The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. In the full panoply of a state and military funeral, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov was laid to rest today by the Kremlin wall. His successor, Konstantin Chernenko, greeted scores of foreign leaders and met privately with Vice President George Bush. We'll have full reports, and we'll examine the domestic problems facing Chernenko. We'll also bring you up to date on the new fighting in Lebanon and President Reagan's high-level Middle East talks in Washington. Jim Lehrer is off; Judy Woodruff's in Washington. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Also tonight, some economic news worth celebrating on Valentine's Day -- retail sales and the stock market both on the rise. We take a new look at the problems facing America's high schools with the man who has just finished a five-year study and come up with some innovative conclusions. And a celebrated American poet gives us a special look at the study of black history.

MARGARET WALKER ALEXANDER: The segregated system which denied us even our humanity was the reason for black history celebration. It was to say, people who know who they are and where they come from, know where they are going.Chernenko's Domestic Problems

WOODRUFF: Vice President Bush met with the new Soviet leader in Moscow today and said afterwards that Konstantin Chernenko agrees about the need to improve relations between the two countries. Bush said the general tone of the meeting was good. Their session came on the day Soviet officials buried their second leader in 15 months. It was the state funeral for Yuri Andropov, former head of the secret police before becoming head of the Communist Party and president of the Soviet Union. His successor as general secretary, Mr. Chernenko, praised Andropov in a eulogy as an ardent champion of peace.Chernenko also said the Soviet Union under his leadership will be ready to join talks to negotiate peace, but he added that Moscow will not be scared by threats. For a report on the ceremonies in Red Square, here is Tim Sebastian of Visnews.

TIM SEBASTIAN, Visnews [voice-over]: The procession had little distance to cover. Troops of the KGB and the Interior Ministry provided the escort. The briefest and most mysterious rule of any Soviet leader had ended. For the last six months Yuri Andropov disappeared from sight, his health and energy failing. No leader of modern times has ever been so little seen. The new leadership replaced him with an older man and pledged continuity. Mr. Chernenko had few surprises in his speech; there was more surprise in his manner. He spoke with apparent difficulty and seemed to breathe heavily.

Soviet television showed no direct pictures of the open coffin, in contrast to Mr. Brezhnev's funeral. In Moscow it was said Andropov's illness had altered him almost beyond recognition.

His widow Tanya was helped in, clearly in considerable distress; the cameras hid most of the private moments. She kissed his forehead, the first public gesture from Russia's unseen first lady. Her son Igor touched the body briefly. Soviet spectators would not have seen many of these moments. The private lives of their leaders are not considered their concern.

Mr. Chernenko had moved up to the gravesite for the final salute. He is known to have had health problems of his own. For a brief moment he seemed to have difficulty raising his hand. Now more than ever he'll need his strength if he's to consolidate his power.

MacNEIL: After the funeral Vice President George Bush had a 30-minute private meeting with Chernenko and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Afterwards Bush said the spirit of the meeting was excellent and that the new Soviet leader agreed about the need to place our relationship on a more constructive path. Bush said the mood of the meeting was devoid of all polemics, that Chernenko spoke from the heart and sent greetings to President Reagan in a very warm way. The Vice President reported on his meeting at a press conference at the U.S.

Vice Pres. GEORGE BUSH: I did deliver a letter from President Reagan to the general secretary. I won't go into its contents in detail, but I can say that it conveyed the President's determination to move forward in all areas of our relationship with the Soviets and our readiness for concrete, productive discussions in every one of them. I welcome the general secretary's statement to the Central Committee yesterday that the Soviet Union is for the peaceful resolution of all difficult international problems by means of serious, equal and constructive negotiations. I told him that this is precisely our approach as well, and that we too want deeds, not just words. And I stressed the particular importance of real results in reducing nuclear weapons, resolving regional disputes and improving human contacts and cooperation.

Let me direct a few parting words to the Soviet people and the Soviet leadership. The Soviet people should know that, like them, like people everywhere, the people of America are peaceful people. We in America share your yearning for lasting peace, for peace that one day may not need armies and missiles to keep it. The Soviet leaders should know that we are serious and steady. As President Reagan said in a speech just this past Saturday, we should find ways to work together to meet the challenge of preserving peace. Living together in this nuclear age makes it imperative that we talk to each other, discuss our differences and seek solutions to the many problems that divide us.

MacNEIL: One problem facing Konstantin Chernenko is a Soviet economy that both Soviet and Western observers agree is deeply troubled. Economic reform appeared to be a key goal of the late Yuri Andropov, who organized campaigns against lazy and absentee workers and harshly criticized the shoddy production of consumer groups. The Soviet economy did show some improvement of 4% growth last year. Many who monitor it believe Chernenko will have a tough time continuing even that modest economic growth. For more on the economy and domestic problems facing the new Soviet leader we talk with Marshall Goldman, a professor of economics at Wellesley College and associate director of the Russian Research Center at Harvard. He is the author of many studies on the Soviet economy. Professor Goldman joins us tonight from public station WGBH in Boston.

Professor Goldman, do you think from what you know of his background and the strains there were over Andropov's effort that Chernenko is likely to try and continue this reform effort?

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: It's difficult to say for sure, but if you go back and look at Chernenko's record under Brezhnev it really wasn't a very impressive one. He was more of a briefcase carrier for Brezhnev than anything else. He seems to like -- to fall back on the party and the support in the party, and it will be very difficult for him to move ahead, I think. Even under the best of circumstances, in other words, for a strong, vigorous leader, it will be difficult to do. One of the most remarkable things about the picture you showed -- just showed in Moscow was that Chernenko indeed seemed to have difficulty raising his hand to his head to salute. And he's had emphysema. And what you need to attack the problems in the Soviet Union is youth, vigor and enthusiasm, and it hardly looks like a man who is 72 years old, particularly that man, has that, what's necessary.

MacNEIL: And a lot of political clout.

Prof. GOLDMAN: And a lot of political clout.

MacNEIL: There was some speculation today from Moscow observers who noticed that Mikhail Gorbachev, the young contender for the leadership, who had been running the reform program under Andropov, was standing immediately to Chernenko's right in the lineup of the Presidium. Now, are we reading too much into that to say that this will have some significance?

Prof. GOLDMAN: It may very well be that we're reading too much into it, but at the same time we can't ignore the fact that how one stands in line in the Soviet Union is usually very important. I think we'll have to wait and see who's made head of the Supreme Soviet and if there's any change in the role of Prime Minister Tikhonov, who is 76, is prime minister now, and he was the one who nominated Chernenko for the secretary general.

MacNEIL: How urgent is it from the Soviets' own internal point of view to do something

Prof. GOLDMAN: Well, if they don't do anything the economy won't collapse. They've had, actually, as you've pointed out, they've had a good year in the past, and that should give them some momentum. But there are some basic serious problems that they're going to have to address sooner or later. They, even though they had a relatively good harvest last year, it's still about 20% below or 10 to 20 percent below what they had anticipated. They're unable to do any innovating of the new high technology. They're still trying to cope with the traditional smokestack technology. The consumer still feels neglected. There are long lines; there is basic dissatisfaction. Now, obviously, the Russians can get along with that. The Soviets apparently have the narrowest waistlines in the world. There always seems to be another notch in the belt that they can tighten. But I think there is a yearning there for something more, for something new. Andropov seemed to be responding to that, and the question is whether or not Chernenko is going to follow in that role or Gorbachev or whoever it might be who would follow alongside him.

MacNEIL: You say there's a yearning. Would the Andropov efforts, as much publicized as they were, have created a kind of momentum of expectation in the Soviet -- ordinary Soviet citizen, which, despite the lack of voice he may have in the system, would be irresistible? In other words, they would have to go on with it?

Prof. GOLDMAN: Well, you know, the reforms that Andropov proposed certainly broke the pattern of inaction that had been the case in the last four years, certainly, of Brezhnev's life. And people were coming to expect new things. But you have to acknowledge that the reforms that Andropov proposed were really pretty meager, pretty insignificant. In many respects they weren't as far-reaching as those that had been proposed by Lieberman in the 1960s or other economists associated with him. But, nonetheless, there were expectations. I think it's fair to say that Andropov will be looked back with fondness by some Russians because he did try to do something. He, you know, not to coin a phrase, but to use one that's pretty familiar up here in Boston is, he got the country moving again. The last four years, I say, under Brezhnev were very dismal. Production, for that matter, of many important commodities such as steel, coal, autombiles, machine tools was actually lower in 1982 than it had been in 1978. And Andropov stopped that, and that was important. I think people's morale began to improve. They saw that at least there was somebody in charge although now, of course, we know that he may have been in charge, but for a good portion of the time he was in bed.

MacNEIL: A number of the East European satellite countries, notably Hungary, for example, and to some extent Czechoslovakia, have modified their Marxist economies. Does that put any pressure on the Soviet economy to follow suit at all?

Prof. GOLDMAN: It certainly does, but it's always interesting to talk to a Soviet and ask him or her, why don't you do what the Hungarians do, and invariably they give you the same response. It's almost as if before they leave the country or before you meet with them in the Soviet Union they have to pass through a chamber where these words are written. There are three reasons why we can't do what Hungary has done: One, Hungary is very small; the Soviet Union is very enormous. In other words, you can stand in a high hotel in Budapest and see what's happening on the border. In the Soviet Union you don't know what's going on in Vladivostok and things may get out of control. Second, the Hungarians are basically all Hungarian whereas in the Soviet Union we're all very heterogeneous. In other words, "I don't trust the Georgians, and are you going to trust the Uzbecks, and who knows what's happening to the Armenians?" And, finally, the Soviet Union has so many more people -- 270 million people versus the 10 million in Hungary. "So we know each other in Hungary and we can do that." In other words, once you let loose a system that's been constrained as long as the Soviet Union's system has, you're playing with fire. The Chinese have a proverb which really applies to China, but it goes for the Soviet Union too. "He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount." You know the system may not be performing well, but it may be worse if you get off.

MacNEIL: Well, we have to get off.Thank you, Professor Goldman, for joining us.

The United States today reported a substantial surge in the number of missile-carrying Soviet submarines off the east coast of this country, but Navy Secretary John Lehman said there's no reason to worry. That was echoed in a letter to Congress by General John Vesey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said the Soviet subs are not a cause for alarm. Both Lehman and Vesey said the submarine activity is what the Soviets promised in response to U.S. deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in several European countries.

The Swedish navy today dropped depth charges on a suspected foreign submarine off the Karlskrona naval base. A Soviet submarine went aground in those waters two years ago, and many unidentified submarines have been detected there.

Judy?

WOODRUFF: In Lebanon Druse rebel fighters captured a strategic mountain corridor from Lebanese government troops today after a battle that raged through the ridges overlooking the American Marines at Beirut airport, and included the first bombing raid by Lebanese air force jets in five months. Even two long barrages from an American destroyer offshore couldn't prevent defeat for the Lebanese army, which a spokesman said was outmanned and outgunned. Military analysts said the victory for the Druse gives them a corridor to the sea they have long wanted. It permits them to link up with Shiite rebels south of the airport. An American military spokesman said the U.S. ship fired at the request of the Lebanese army. However, in Washington, three spokesmen for the Reagan administration gave differing interpretations of how the Navy's guns are being used.

Secretary of the Navy John Lehman said, "It's clear that the ships are providing supporting fire for the Lebanese army." Three hours later Michael Burch, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "We are not providing fire in direct support of the Lebanese." And then the White House deputy press secretary entered the fray. He said Lehman was wrong, and the Navy guns would be used only to protect the Marines and other Americans. Later in the day Lehman revised his earlier statement agreeing with the White House that he had misstated U.S. policy.

Allister Clarke of Visnews has a report on today's fighting in Lebanon.

ALLISTER CLARKE, Visnews [voice-over]: A decisive battle in the strategic mountains around Beirut has long been expected. Since last September's heavy fighting round the capital the army has held positions round Beirut but has failed to close a corridor known as the Shuefat Gap through which arms and supplies for anti-government forces have poured into the city., A Lebanese military spokesman said the government's tiny air force struck three times at Druse positions as the army battled to fight off the attacks. It broke an ominous lull in the fighting in a continued political deadlock between President Amin Gemayel and the opposition who have failed to open a dialogue since last week's fighting. In the capital itself, a nervous ceasefire was holding as well as any ever does in this battered city. Sporadic clashes took place as the army tried to organize the reopening of a route across the Green Line, which has virtually severed the city since last week's fighting.

WOODRUFF: In the United Nations, France called for a meeting of the Security Council to discuss sending a U.N. peacekeeping force to Lebanon to take the place of the multinational force. The meeting will reportedly get under way tomorrow. But U.N. sources said the Soviet Union has set five conditions for going along with the French proposal, including demands that the United States pull its troops out before the U.N. force goes in, and that the U.S. Navy first withdraw its ships beyond the range of Lebanon's coast.

In Washington, an unnamed U.S. official said those conditions are totally unacceptable.

At the White House President Reagan was discussing the broader Middle East picture with jordan's King Hussein and Egypt's President Mubarak, who publically called on the United States to start a direct dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

HOSNI MUBARAK, President of Egypt: The Palestinian people are entitled to your support and understanding. There is no substitute for a direct dialogue with them through their chosen representative, the PLO. Such dialogue will immensely serve the cause of peace to which we are both committed. Mr. Arafat is a responsible leader who has demonstrated tremendous courage under the most difficult circumstances. A dialogue with him would reassure the Palestinian people and rekindle their hope for a better future. No other nation can speak for the Palestinians, and no other nation is more qualified than the American people to lend them their support and backing.

WOODRUFF: The President had no response for Mubarak. The Reagan administration has been hoping that King Hussein would receive a mandate from the PLO to negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.

In Israel, Deputy Prime Minister David Levy today accused the United States of failing to consult his country on vital matters of Middle East policy. Levy said today's meeting in Washington among Presidents Reagan and Mubarak and King Hussein was designed to bypass the Camp David peace accord and construct a new framework for Middle East peace efforts. Levy said the Israelis were not consulted when President Reagan decided to move U.S. Marines in Beirut to ships offshore. Meanwhile, an Israeli newspaper today quoted Prime Minister Shamir as warning President Reagan that canceling Lebanon's accord with Israel could set a dangerous precedent if it's done because of pressure from Syria.

Robin?

MacNEIL: An alert was declared today at the nation's largest nuclear power plant, a Tennesse Valley Authority generator at Browns Ferry near Athens, Alabama. Officials said the alert, which is the third most serious of the four operating conditions at a nuclear plant, was called when they were unable to cool down one of the three reactors after they had shut it off. The official said there appears to be no danger to the public, and the condition of the reactor is stable.

The federal government today proposed a way to avoid using chemicals like the controversial EDB to kill insects in food. That way is radiation. Margaret Heckler, secretary of Health and Human Services, said the exposure of fruit and vegetables to radioactive cobalt 60 and cesium 137 would be safe and would not make the foods themselves radioactive. She outlined a proposed federal regulation to a convention of the National Food Processing Association in Washington.

MARGARET HECKLER, Secretary of Health and Human Services: The proposed regulation caps a 40-year, $80-billion effort by the federal government and the food industry to find a safer, more effective way to rid foodstuffs of harmful insects and to retard spoilage. The amount of ionizing energy permitted under the regulation is well within the bounds of safety for human consumption. In fact, at the dosage levels we have established, there is no residue from treatment. This method has been used for several years now in 28 countries for certain foodstuffs. It has been utilized on the food of U.S. astronauts and servicemen and patients with immune system deficiencies because of the purity of the product that is achieved.

MacNEIL: Here are some economic notes today.

The Commerce Department reported that U.S. retail sales rose 2.2% in January, the biggest increase since May. Commerce Secretary Baldrige said this reflected growing consumer confidence in the nation's economic health. The Federal Reserve Board reported that consumer debt rose by a record $6.6 billion in December. Increases are often taken as a sign that consumers are more confident about the economy. U.S. automakers reported today that sales of domestic cars were up 32% in the first 10 days of February. And the stock market had a more confident day. The Dow Jones average of 30 industrial stocks closed up 13.71 points at 1163.86 for the day.

Judy? Sizer's Ideas for American High Schools

WOODRUFF: The results of the latest study of high school education in this country are out, and the recommendations are the most radical of all the reports so far. The American high school is described as an outdated institution and the entire system in need of a fundamental restructuring. The report is the tenth study on education to come out since the President's Commission on Excellence in Education issued its findings last spring. Today's report is the result of a five-year study on American high schools and is called Horace's Compromise, "Horace" being an hypothetical English teacher. Among its recommendations are abolishing compulsory attendance, establishing tough admissions requirements, doing away with grade levels and course credits and streamlining the curriculum into a few subject areas while omitting vocational and physical education courses. The author of the report is Theodore Sizer, a former dean of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.

Mr. Sizer, what makes this report different from all the others that we've seen come out over the past year or so?

THEODORE R. SIZER: Well, among other things, we looked at the insides of schools almost completely exclusively, and we listened to lots of kids and lots of teachers and principals, and the kinds of suggestion we've come up with flow from that. So it's an inside-out study.

WOODRUFF: Are the schools really in as bad shape as your report and these other reports would have us believe?

Mr. SIZER: Yes and no. There's no school in this country that I visited where I didn't see some wonderful things happening. What is so frustrating is that so many more good things could happen if some of the long-established structures and traditions we have stay in place. If we can make what some people call very fundamental changes, we could do a lot better.

WOODRUFF: Well, let me ask you about some of your recommendations. You recommend doing away with grade levels, with course credits. Why such a drastic change?

Mr. SIZER: Because it's common sense.You and I know that you and I don't learn at the same rate at the same way at the same time. We knew that from our high school years too. To say that everybody at a given age is learning in the same wayand should be at the same level is a very constraining influence.

WOODRUFF: Well, what should we do instead?

Mr. SIZER: Take the kids where they are.Those who learn quicker, for whatever reason and what subject, should be allowed to move along. Those who may ultimately be very masterful but who, for some reason, are moving a little slower, taken them where they are. For example, I just heard the information on one ninth grade in a district high school in an Eastern city. And in that -- of the 120 incoming ninth graders there were evenly distributed reading scores from the second-grade level to the 12th-grade level.And yet the existing system treats them all the same.

WOODRUFF: Well, how do you decide then who moves ahead and who stays back? You're talking about a very subjective system, aren't you?

Mr. SIZER: I know. That's right. Well, subjective at one level and objective at another. If the youngster can't read you could tell that pretty easily. And to hand that youngster who can't read a 10th-grade textbook just because he is "a 10th-grader" is cruel as well inefficient.

WOODRUFF: You're also saying do away with compulsory education. Doesn't that fly in the face of everything that we think is endemic to American universal education?

Mr. SIZER: Well, I'm not saying do away with compulsory education. I'm saying let's have compulsory education up to a point where a young person can show that she or he is literate, competent in mathematics and fully aware of how a democracy works. And I mean by literacy not merely identifying words but being able to read something and make sense of it. Once the state knows that, it seems to me the claim of the state to force that child to stay longer in school is very weak, and the lack of compulsion follows from, I think, the proper limits of the state.

WOODRUFF: But what about, say, those students at, say, the lower end of the income scale who may not come to school initially as motivated as some other students who come from a more advantaged background? What about them?What happens to them?

Mr. SIZER: Well, you never push them out. You work with youngsters as long as it takes, and when you try very hard within the compulsory system to bring those youngsters, all youngsters, up to clear levels of literacy and numeracy and civic understanding, for some youngsters it's going to take longer. But you stay with them. The notion that you push kids out is simply abhorrent. You don't push kids out.

WOODRUFF: So you're saying stay with them, don't abandon them, even if they can't cut it?

Mr. SIZER: That's right. That's right. I think there are very few kids who can't be brought up to the kind of level that Americans should expect.

WOODRUFF: These are some pretty radical changes you're talking about. What do you think the realistic odds are that something like this would be implemented?

Mr. SIZER: They may be radical, but they tend to follow common sense and people's experience. I think that it will be possible to put some of these ideas into practice in a small number of experiments initially because I am very aware, from listening to and talking with a large number of teachers and principals, there are folks out there ready to go who believe that we can organize our schools more effectively and more simply to achieve some of these ends better.

WOODRUFF: All right, thank you. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it.Thank you for being with us, Mr. Sizer. Robin?

MacNEIL: A six-year-old Texas girl has undergone the world's first operation to transplant a heart and a liver simultaneously. The operation was performed in Pittsburgh Childrens Hospital on Stormie Jones of Cumby, Texas. Doctors said she suffered from a rare genetic disease that caused extraordinarily high levels of cholesterol in her blood. She needed a new liver to combat that disease and a new heart because her own was too weak to withstand the liver transplant. The little girl is reported recovering in intensive care tonight after a 16-hour operation.

[Video postcard -- Mt. Herman, Oklahoma]

MacNEIL: The Civil Aeronautics Board today opened hearings on proposals to sharply increase restrictions on smoking aboard airliners. Among the proposals being considered are a ban on smoking on flights of less than two hours and on planes with fewer than 60 seats. Representatives of the airlines and the tobacco industry joined forces today to oppose any new regulations. The airlines said they were making reasonable accommodations to both smokers and non-smokers. The tobacco industry said there was no credible scientific evidence that smoking endangered the health of non-smokers. But the anti-smoking group ASH said it creates serious and documented problems for many passengers.

Judy? Teachers for Mondale

WOODRUFF: President Reagan was the target of both Democratic frontrunner Walter Mondale and Senator John Glenn today. Campaigning in Illinois Mondale said the President should welcome the new Soviet leader by temporarily suspending underground weapons testing. And Glenn, on a southern tour, charged that Mr. Reagan is moving towards what he called an undeclared war against Syria in Lebanon.

The real declared combat right now is between the Democrats themselves, and it begins in earnest next week at the Iowa party caucuses. The activity in Iowa is not just the first official test of the candidates. It's also the first test of organized labor's endorsements that have been garnered by the Mondale presidential campaign. Cokie Roberts of National Public Radio takes a look at one union's political effort in Iowa.

COKIE ROBERTS, National Public Radio: The National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, put Walter Mondale at the top of the class of Democratic candidates some time ago, giving teachers time to get organized without any last-minute cramming. The first test of that organization will come on February 20th in Iowa.

BOB THOMAS, teacher: Who's got another example of mediation? Somebody gave -- Shawn in the other class talked about, his dad was at the [unintelligible]. Some trucker came in and --

ROBERTS [voice-over]: Bob Thomas has been teaching about history and government for almost 20 years, but he didn't start participating in politics until nine years ago when he first came to Centerville High School in southeastern Iowa. Once involved, Thomas took the lead, serving as a delegate to the Appanoose County convention in 1976 and to the Democratic National Convention in 1980. It still somewhat surprises Bob Thomas that he's seen as a political force. When he first went into teaching he thought politics had no place in the classroom.

Mr. THOMAS: I think the training I had [unintelligible] social science education was you can have opinions but you keep them at home. Somewhere along the way I began to change, that if, you know, if you're going to be a role model you've got to stand for something. And I figured you let other people express their points of view and you've got to let people know where you're coming from. Most kids know why I'm a Democrat. I don't know if they know what being a Democrat means, but I think it's okay to take a stand. I'm a person and I have some opinions, and I think kids got to realize that teachers are real people. That's one of the problems, I think, that people have sometimes. We're part of the population. No, I'm not just a teacher. I'm a taxpayer, a citizen.

1st CAMPAIGN WORKER: Do you plan to go to your precinct caucus on February 20th?

ROBERTS [voice-over]: Involved teachers are working hard for their candidate and for their union. For weeks members of the Iowa Teachers Association have been meeting at the state headquarters and 20 other locations using computerized lists, calling Iowa's 10,000 Democratic teachers, finding out which ones are for Mondale, convincing them to go to the caucuses.

2nd CAMPAIGN WORKER [on phone]: Patricia? Hi! You have laryngitis. Well, My name's Wayne Bauman and I'm a teacher helping ISEAPAC with a survey of members --

ROBERTS [voice-over]: When it comes to helping elect Walter Mondale, who has spent a lot of time and effort of his own in Iowa, the campaign's state labor coordinator, Will Robinson, says teachers get high marks.

WILL ROBINSON, Mondale campaign: The first is that they're everywhere in the state. They're in rural communities where no other organized group are located, and the second reason why they're so effective is because they're good communicators. They make their living talking to people and being persuasive. Any teacher that can handle a roomful of 14-year-olds can certainly handle a Democratic caucus site.

ROBERTS [voice-over]: In Centerville, a small, economically struggling, agricultural community, formerly a mining town, the Democrats will hold three caucuses next Monday. Democratic strength's grown in the area as a result of teacher and student political participation, which, says history teacher Bob Thomas, causes some partisan resentment.

Mr. THOMAS: Nobody has really ever really directly confronted me, but other people make some comments, I guess, because I think we've made a difference in this county. I think teachers and kids and Democrats in general, as I said before. In '72 the Democrats elected one person on the ticket. In the last election the Democrats took every office but the congressman, Jim Leach's office, and teachers supported him. And we've made a difference, and that's what upsets people. If we hadn't gotten involved Republicans would still be winning.

ROBERTS [voice-over]: To win the numbers game the teachers union holds mock caucuses for its members. Bob Thomas and elementary school teacher Julia Shirley conduct a caucus training session for Democratic and Republican teachers in Centerville, where they teach teachers not only what happens at caucuses, but how to affect them.

Mr. THOMAS: Mondale campaign, what's that called? What did you agree to do, Bill? The five Fritz?

BILL: Five for Fritz.

Mr. THOMAS: Have you got your five?

BILL: Nope, not yet.

Mr. THOMAS: Oh. Okay. But that's a technique to get some more people at the caucus. Generally people are talking about it's gong to be low attendance, and I think there are some people who would go if they knew some other people were going to be there.

ROBERTS [voice-over]: After awhile Democratic and Republican teachers move to opposite sides of the room ready to do a run-through of their Monday night performance.

Mr. THOMAS: Okay, let's divide up into preference groups and let's just play the game and see what happens so we'll get something. You're going to join the Mondale group?

ROBERTS [voice-over]: The nine Democrats split into Mondale, Glenn and Hart factions. The caucus can elect three delegates. But under the rules the Hart group is too small to qualify. Mondale supporters engage in a kind of persuading they'll have to use on Monday to get the teachers for Hart to go for Mondale.

TEACHER for MONDALE: No way. He's down, at least everything right now, he is down. He's not even --

TEACHER for HART: But he's on the move. He's on the move.

TEACHER for MONDALE: He's not even in the top three.He's on the move?

TEACHER for HART: Yes, he is.

2nd TEACHER for MONDALE: He's a very fine man.

TEACHER for MONDALE: Oh, yeah. Good man. Realistically you have to go with Mondale.

TEACHER for HART: Okay, he twisted my arm.

ROBERTS [voice-over]: Final tally, Mondale, two delegates; Glenn, one. next Monday these colleagues and neighbors will repeat this type of performance at the actual caucuses where teachers will have more people to try to educate, usually between 50 to 100 per caucus. But the teachers will be prepared, and though no one will be handing out report cards, Bob Thomas is ready to grade this test.

Mr. THOMAS: If all the delegates to the county convention are Mondale delegates I think that would be called a success.

WOODRUFF: The chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, Dave Nagle, agrees with most observers that Walter Mondale is leading in Iowa. But he cautions there may be a lot of shuffling going on in the last days of the campaign. Robin? Margaret Walker Alexander

MacNEIL: One well-known fact about today is that it's Valentine's Day. Less well known is that February 14th is celebrated by many black Americans as the birthdate of Frederick Douglass, a leading black opponent of slavery before the Civil War. Since he was born a slave, Douglass was denied an official birthdate so his mother picked this date to mark the birth of the son she called her little Valentine. That small historic detail remains known today primarily because of the work of Carter Woodson, a Harvard-trained historian who founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. Woodson established an annual black history week to coincide with Douglass' birthday, to set right the historic record he felt had been distorted or ignored. Black history week was officially extended to a month in 1976.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault marks this 69th year of observance by visiting one student and teacher of black history. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Margaret Walker Alexander has spent the better part of her life etching black history lessons in the minds of all who have read her poetry and her prose. She has been writing since she was a child, growing up in New Orleans nearly 70 years ago. In 1942 her volume of poetry, For My People, broke new ground in writing that positively and affirmatively celebrated black life. That, along with her prize-winning historical novel Jubilee, published in 1968, established her as the spiritual mother of most of the young black writers of the era.

We wanted to hear Dr. Alexander's insights on the value of observing Black History Month and what it's meant to her. As is usually the case in February particularly, we found Dr. Alexander actively observing Black History Month in Jackson, Mississippi, where she has lived and taught and worked for the last 35 years. When we caught up with her she was being honored in song for her tireless efforts.

SINGER: "I don't feel no ways tired, Lord, Lord. I come too far from where I started from."

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: These are some of the people who are inspired by and who inspire Margaret Walker Alexander.

MARGARET WALKER ALEXANDER, writer: I have chosen for this Black History Month celebration a very great black woman in our history, a balled for Harriet Tubman. "Dark is the face of Harriet, darker still her fate. Deep in the dark of southern wilds, deep in the slaver's hate --

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Throughout the month, before audiences like this one, Dr. Alexander will be drawing from her storehouse of information on the black past. [looking through files] What is all this you have in here?

Dr. ALEXANDER: These are some old scrapbooks. This one I kept when I was in high school, about 14, 15 years old. It has all these famous black people that I read about at the time.

HUNTER-GAULT: Who were they?

Dr. ALEXANDER: Well, there's James Weldon Johnson and Paul Robeson. I saw that with him.

HUNTER-GAULT: Listen to this! "Nothing stopped this hot roaring buck from Harlem. Up he rose from Pullman porter to king. Second balcony reserved for colored. 15 "

Dr. ALEXANDER: Isn't that interesting? This is Carter G. Woodson, the man who started Black History Month, Black History Week -- Negro History, we called it then. Actually black history as Negro History Week began the year I was born.

HUNTER-GAULT: What was so important about the black history observances when you were a child?

Dr. ALEXANDER: It was the only weapon that the black teacher or the black parent had against the whole system of segregation, which said black people didn't have any history. I don't think my parents ever wanted to say to us that we weren't first-class citizens or that we couldn't go in the theater or that we couldn't stop at the drugstore and have a Coca-cola. Instead, they said what we could have.

HUNTER-GAULT: Black history was a very personal experience for you as well?

Dr. ALEXANDER: Well, I heard my grandmother talk about her mother and slavery. When I was a little girl I heard those stories. My grandmother told them to me almost every night. It was like a bedtime story.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: From those stories and her own research, Dr. Alexander wrote the novel Jubilee, the wrenching epic of slavery drawn from her great-grandmother's real-life saga. She also wrote poems that summed up her Southern experience.

Dr. ALEXANDER: I wrote a poem about living in the South that I think tells you exsctly my feeling of love for the pastoral beauty of the South and my hatred of the social horror. "I want my body bathed again by Southern suns, my soul reclaimed again from Southern land. I want no mobs to wrench me from my Southern rest, no forearms to take me in the night and burn my shack and make for me a nightmare full of oil and blame."

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: But Margarett Walker Alexander didn't just write about a distant past, about her great-grandmother's history. Although she was internationally recognized as a writer, every day she experienced the problems and promises of life in the Deep South, of life as a black woman in Jackson, Mississippi.

Dr. ALEXANDER: When I first came to Jackson 35 years ago I was looking for a place to rent. The only houses available were three-and four-room houses --

HUNTER-GAULT: For rent.

Dr. ALEXANDER: For rent.

HUNTER-GAULT: Like these.

Dr. ALEXANDER: Like these houses. I guess they're two-tenant houses, two sides. And basically they are white-owned houses, andthe black people who live there do not own them.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Margaret Walker Alexander and her husband, now deceased, didn't want to accept that reality, so they got together a group of friends and built their own community. Three years ago those friends petitioned the city to rename the street in honor of its famous founder. The Alexanders had found a place to raise their children, and as parents they set about instillin them with a sense of history.

Dr. ALEXANDER: Well, I feel that a family is a part of black history, and we tried to have the children understand the meaning of black history so that as they grown they too will know that they are a part of the historical process.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Dr. Alexander and her family not only studied history, they lived through it. In 1963 their neighbor, Medgar Evers, a top state NAACP official, was assassinated in his driveway, and across town, at Jackson State College, where Dr. Alexander taught about black heroes like Evers, where she founded an institute for the study of black culture and history, two students were killed by state police during anti-war demonstrations in 1970.

Dr. ALEXANDER: Those in the dormitory, the women, just were all under the stairs and all trying to hide from the guns and screaming. And then blood all over that place, blood all over that dormitory. There was some awful things heard on walkie-talkie: "Do you know how to use this kind of gun?" "No." "Well, you can learn tonight. I'm gonna get me a nigger tonight."

And Jackson, Mississippi, is a mixture of emotions for me.As I say in a poem about it, "City of tense and stricken faces, city of closed doors and ketchup-splattered floors; city of tree-lined, wide white avenues and black alleys of filthy rendezvous. I give you my heart, Southern city, in the bosom of your families I have planted my seeds of dreams and visions and prophecies, all my fantasies of freedom and of pride. Here lie three centuries of my eyes and my brains and my hands, of my lips and strident demands. I give you my brimming heart, Southern city, for my eyes are full and no tears cry. And my throat is dusty and dry."

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Nonetheless, Dr. Alexander is more committed to change than ever. Not merely content to record it, but now to actively pursue it. To that end she is now getting involved in local polities.

Dr. ALEXANDER: We are here today basically to announce the candidacy of Shirley Harrington Watson for the position of city commissioner in our city council. [voice-over] I have no real desire to be thought of as political, but I agree our lives are determined by politics -- by economics and politics. That's where it's all been all along. It's not with our refined, artistic and aesthetic senses. It's in that ugly business of bread and meat and bones.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Whatever pessimisms color the poet's language, Margaret Walker Alexander's real life remains fertile. She's just completed a book of poems and a new book about Richard Wright, the author of such books as Native Son, whom she considers one of the most important writers of the 20th century. And she's not done yet. Why?

Dr. ALEXANDER: Well, we need to have more understanding of all people's cultures and histories and religious beliefs all around the world. We need to realize that white Anglo-Saxon Protestant is not all of it. And that that's a form of myopia that the rest of the world cannot afford. It's too dearly bought with our slavery. That's why we have to have black history, so that all people will understand the dignity of human personality, the divinity that is potential in every human being.

[voice-over black national anthem] "For my people standing staring, trying to fashion a better way from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding, trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people, all the faces, all the Adams and Eves and their countless generations. Let a new world rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth. Let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and the strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written. Let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control."

[Video postcard -- Inspiration Point, Utah]

MacNEIL: Finally, tonight, we have a book review. The book, a novel, is by the Chilean author Jose Donoso. It's English title is A House in the Country, and our reviewer is Richard Locke.

Let me begin by asking you who is the author, Jose Donoso?

RICHARD LOCKE: Jose Donoso is a 60-year-old Chilean who was educated in the United States at Princeton and lived here for awhile and taught at the Iowa Writing Workshop. He lived abroad for awhile, in Europe, and has gone back to Chile now. He is the author of some seven novels and has won many prizes, both here and in Latin America. He is chiefly important as one of those dozen Latin American novelists who have created the so-called boom in Latin American literature, which has excited people around the world, and of course led to the emergence of such celebrities, really, as Borges or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who just won the Nobel Prize.

MacNEIL: Describe for us the setting and situation of A House in the Country.

Mr. LOCKE: A House in the Country is set in the 1890s in an unnamed Latin American country. The house in question is an ornate mansion surrounded by an elaborate fence and grounds and parks and in a very, very complicated physical setting. In this house a group of enormously wealthy landowners, some 13 adults and their 33 children, are all gathered, and their intrigues and fights and elaborate rivalries are very much the essence of the plot of the novel. These conflicts, of course, express many of the themes in recent Latin American history, but you read this book with very much of a sense of enjoyment of an old-fashioned historical or family novel because you follow these -- some 50 people of the lower classes, the middle classes, the running up and down the stairs, escaping from the house and coming back again. All these conflicts emerge as very much a story to be read.

MacNEIL: And there is also, from the little bit I've read of it, a very strong connection with the surrounding natives who live in the plains around the house.

Mr. LOCKE: Really, the central image of the book is this lush house surrounded by a vast plain of grass in which are the remnants of a native population. These natives are required to mine the gold in the surrounding mountains for this very, very wealthy family, but they're kept in complete squalor. The servants are oppressed. And much of the action of the novel consists of the goings and comings of different groups of this family who are always slaughtering the natives and very often slaughtering each other or their own children. The thing that's funny is that this should all be done in a rather comic and light-hearted manner. Something like the movies of a Bunuel or a Fellini, where the grotesquerie is also very decorative, and you approach it the way you might approach some kind of a rich pastry or elaborate dessert, where the politics and the elaborate history of all these people seems to be delivered to you with a great flourish and virtuosity.

MacNEIL: So it reads easily and enjoyably?

Mr. LOCKE: It's very fluent, goregeously visual. The setting, the grounds, the ruined statues. The house, of course, decays as these conflicts continue. At one point Donoso describes the house as a vast shipwreck lost in the middle of this green plain. The comings and goings of all these people are indeed seen like in a vast sort of literary version of a Cecil B. DeMille movie, with huge quantities of people scraggling across the plain arguing and fighting in a kind of comic way.

MacNEIL: Is there a political message?

Mr. LOCKE: There is. It's buried within it, and is by no means a tract or a sermon. The political message is that greed left over from the elaborate colonial history of Latin American is the motive behind all action and that these people who are being portrayed as a rich or aristocratic, highly elaborate, artificially polite and theatrical family are themselves merely covering up their greed in one way or another. They seem to be incapable of either taking care of each other or the natives, who then they oppress, or their servants, who they exploit. The parents devour the children; the children devour each other. And the metaphor is clearly that greed and the elaborate, almost Oedipal, family drama writ large is the motive behind all history. The play-acting that goes on, the amount of denial of any kind of reality or reciprocity with other people is the clear political and moral message of the book. There's a complete comic dismissal of ideology, religion or any kind of politics in the usual sense. All of history is just reduced to this sort of vast tapestry or animated Renaissance painting or cartoon in which these people are carrying on a kind of comic pastry -- elaborate violence using puff pastry as their weapons, even as they're devouring one another.

MacNEIL: And you recommend it as a good read?

Mr. LOCKE: I do, because it's tremendously enjoyable as a vast pageant come to life. Enormously good-humored. And yet very clearly with a lot of guts. At the end, when nature indeed takes over and the warring factions have formed to huddle down in the vast ornate ballroom, a wind which symbolizes all the changes and all the natural powers that they've tried to avoid with their artificial society, a wind blowing thistles comes and begins to choke all the people -- the natives, the servants, the few grownups that are left alive. They huddle together in a mass on the floor of their ballroom surrounded by tromp I'oeil figures, and only if they're very good to one another and breathe very shallowly can they possibly survive. That clearly has a political message, but it also has quite an elaborate novelistic one as well.

MacNEIL: Thank you.

Once again, the book we've been discussing is A House in the Country by Jose Donoso, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Judy?

WOODRUFF: Taking a final look at today's top stories.

In Lebanon, an updated report. Political factions are standing by for what the Christian radio station says will be an historic announcement by President Amin Gemayel. The statement is expected within hours. Gemayel's government army suffered a setback today when it was pushed off a key mountain ridge south of Beirut after a battle with Druse militiamen.

Vice President Bush met the new Soviet leader, Konstantin Chernenko, today in Moscow in the Soviet capital for the state funeral of Yuri Andropov. Bush said the spirit of the 30-minute conversation was excellent.

In domestic news, a new report on American education was released today. Tougher standards urged for high school students.

And Wall Street had a good day for a change, with a 13-point gain.

The mood in the financial markets mirrors the release of some welcome economic data. Retail sales were up 2.2%, the biggest hike since last May.

A good note to say good night on Valentine's Day.

Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Judy. That's our NewsHour tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.