA. But escape is not easy. Jerome's older brother, Sylvester, didn't make it.

Mr. MIMS: He came to all my games, and he always used to tell me you had to work hard and finish school, go to college, get your degree, all those things. You know, he had a problem himself. He died of a drug overdose. And you know, he was a good person and everything, but he just -- he just got caught up and, you know, it's just one of those things.

MERROW: Was he on drugs for a long time?

Mr. MIMS: For a long time. Since he was about, maybe 13 years old.

MERROW: That help you, knowing your brother died of a drug overdose?

Mr. MIMS: Yeah. I mean, I can learn from his mistakes. I can see, you know, which way not to go. I mean, it's unfortunate, but that's life. That's life. I wish it didn't happen, but that's life.

MERROW: Here you are, you're a sophomore in college, you're going to a good university, you have a good high school education, and you look out here. Do you see people who could have been you?

Mr. MIMS: Yeah. I -- the guy named Kevin. He's about six nine. Everybody thought he had the potential to make, you know, make it to the pros because of his height. And he can play, he can shoot, he can run, he can jump. He can do all those things. But one thing about Kevin. He dropped out of school like in ninth, tenth grade.

MERROW [voice-over]: In fact, Kevin Alexander, now 22, dropped out of school after eighth grade.

[on camera] What about school? You weren't motivated in school, or --

KEVIN ALEXANDER: I was, but I had a reading problem. Still do, you know. But when I went to school, you know, for reading, the teacher wouldn't teach me how to read, and Ma and Pop said they didn't know what they were talking about. So I just started hooky-ing and stuff, you know -- cutting that class. Then I just lost interest in school.

MERROW: You must have been a pretty good ball player back then.

Mr. ALEXANDER: It was all right then. I had an urge for it then, you know, for real.This is a big man who just, once I learned how to dunk, that was it.Turned it down once, I just kept going at it.

MERROW: Did you know about this camp that Jerome went to up at Germantown Friends where he's a counselor?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Yes. Yeah.

MERROW: Did you ever go there?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Nah. It wasn't in me. Got in the streets, you know.Got in the streets out here gambling, drinking, getting high, playing ball when I want, you know. Just never got into that.

MERROW: What do you do now?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Now I just play ball. Drink a little to get high, man. Because there ain't nothing else to do, man, you know?

MERROW [voice-over]: Jerome's friend Kevin might have gone to Dave Felsen's basketball and reading camp, but he wasn't interested, and nobody pushed him hard enough. Jerome's brother Sylvester might have gone to the camp. He was 13 the summer it began. But that was also the year he got hooked on drugs. Jerome Mims was lucky. He found the camp, and he's not made the most of the opportunity.

[on camera] Let's celebrate Jerome Mims and his bright future. Let's give credit to Dave Felsen and Germantown Friends School for using sports to turn on young minds to reading and other realities. But don't overlook the bitter reality of life on the playground. For every Jerome, there are too many Sylvesters and Kevins -- talent wasted, lives lost. Just too many young people left with nothing but dreams.

MacNEIL: That basketball and reading camp is in its 16th year. It's open to anyone age 10 to 18 for $10 a week. The program receives no public funds and relies on donations. With us to talk about programs like it is former tennis champion Arthur Ashe. He's working on a book about the black athlete.

Mr. Ashe, what do you think of programs like that?

ARTHUR ASHE: I think they're very worthwhile. And his program in Philadelphia is not the only one doing that. Quite a few of the other athletes who have basketball and football and camps for other sports are doing the same thing. I know Walt Frazier, who has a camp here in the New York area, is introducing an educational element into the athletic regimen.

MacNEIL: You've -- I know from reading a piece you wrote for the New York Times in 1977 -- for nearly a decade you've been preaching that young blacks should not think of sports careers as salvation. Do you see any progress in getting

Mr. ASHE: Oh, yes. There's been tremendous progress. And that editorial was written as an open letter to their parents and trying to advise them that the way out of the ghetto, so to speak, to use a phrase very loosely, was not necessarily through the NBA, major league baseball, or the NFL. We've been able to turn around quite a few of the counselors at places like the Boys' Clubs, YMCAs and the public high schools, especially those who are black and who think that, "Hey, if I can produce someone who winds up all the way in the professional ranks, it would be a feather in my cap as well as the camp of those who may have been the college teachers or club teachers --"

MacNEIL: So in other words, some people at schools and high schools are still encouraging kids in the J Syndrome?

Mr. ASHE: Oh sure. Oh yeah. But they are being much more selective, in the sense that if one is plucked -- these days the recruiting is very highly sophisticated.You have to understand that in some parts of the country, in certain sports, athletes are recruited from junior high school on. Junior high school. That, is they are recruited in elementary school to go to certain junior high schools, and then recruited to go to certain high schools. And they're obviously recruited very heavily to go to certain colleges. So this starts very early.

MacNEIL: Are a lot of kids being misled by that recruiting?

Mr. ASHE: Oh, yes.

MacNEIL: I mean, is there a lot of wastage in that --

Mr. ASHE: Yes, especially in the sense that there are false hopes built up, and there is always a feeling that further on down the line, the educational element will be added to supplement what's missing earlier in the pipeline. And of course, that doesn't happen. But the huge omission, the one that is most important of all, is found in the home, where it is not found, so to speak. And parents can make the difference. And quite a few of these kids, especially the young males, come from families where a father figure or father itself is missing completely, and the peer pressure with their young friends, as was evidenced in this previous piece, shows that they want to do what their buddies are doing. So if your buddies are hanging out on the corner, as the comment was given, getting high or getting into drugs or pimping, as the phrase was used, well then you're liable to want to do that also.

MacNEIL: Where is the -- where is the answer to this, do you think?

Mr. ASHE: Well, the answer is a multi-faceted and a sort of a multi-disciplinary one. Black colleges in particular are attacking the problem by trying to get the rules changed. As you know, Proposition 48 took effect last month. Proposition 48 --

MacNEIL: We just did a --

Mr. ASHE: Oh you did.

MacNEIL: We just did a feature on it recently, yeah.

Mr. ASHE: Oh, okay.Well, black colleges in particular wanted to put the onus back on the public school systems.

MacNEIL: Yeah, a lot of them have objected to it.

Mr. ASHE: Yes. They're saying, "Look, you are presenting to us a problem that is a fait accompli. We didn't cause the problem. Fix it down below the stage in which we get it." They're trying to enlist, as I said, the segments of those athletic counselors at the public schools and the clubs -- especially places like Boys' Clubs and YMCAs -- to stress education and encouraging people, as we saw in the piece earlier, to do the same. And they're also trying to work with PTA groups for the first time to make that a strong priority. However, in certain public school districts, athletic programs wind up being a reason for bringing kids to school in the first place, because normal dropout rates in quite a few public schools, especially with black youngsters, is as high as 50%. And so one reason they come to school in the first place is to play sports.

MacNEIL: So it's a mixed message that --

Mr. ASHE: Yes, very much so.

MacNEIL: Is there -- in many school districts in this country, is it still true for black kids in the inner-city that sports is the only way out, or is that an old fashioned way of looking at it?

Mr. ASHE: No. There's no question that, in their relative experience of who has made it out of their situation, yes, they do see sports as the only way out, along with entertainment. Because from the same ranks, from the same peer group -- and most of America's premier black athletes come from our under-class; they don't come from our well-to-do families. Because our well-to-do families would not allow their offspring, male or female, to spend the hours needed to become a Dr. J. They wouldn't go for that. And in actual fact, I know very -- since I, as you say, doing the research for this book of mine -- very, very few black professional athletes in any sport, especially the big three -- basketball, baseball and football -- come from families where both parents are college graduates. That is exceedingly rare.

MacNEIL: Arthur Ashe, like to go on, but we have to move on. Thank you very much for joining us.

Mr. ASHE: Thank you. Monumental Sculptor

WOODRUFF: Sculptor Henry Moore, one of the most important figures in the art world of the 20th century, died yesterday at his home near London at the age of 88. Moore was perhaps most well known for his sometimes monumental public sculptures, which can be seen in some 90 cities. Moore always felt that his sculptures should be accessible, and he encouraged people to touch them. Many of his works, often characterized by massive curves and holes, seem to suggest mysterious links between natural landscapes and human forms, and were considered abstract by many critics. In an excerpt from a 1984 documentary about a special retrospective exhibition, Moore spoke about his life and his art.

HENRY MOORE: What they mean by abstract, abstract may not -- abstract means no nature. And everything is nature. I mean, if they say I like looking at form, and not at a repetition of something out of the -- that's a different thing. But abstract is a silly word. Sculpture is, by its nature, real.It is -- you can touch it, knock it, you can bump your head against it. It's not abstract, no. I don't know what abstract means.

This reminds me very much of my youth and my mother. I was the seventh of eight children, and by the time I was seven or eight, she must have been, what? Getting on to 60 or more. And she used to suffer from rheumatism in the back, and she'd say, "Henry, lad, come and rub my back." And I didn't like doing it. I was a bit shy. I was beginning to be a little bit conscious -- self-conscious -- sex-conscious of being bent over. And it taught me to understand a back. I mean, backs -- some type think backs are empty and nothing. But for me a back is as good as a front. I mean, people think that only the front, because of its breasts, is interesting. But for me the back is just as interesting. Shoulder blades and the backbone and the fullness of the hips. Oh yes, wonderful.

Sculpture viewer: To me it's a little abstract. I like more conventional type of things. But then, I'm probably what is termed as queer, I guess.

Sculpture viewer: I think it's wonderful. I think it's trusting of the public, and I hope the public turns out worthy of the trust.

Sculpture viewer: I think when you put the title on it people will come over to look at the title, and they'll come back and talk about it. Because for some people, having the title gives them more suggestion as to what they really should be --

Sculpture viewer: Right. Very important.

Mr. MOORE: I mean, they want it to be able to refer to it, like you having a name different from your brother or your -- you know, so you know who you're talking about. But it isn't -- it doesn't mean that if you're called Arthur and your brother is called Fred that Arthur's got four legs, and you've only got one leg. So it's nothing. The name doesn't mean it's different. It's just a certain -- identifying somebody.

This is what I would do with a sculpture. I try to look at it as though if you found a pebble and you picked it up, you'd look at it from all around. You approach it probably from the front or a side, and I would walk all around it. And bend down and look up at it, and so on. And try to understand it like it was some strange animal that you might never have seen. Because it should be an experience in shape -- an object that you hadn't seen before.

WOODRUFF: Henry Moore once said, "Sculpture is an art of the open air. Daylight, sunlight, is necessary to it. And for me, its best setting and compliment is nature. I would rather have a piece of sculpture put in a landscape -- almost any landscape -- than in or on the most beatiful building I know."

MacNEIL: Once again, the main stories of the day. Ten people are still missing from the air crash which killed 67 in California. An unknown number of people died when a Soviet liner sank in the Black Sea. Soviet authorities said they plan to keep an American reporter in jail for ten days. Good night, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our News Hour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and have a safe evening.