The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, the U.S./Soviet talks on long range nuclear missiles began again in Geneva, the State Department said Americans should continue to stay away from China, and a new report severely criticized the middle schools in America. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the News Summary, we focus first on the strategic arms talks resuming today with a background report and News Maker interview with arms control chief Ronald Lehman. Then the middle school crisis, we have a discussion with two members of the task force, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and New York School Principal Deborah Meier. Next we profile David Toma, an ex-cop who travels the country talking tough to school kids about drugs. And essayist Anne Taylor Fleming looks at the impact of big recent news stories.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The United States and the Soviet Union resumed negotiations about long range nuclear missiles today. U.S. negotiator Richard Burt met for 80 minutes in Geneva with his Soviet counterpart, Yuri Nezarkin. The talks had been in recess for seven months. Burt told reporters after today's session that he had emphasized Pres. Bush's commitment to reducing the risk of nuclear war. Back in Washington, Mr. Bush proposed negotiators first agree on anti-cheating measures before completing a treaty, itself. He said verification is often the sticking point to reaching an agreement. A White House spokesman said the proposal would probably be presented to the Soviets at Wednesday's session in Geneva. We will have more on the Geneva talks right after the News Summary. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: The Chinese Government today announced 46 more arrests in connection with pro democracy demonstrations, bringing the announced total to 1360. Of those, at least 11 have been sentenced to death. Premier Li Peng said today that what he called quite a lot of rioters remained at large and must be seized and punished lest they stage a comeback. Li said China had been more restrained than any of the nation's now criticizing it. "Some countries have attacked us, abused us and created rumors. Can their governments be more tolerant? You won't find one that is." Li's comments were just part of a government campaign to justify its crackdown. We have a report from Beijing by David Rose of Independent Television News.

DAVID ROSE, ITN: The Chinese state propaganda machine is now hard at work, creating heroes and role models from carefully selected soldiers who were killed during the recent unrest. This mother of a soldier whose body was hung from a bridge close to Tiananmen Square has hardly been allowed to grieve in peace. For the past three days and again tonight Chinese state television has filmed her meeting ever more important government officials. Until tonight, she was shown with Li Peng, the hard line minister. He congratulated her on bringing up her son so he was ready to sacrifice himself for his country. Also honored, this old man's son, and in a move straight from the cultural revolution, he's been made a model soldier. His old school was shown. The commentary said the pupils were holding special classes to learn from his life and his sacrifice. At dawn today, there were only a hundred or so soldiers in the square where a week ago there were thousands. Ever since the massacre and the crackdown, there have been long cues outside Western embassies, particularly the American embassy. Many Chinese, especially those involved in the pro democracy movement, have been trying desperately to leave the country. But from now on, it's going to be much more difficult.

MR. MacNeil: The Bush administration today again warned Americans to stay away from China. Secretary of State Baker said the President remains firmly against imposing more sanctions against China. Baker said the President is quite anxious we do not do anything that would hurt the Chinese people.

MR. LEHRER: Back in this country, the nation's middle schools are mostly too large and impersonal to do their jobs. That was the verdict announced today by a task force of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. The group's chairman told a Washington news conference there must be fundamental changes in schools for six, seventh and eighth graders.

DAVID HORNBECK, Task Force Chairman: We do need smaller communities, schools within schools, teams of teachers and kids, a sense from youngsters that there is somebody in the school that really cares about them, the kind of training that's necessary to focus on values, education, in the form of community service. Those things are absent at the moment and unless and until we do those things, we won't be responding to ten to fifteen year olds in the manner that they require.

MR. LEHRER: A reminder that two members of the task force will be with us after the News Summary. Pres. Bush also had schools on his mind today. He conducted a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House to honor schools working to make their schools drug free. He told the group of teachers, community leaders, parents and students they were the top commandos in the war on drugs.

MR. MacNeil: The Supreme Court gave railroads broader power to test their employees. By a vote of 7 to 2, the Justices said Conrail may require drug tests without going into collective bargaining over the issue. It's the first time the court has ruled on drug testing byprivate employers. But the ruling was based on the Federal Railway Labor Act and may not have broad impact for other workers.

MR. LEHRER: Prosecutors asked the judge today to send Oliver North to prison. In a pre-sentencing memo filed with U.S. District Judge Gerhard Gesell, Independent Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh said North had shown no remorse for his Iran-Contra crimes. He said he still considered himself above the law. North, who was a top security aide to Pres. Reagan was convicted last month of obstructing Congress, accepting an illegal gratuity, and destroying or mutilating government documents. He is to be sentenced Friday.

MR. MacNeil: Greece's socialist government plagued by financial and personal scandal suffered in yesterday's general elections. Thousands of supporters of the center right new democratic party celebrated in the streets today. Their party beat Prime Minister Andreas Papandreas Panhalec socialist movement which has ruled for eight years. But the conservatives did not get a governing majority of seats so it's not clear which party will end up in control. One factor in the campaign was Papandreas' much publicized affair with a former airline flight attendant. Socialists, environmentalists, and far right candidates were the major winners in 12 nation elections to the European Parliament in Strassberg. The socialists increased their membership to 182 seats in the 518 member body which has limited but growing power in the European community. At the other end of the spectrum, extreme right wingers increased their standing by seven members to twenty-three seats. Six of them were candidates of the German Republican Party led by a former SS soldier. The biggest loser was Margaret Thatcher's British conservatives, who lost 13 seats to the British Labor Party. It was Mrs. Thatcher's first defeat in a national ballot since she took power a decade ago.

MR. LEHRER: And there was a run-off election in Poland yesterday. Unofficial returns today showed Solidarity still showing its power. The once outlawed movement won eight of the nine Parliamentary places it was allowed to contest. In others, where only Communist Party candidates were running, voter turnout was only 25 percent.

MR. MacNeil: That's our News Summary. Still ahead, strategic arms, the middle schools crisis, profile of a drug campaigner, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. NEWS MAKER - RESTARTING START

MR. MacNeil: We start with START talks which stands for strategic arms reduction. Those talks began in 1985 resumed today in Geneva, with a new team from the Bush administration negotiating for the American side. We'll talk with Ronald Lehman, the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, in a moment. First some background from Judy Woodruff.

MS. WOODRUFF: One of the biggest pieces of unfinished business that Ronald Reagan left behind for George Bush was strategic arms control. But Mr. Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev did hold five summit meetings, the most any U.S. President has had with a Soviet leader. And they did make considerable headway towards an arms agreement to follow up on the Salt II agreement signed in 1979.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: [December 10, 1987] [Speaking through Interpreter] At the central attention of the negotiations these past few days was the problem of a radical reduction in strategic offensive arms. We were talking about a reduction by 1/2. It is a complex issue. On the whole, both sides came to the conclusion that on this road too we must make a serious breakthrough.

MS. WOODRUFF: Those radical reductions were a major departure from the Salt II agreement of the previous decade. Its goal had been putting a limit or a cap on the growing number of strategic weapons. The new goal was to see how deeply those arsenals could be reduced. By the end of the Reagan administration, the U.S. and the Soviets were perhaps 90 percent of the way to an agreement. They had reached an accord on the following points: A 35 percent reduction in American ballistic missile warheads and a 50 percent cut for Soviet warheads over a seven year period, a ceiling for 1600 strategic offensive delivery systems, including launchers of land and sea based missiles and heavy bombers, and a 50 percent cut in the capability of missiles to carry warheads, the so-called throw weight factor. Based on that progress, Pres. Reagan has urged his successor to push ahead, saying the benefits outweighed the risks and that Gorbachev presented a once in a lifetime opportunity.

PRES. REAGAN: [June 13] I believe Mikhail Gorbachev is the Soviets' best and probably only hope to turn things around. I believe we should take the risk that the Soviets are serious in their efforts to reach genuine arms reductions with the West.

MS. WOODRUFF: But Mr. Reagan seemed to base his views on his vision of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Mr. Bush's approach has been more practical.

PRE. BUSH: [May 12] The new relationship cannot simply be declared by Moscow or bestowed by others. It must be earned. It must be earned, because promises are never enough. The Soviet Union has promised a more cooperative relationship before only to reverse course and return to militarism.

MS. WOODRUFF: Despite that skeptical talk, Mr. Bush announced in a statement today that after a five month review of arms control issues, his administration will stick with most of the treaty language already worked out between the Soviets and the Reagan administration, and he said he was prepared to address all the issues that remain unresolved. Those include what to do about strategic defense, the Soviets say they will accept no treaty that permits the U.S. to test and deploy so-called Star Wars strategic systems, something the Reagan administration insisted on, mobile missiles, the Reagan administration proposed to ban them, as is the Bush administration, even while it asks Congress to fund two separate mobile missiles, the multiple warhead, MX, and the single warhead, Midgetman. And third, sea-launched cruise missiles. Both countries have different ideas about how to limit them and even more difficult, how to verify those limits. In fact, the ability of each side to verify that the other side is abiding by the treaty's provisions promises to be one of the toughest hurdles to overcome. It was with that in mind apparently that Pres. Bush announced also today that he wants verification measures agreed to and put into effect before any treaty is signed. Some critics charge it's another delaying tactic, but there is no doubt the Bush administration has put a conventional weapons agreement on a faster track than it has strategic weapons and former Carter administration arms control adviser Paul Warnke says that's a mistake.

PAUL WARNKE, Former Arms Control Negotiator: I think that they feel there is far less public clamor for an arms control agreement than there was back in the early 1980s. Gorbachev is not a Brezhnev and he's not a very forbidding figure, and as a consequence, I think there's a sense that there is less risk. But, nonetheless, the strategic balance is less stable than it should be. There are too many weapons with toomuch counter force capability.

MS. WOODRUFF: Just as worrisome may be the criticism of Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, who last week accused the administration of having no strategic rationale to guide its weapons decisions.

MR. MacNeil: Now to Ronald Lehman, the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In the Reagan administration among his several posts, he served as chief U.S. negotiator at the START talks and as Assistant Secretary of Defense. Dr. Lehman, thank you for joining us.

DR. LEHMAN: Pleased to be here.

MR. MacNeil: The differences that Judy listed that remain, the 10 percent of things that remain to be decided, how confident are you about reaching agreement on those?

RONALD LEHMAN, Director, Arms Control Agency: I think I'm quite confident that we will reach agreement on these issues, but let me say the long pole in the tent is clearly a verification issue. You will not complete a START treaty until you get the verification measures in detail completed and I think that's why the President wants to give us a step up on these important issues.

MR. MacNeil: This is quite a change from the Reagan approach.

DR. LEHMAN: I'm not so sure it's a change in terms of the emphasis on verification but what it is is a recognition that you can't get done any faster than you complete the verification rules.

MR. MacNeil: But it is a change to propose and, in fact, insist on implementing verification procedures, having them actually working before a treaty is signed, is it not?

DR. LEHMAN: These are not preconditions, but let me say we've learned a lot of important lessons from the INF experience. And we believe by actually doing some hands on work, getting beyond abstract verification and talking about the specifics of what needs to be done, and experiencing it, we can expedite the START treaty.

MR. MacNeil: You say it's not a precondition. In other words, it's not a deal breaker. If the Soviets say no, Mr. Bush won't insist?

DR. LEHMAN: Well, in the end, we have to have the verification that's necessary to get the treaty ratified. You remember the experience of the Salt II treaty. We don't want to repeat that. Everyone we've talked to on Capitol Hill has made it clear, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, whether liberal or conservative, that verification matters to them. And we're listening.

MR. MacNeil: Are you saying that the Reagan approach to verification was not realistic or tough enough?

DR. LEHMAN: No. What I'm saying is that you spoke of being 90 percent complete. I think the 90 percent refers to the so-called big issues, but the long pole in the tent remains the many thousands of technical details in verification. We have to get that work done.

MR. MacNeil: But why put it actually -- why get these schemes or systems of verification actually working first before a treaty is signed? Won't that mean a long delay in actually saying yes and putting the ink to paper?

DR. LEHMAN: No. As I said, in the end, what we want to do is complete the START treaty and if we can achieve some of these and put them into effect earlier, and if that can help us with the START treaty, then that's what we want to do. It's not a take it or leave it offer. It's a list of measures that we think can expedite the process.

MR. MacNeil: How does the administration answer some critics? We just said, heard Paul Warnke say that the administration feels that the public heat is off for a START treaty. Answer that one first.

DR. LEHMAN: We haven't given up our interest in the START treaty at all. On the contrary, I took this job in part to help expedite completing the START treaty. I think there is, there's been so much remarkable success in the conventional arms area that was largely unanticipated that I think people are wondering, well, what's happening on START. Well, what you're going to see is that it is the President's highest priority and we are going to press and press hard.

MR. MacNeil: Spurgeon Keeny of the Private Arms Control Association says that Pres. Bush appears to be trying to kill the prospects for an agreement.

DR. LEHMAN: I think that's just simply wrong. On the contrary, I was in Geneva as one of the negotiators. The then Vice President came to visit me. He expressed his interest in this project. I have no doubts he wants very much to conclude this START treaty and as soon as possible, but we don't want it dead on arrival in the Senate. We want to make sure that this treaty is one that we and the Congress will be proud of.

MR. MacNeil: Mightn't a layman think that the President was a lot less interested in a START treaty than the conventional weapons agreement if you just look at it on the face of it, in conventional arms, Mr. Bush has gone to Europe and proposed a bold, radical new proposal to Mr. Gorbachev. On START, there is nothing new in substance. At least, that's what the administration spokesmen have been saying. The position remains approximately the same.

DR. LEHMAN: There are some elements that are drawn from START and in other contacts, areas where we've had discussions with the Soviet Union, so these are not all new concepts. But the idea of getting on with it and implementing where possible not only verification measures, but measures that would enhance stability is I think an important concept. And it's designed to give impetus to this whole effort.

MR. MacNeil: Just to come back to my question about the layman looking at it and reading his newspapers and watching television, he sees the President go to Europe and make a really startling proposal to Mr. Gorbachev on conventional arms. There is no startling fresh proposal on START.

DR. LEHMAN: I think that this is a realistic proposal that reflects that many of the great issues, in fact, have been resolved. Our delegation in Geneva will be making it clear that we are working off of a joint draft text which is already over 400 pages long. They will also make clear that the basic provisions that have been agreed will be reaffirmed. We will put down in some markers in some areas where we will look at the possibility of some changes. The issues that remain, issues such as the mobile ICBMS, which you mentioned, these are issues that we have to address in the context of a modernization program and this really requires consultations with the Congress.

MR. MacNeil: What are -- where are the areas you'll put down markers to say that you'll look at changes?

DR. LEHMAN: Well, I think you will see in the area of mobile ICBMS that we will make it clear that we are reviewing this in the context of verification and our strategic modernization program and as we discuss this with the Congress.

MR. MacNeil: What about the strategic defense initiative, will there be marker there of introducing the idea of possible change?

DR. LEHMAN: There we will be reaffirming our position.

MR. MacNeil: No change in that position?

DR. LEHMAN: No change.

MR. MacNeil: Does that mean that Mr. Bush would abandon the prospect for a START treaty rather than accept any limitation on production testing or deployment of elements of a strategic defense?

DR. LEHMAN: Well, as you know, there's no area of arms control where there is more agreement and limitations and treaties and law than in the area of strategic defenses. After all, we have the ABM Treaty, but it is the Soviet Union that says they won't agree to a START agreement unless there are additional agreements in the area of defense and space. We think that's unnecessary.

MR. MacNeil: And so Mr. Bush would forego a START treaty rather than modify that position, is that his instruction to you?

DR. LEHMAN: No. In fact, we have reaffirmed our position to the Soviet Union that as was agreed in the Washington summit statement, we are prepared to consider a period of non-withdrawal from the ABM treaty and we are prepared to negotiate a joint draft treaty on defense and space which would provide for certain confidence building measures and predictability and inspections of each side's research facilities and tests. This was all designed to address Soviet concerns. We are trying to address Soviet concerns. We just don't think START ought to be held hostage.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with Mr. Reagan's statement -- we just heard it again -- that the benefits of concluding a START treaty now outweigh the risks?

DR. LEHMAN: I think that we believe we can conclude a START treaty that will be verifiable, that will enhance our security, that will improve stability. We believe that's possible. And we intend to try to do it.

MR. MacNeil: That isn't going quite as far as Mr. Reagan went. Is his language too strong for the Bush administration on that?

DR. LEHMAN: I think the basic structure for the START agreement is sound and that's what we have told the Soviet Union.

MR. MacNeil: Does the Bush administration agree with Mr. Reagan that Gorbachev presents a once in a lifetime opportunity, that it's with Gorbachev or nobody?

DR. LEHMAN: I don't know that we would say it's with Gorbachev or nobody. After all, the Soviet Union is undergoing remarkable developments and changes and I think it's a bit hard to predict, but let me say we have every intention of not losing any opportunities.

MR. MacNeil: Do you feel that a START agreement can be negotiated and signed within Mr. Bush's first term?

DR. LEHMAN: I do.

MR. MacNeil: When would you advise us to put the signing date on our calendar?

DR. LEHMAN: I would advise you not to. We don't like to negotiate against a deadline. We think that's how mistakes are made. We want to avoid mistakes. We want a treaty that the Senate will give its consent to ratification and we think we can do that.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Mr. Lehman, thank you very much for joining us.

DR. LEHMAN: Thank you very much.

MR. LEHMAN: Still to come on the Newshour tonight, troubles with the middle schools, a man named Toma, and an Ann Taylor Fleming essay. FOCUS - MID-SCHOOL CRISIS?

MR. LEHRER: In some parts of the country, they're called middle schools, junior highs, but whatever name they are doing a terrible job. That at least is the thrust today of a report issued by the Carnegie Corporation. The report warns that these schools are not only failing to educate children between the ages of 10 and 15, they are even making it all worse in the areas of drugs, alcohol and teen pregnancy, among other things. The task force said most middle grade schools are too big and too impersonal and suggests ways to correct that situation. Two members of the task force that wrote the report are with us. They are Deborah Meier, Principal of the Central Park East Secondary School in New York City's East Harlem, and Bill Clinton, the Democratic Governor of Arkansas. He is also the current chairman of the National Governors Association Task Force on Children. He joins us from public station WVIZ in Cleveland, Ohio. Ms. Meier, what are the suggestions that you all make as a way to make these schools smaller and more personal?

DEBORAH MEIER, Central Park East Secondary School: Well, first of all we're stuck with the fact that we have very large buildings on the whole but we have suggested that the size of a building doesn't need to dictate the size of a learning community, so we're suggesting that we take our large building designed for a thousand to two thousand students and create small learning communities, certainly of under 500, with even smaller teams, where young people can spend several years with a small cohort of their colleagues and peers and a small group of faculty who get to know them well, who know their families well and who can, therefore, have an influence and can create a powerful adult culture.

MR. LEHRER: Why is that important?

MS. MEIER: Well, for a variety of reasons. You can't influence someone and you can't change someone and you can't get someone to think about new ideas if you don't know them well, if you don't understand how they think and if they don't understand how you think. You can't introduce people to wonderful and new ideas if they don't get to know the adults. You can't do it if you have seven or eight periods in which young people have to every thirty- five/forty minutes adjust to a new adult, a new set of expectations, in which adults see 150 different students and are expected to try to think about how they learn and what they learn and their families have no way to know -- no one in that school who knows their youngster well. As parents, I think we need to know that somebody knows our kids well, somebody cares about them personally and individually. And the young person needs that also.

MR. LEHRER: Are the middle schools a special case, Ms. Meier, or is the same problem in elementary schools, the same problems in high schools?

MS. MEIER: Well, there's two things. First of all, high schools are more personal. Some teacher does know you well and you do know a small number of students well. But second of all, it's an extraordinarily vulnerable age and we have created the most, we've designed for that particular age students an institution which if we wanted to create the craziest kind of youngsters, we'd have designed schools like that. It's as though we've taken everything we know about how learning and about how human beings behave and then created institutions that we can then complain about the results.

MR. LEHRER: Gov. Clinton, now how in the world did this happen? How did the middle schools get to be as bad as they are?

GOV. BILL CLINTON, Arkansas: [Cleveland] Of course, it wasn't intentional, but I think you have to understand that they sort of developed as an intermediate stage between elementary school and high school and really before the dramatic changes we've seen in family life and the challenges to young people from drugs and early sexual activity, and I think now we are trying to say, look, this is important to have a separate learning experience for a kid this age, but it's going to have to be more personal. The children are not going to have to be segregated. They're going to have to be brought together so they can learn together instead of saying it's too late for you even in junior high school. If we do these things, you can still make these schools work and I think a lot of people are beginning to do that around the country. Nobody intended to shunt them aside in these middle years.

MR. LEHRER: What did they intend? I mean, what has been the intention and the purpose of middle schools as you all discovered in your studies?

GOV. CLINTON: I think the purpose obviously was to just continue the education of the child and prepare the child to go on to high school. There was a recognition that this was a separate and very different age than either the early years or the high school years but the way the institutions were developed, as Ms. Meier said, were not designed to deal with the enormously personal problems that children have at this age.

MR. LEHRER: All right, now, the report says, Governor, that not only have these schools failed in a constructive way, they've even added to the problem, particularly in personal matters like alcohol, drug abuse, that sort of thing. Spell that out for me.

GOV. CLINTON: Well, what the report points out is that if the schools are too big and too impersonal, that the kids get there, they're very influenced by their peers, perhaps in a negative way. They may be far away from their families, they may not have a very supportive family unit at home, but there is no adult there at a time when they're really asea, so that being in the context of a large school with a lot of people who don't know them could actually make them more vulnerable than they might otherwise be to getting in trouble. Also, if they're segregated, if they're classified as slow learners, special education students before they should be, that actually compounds the likelihood that they'll drop out of school, that they'll fail to learn anything when they move on to high school. So in that sense the problem's made worse if the institution is not responsive to their needs.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. Meier, you and your colleagues on this task force say the whole system of middle schools needs to be changed and reformed. Is that the kind of thing, can you lay that out, here's a plan, you change your school and it'll work? Is it that kind of thing?

MS. MEIER: No. I think the essential question is to start giving greater power to the people who know the kids best and who know that learning environment best, which is a collaboration between the families, a faculty of a school, and to some degree the students in redesigning an educational environment that makes sense for them, those who know the kids best. I think what you can say is that we do know they need to be smaller communities. That can be done. I think we do know --

MR. LEHRER: You mean with the existing buildings, the existing personnel, the existing everything?

MS. MEIER: Yes, we have a large office building, we have the empire state building, and we don't put one office in it, so we can have a big building. We're stuck with big buildings, we built them that way. That's okay. The school I teach in has three different schools in it. The building I'm in has three schools.

MR. LEHRER: Of the same level?

MS. MEIER: Three schools. No, in fact, one's an elementary school in this case, one's a secondary school, seventh through twelfth, and one is a middle school, seventh through ninth grade. Every school building in our district has now been broken down to at least two, mostly three and four different schools in those same buildings. In 1974, that district had the same 17 buildings it has today, only now it has 51 different schools. They're all small. They're all real communities in which teachers, parents and students have redesigned an education that makes sense for them.

MR. LEHRER: But let's say you have a big building that has room for a thousand students and it's all middle school, I mean, there are no elementary, no high school, are you suggesting that one of them be the Billy Bob Dunn Middle School and the other one the Sammy Sue Smith, I mean, right in the same building, exactly the same classes, the whole thing?

MS. MEIER: Why not? They would all in a sense become a little different because if you put any group of people together they begin to have ideas, and one of them has an idea different than an other one. It's by the nature, just as any two teachers are different, that collaboration of parents and teachers and students in their particular school will become a little different than the one next to them, but they will be a stable community for three years in young people's lives. They will be a place to relate to. They will be a place that has an ethos, a viewpoint, a set of ways of expecting certain kinds of behavior.

MR. LEHRER: Their own athletic teams, their own separate --

MS. MEIER: Listen, each detail we can work out. They can decide whether they're going to collaborate on teams or have little teams. Let me point out something that I think is enormously important in a sense of the moral and ethical tone of our schools. A friend of mine who is the principal of a very large school pointed out to me when I was describing how we responded to some of the tragedies that our students have experience this year. She said, I couldn't do that in my school, Debbie, because every Monday when I come back, we would be in a state of mourning. We would be in a state of perpetual mourning if everyone's death, every tragedy, every important event, we took seriously. But in our school, it's small enough, we take everything seriously. That's an important lesson for kids. To value life means to take, to celebrate its triumphs and to mourn together on the tragedies that are worth mourning about.

MR. LEHRER: But it takes a small group.

MS. MEIER: But you need a small group.

MR. LEHRER: To do it.

MS. MEIER: You need people who know each other to whom it's a personal act. It's not a bureaucratic act. And to create a community which can focus on learning and intellectual achievement and not on control. It's creating a community of people who know each other. It's the best measure of safety. The security chief in New York City said the best ways to solve the problems of security in New York schools was if the schools were small enough so that everybody knew each other, so you knew the stranger in your midst, you knew which kid you had to worry about because he gets upset if someone touches him. You need that, we need that knowledge of each other and I'm not just talking about young people in a way, although it hurts the young people most. But very few of us adults work in institutions that are as anonymous and as mindless as the schools we've created for our young people. We don't have to relate in a work place, every 40 minutes change work place, every 40 minutes -- it's not a sensible way to operate our high schools either of course.

MR. LEHRER: Governor, what are the politics of this? What are the realities of getting this done at the middle school level, in the state of Arkansas, or anywhere else in this country?

GOV. BILL CLINTON, Arkansas: Well, first of all, I think it matters whether people believe that the recommendations are accurate. I was just listening to Ms. Meier talk. My state has the lowest dropout rate of any southern state even though the per capita income is low, and I'm convinced it's because we have so many community schools. If people believe that these things make sense and need to be done, then I think you can get support for them. Now change is always hard. Change is what happens after one of these reports is issued. But I think that what we call for, which is for every governor to take these recommendations and review them and to come up with a plan to implement them in each state, to involve the business community and the other agencies of government in helping children meet their needs in the schools. They don't cost a lot of money. There are just a couple of recommendations in here that cost money. Even having more schools in a big school building may not be that much more expensive. So if you look at what we said, we said the most important thing is to give more personal attention to the students, don't write them off at an early age, give them a broad range of services if they need help, health information, for example, screening, referral to appropriate physicians if they need that, the opportunity to be of use in the community, build a value and an ethical citizenship. Those things are not that expensive. I think that we can implement almost all the recommendations in almost all the states with very little new money.

MR. LEHRER: Governor, you mentioned the other educational reports. There have been many, all of them decrying a crisis in the public schools at various levels, reports talking about prenatal care, kindergarten, elementary school. Then it goes on to high school. Where does this fit on the scale of crisis in your mind?

GOV. CLINTON: Let me first of all say I think I have read every one of those reports. I have participated in writing some of them. I think this is one of the best. And it can be seen really in a companion way almost to the interesting report that the Grant Foundation recently did on the transition from school to work of kids who drop out and go to work or leave high school unprepared and go to work. These are the critical years. You have sort of your last chance to really do it right with a lot of these kids. So I think it ranks very high on the scale. I also should say that this country ought to be happy that all these reports are coming out and that most people aren't jaded. They're still interested in reading them. They still want to act on them. We have sustained now almost seven years of hard work in improving the educational system and to me that's a cause for hope. And the fact that this is the last in a long list of reports is a cause for celebration, but it is very high on my list of priority reports.

MS. MEIER: Mr. Lehrer, I want to add to one point that the governor made. This report also deals with the question of the intellectual achievement of young people and I think in a very important way, because it is not only enough that our kids don't drop out. It's important to remember that when we talk about drop out, all we mean is they stay on our registers till they're 18. Whether they're a freshman in high school and whether they've learned anything or not, this is the kind of school that can also grab kids' minds, can engage them in serious intellectual effort.

MR. LEHRER: I hear you and thank you both very much for being with us tonight. PROFILE

MR. MacNeil: As we reported earlier, President Bush honored drug free schools today with a ceremony at the White House. Tonight we look at a man who's made fighting drugs in the schools his life's work. He's a controversial former policeman by the name of David Toma. Education Correspondent John Merrow has our report.

DAVID TOMA: [in high school gym] I just want to say to all you drug dealers in this audience look at me good so you know I said it, you're a scum bag, you're a piece of crap, and we're going to get you, baby. We're going to get you.

JOHN MERROW: When it comes to fighting drugs, David Toma is not afraid to speak his mind. A one man crusade, he travels more than 100,000 miles a year to preach his anti-drug gospel at schools.

SPEAKER: Before I introduce our speaker this evening, I want to tell you something about this man's phenomenal background. He was a policeman for 21 years. He has been shot, stabbed and hospitalized over 30 times for every injury imaginable, and he is the only person in the world to ever have two TV series based on his life, one called "Toma", the other "Baretta". I give you now not the actor, but the man, himself, who lived this incredible life, the real David Toma.

MR. MERROW: Toma recently brought his crusade to Camden Catholic High School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

DAVID TOMA: Last week I was in a high school, seven kids are dead, drugs, alcohol, and suicide in one school in the last eleven months, seven kids. I would suggest you listen to me closely. I don't have time to play. And I'm going to tell all of you, if you think you're going to play with me, I'm going to throw you the hell out of here quick. I don't play games.

MR. MERROW: The tough talking former cop held his young audience spellbound for almost three hours with a litany of horror stories about lives wasted or destroyed by drives.

DAVID TOMA: They kicked the door in, two cops came running in with a gun and there's a guy who originally called him in the living room with his hands like this over his head, laughing and crying, laughing and crying, and he's going like this [gesturing]. The two other cops said to me he apparently was pointing in the other room, to something in the other room. They got the guns in their hands, they go through the living room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen. In the kitchen was his wife completely bombed out of her head on drugs, bombed out of her head, just taking her little infant baby out of the oven. They were going to eat the baby.

MR. MERROW: Afterwards we asked some of the students for their reactions.

MIKE RICCI: I think he was just telling us the truth and being honest with us and that's the reason why we were so scared is because he was telling us real life stories. He's not making them up. He's telling us stories that are true.

KRISTA NEIDIG: I mean, he scared me with some of the stories about, you know, just the alcohol, the point about drinking and driving, because, you know, it's always thought social drinking is okay as long as you don't drive.

JENNIFER CHRISTY: I would rather listen to someone who's experienced it rather than just someone who speaks out against it and has no idea what they're talking about. Like Toma has experienced drugs and alcohol and he knows what it can do. And he held my attention more I guess, more than anyone else would.

DAVID TOMA: Drugs is the number one business in America today.

MR. MERROW: Holding teenagers' attention on the subject of drugs is no small achievement. These kids have been bombarded with anti drug messages for years, but Toma's three hour lecture was just the beginning. He continued to hammer his message home for the rest of the day and the day after in meetings with smaller groups of students. His fee for the two days is $6,000. The Gannett Foundation put up the money. The first day's program concluded with an evening lecture for parents.

DAVID TOMA: I'm going to teach them how to be parents. It's a whole new thing. I'm going to teach them what they and this whole society is doing wrong. I'm going to give them, I'm going to give you the answer to the drug problem because I have the answers right here [pointing to head] and right here [pointing to heart].

DAVID TOMA: You want to know what's wrong today? Mama's doing her thing, Papa's doing his thing, the kids are doing their thing and then you think I'm going to come in this school and straighten this mess out. I ain't going to straighten nothing out. You laid in bed, you had your sex, now get the hell out of bed and take care of your kids. They ain't my kids. They're your kids.

MR. MERROW: To his critics, Toma is opinionated and egotistical, to his supporters, charismatic and caring. He's the kind of strong, emotional character most people either love or hate. And he's a showman. One moment he's haranguing his audience, slicing the air with his hand for emphasis.

DAVID TOMA: Every country in this world that's supplying your kid with drugs are out of business.

MR. MERROW: The next, he's down on one knee, pleading and cajoling.

DAVID TOMA: I says, tell me what happened, please, I want to help you.

MR. MERROW: He ends his performance with a declaration of love.

DAVID TOMA: I'm here because I love you. God bless you.

DAVID TOMA: It's never been any different, anywhere I went. The crowds are always there. The crowds are always back. One kid said to me today I can hear you for the next 30 years. I wish I could be around every time you speak. So I must be doing something right, that they keep coming back to hear me over and over, and not the same thing over and over, but even if it were, they want to hear the truth.

MR. MERROW: Now 56 years old, Toma began teaching the truth 30 years ago when he was an unconventional undercover policeman in Newark, New Jersey. After busting the same drug addicts time and time again, he realized that the best way to fight drugs was to stop kids from becoming addicts in the first place. The television series "Baretta", about a big hearted cop who would rather help people than lock them up was based on Toma's life. In this scene, it's easy to imagine Toma, himself, talking as the actor, Robert Blake, tries to persuade a bitter amputee not to blow up a bank.

ROBERT BLAKE: [in Baretta] I don't know how bad you're hatin' man. I ain't never been without my legs. But there was a time when I didn't have much else, honest to God, no mother and my old man was a drunk and he went and died on me and boy was I full of hate.

MR. MERROW: Sharing pain is a powerful elixir. On television, Baretta used it to get criminals to surrender. But that was just fiction. In high schools, Toma uses real pain to create a strong emotional bond with his audience. He talks about his own nervous breakdown and drug addiction, following the accidental choking death of his five year old son.

DAVID TOMA: They brought my son in the operating room and they worked and they worked and they worked and they worked. And all of a sudden, I heard him screaming, "Daddy, daddy, I can't breathe.". At least he was alive. I ran in the operating room. I'm trying to get near my son. I did a stupid thing. I even knocked one of the doctors down, I was so scared. I panicked. And the last thing I remember is my son had his left hand out like this and he was crying, and he said, "Daddy, don't cry for me. I'm going to be a good boy, please don't cry. Tell mommy don't cry.". After hearing Toma let loose, several students did the same.

DAVID TOMA: One of the most important things, people in this room who have never talked and opened up to each other like that, that's what's, that's what a lot of people don't see about some of the things that we accomplish. There are kids in this room who are very self-centered and who were willing to open up in front of their friends. That's like a miracle of miracles.

MR. MERROW: That's Toma's real strength, his ability to get students to open up and talk about their problems. But the opportunity that presents also creates a risk. We talked about that with Paul Harmelin, principal at Overbrook High School in New Jersey. Toma visited there last year.

MR. MERROW: A number of people have raised a concern about David Toma. He comes in, he moves these kids emotionally very deeply, they open up, they're vulnerable and exposed and perhaps not helped.

PAUL HARMELIN, Principal, Overbrook High School: That's the greatest danger I think with Toma, that you have to be prepared for the follow-up. He's a hit and run kind of act. He doesn't pretend to give you long range services. His job is awareness. And you're right, he has a very emotional appeal. And for certain students, they'll respond emotionally, they'll cry, they'll confess, and somebody's got to be there to pick up the pieces. And if you don't have somebody there to pick up the pieces, you're going to destroy that student. And that's the danger.

MR. MERROW: Toma is aware of the problem. He won't come to a school unless administrators agree to bring in additional counselors from churches and community groups, for example. At Camden Catholic, Toma brought them on stage. On Toma's second day at the school, students were invited to meet with those counselors to talk about their problems and many showed up, but when Toma arrived, he took over, and most of the counseling stopped. Principal Harmelin saw the same sort of thing happen at his school.

PAUL HARMELIN: If he has one shortcoming in my opinion, it was his reluctance to use his charisma, the hold he had on the students, to transfer their allegiance. I mean, the kids thought they were only going to be helped if they talked to Toma. We had counselors standing around and a hundred kids lined up to talk to Toma. And they didn't want to talk to the other people, they wanted to talk to the Messiah. They wanted to talk to the man. And he has to, if he's going to really help us, he's got to be able to transfer that attachment that the kids make to him in that three hours to the professionals that are going to be left on board day after day for the next nine months dealing with these kids.

MR. MERROW: His own criticism notwithstanding, Principal Harmelin feels the $6,000 paid to Toma was well spent. The fact is there's no way of knowing whether it was or not. The only evidence that what Toma does works is anecdotal.

SHAWN GREEN, Overbrook Student: Like I used to be a pot smoker and all that, and after I heard him, I was like figuring maybe this guy is right at the wall and I went and talked to him and he got down serious when you talked with him and then I kind of figured, well, gee, he's pretty good. And that basically got me off of pot.

MR. MERROW: Toma had a similar effect on three other Overbrook students in this group. Whether that effect will last is an open question.

MR. MERROW: Let me play devil's advocate on the question of the emotional level of your presentation. It's emotion, it's pure emotion, and it's terrific, but it doesn't last.

DAVIDTOMA: Let's take one part at a time. You are right. It's a tremendous emotion that I use. It's not something that I think about. It's not something that's planned. It's an emotion that's happening inside of me. It's an emotion because it's the truth.

MR. MERROW: But the impact's emotional on the kids. They get lifted up. But then you go away and the emotion, there's nothing left.

DAVID TOMA: No such thing. When you tell people the truth, whether it be children, whether it be you, whatever, when you tell 'em the truth, the truth might hurt, but it stays with you the rest of your life. When kids think you're lying and they will tell me if they think I'm lying, and you can't fool kids, then I don't belong on that stage and I would have quit many years ago.

DAVID TOMA: [in high school gym] You play around with this, you put garbage in the brain, in the heart, in the lungs, you ain't gonna survive, ain't no way, ain't no way you're gonna survive.

MR. MERROW: Other people disagree about his long-term effect, but that doesn't phase David Toma.

MR. MERROW: How's this for a hypothesis? This is your addiction, you need to do this.

DAVID TOMA: Let me say this to you. Let's assume it is and let's assume I need to do it. And you want to know something? You're right. I need to do it. But if in what I'm doing is touching kids' lives, if in what I'm doing is turning people around, then let it be my addiction. All I know is what I'm doing has to be done. I really have no choice anymore. I must do it.

DAVID TOMA: [in high school gym] I'm here because I love you. ESSAY - THE FACE OF CHANGE

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight essayist Anne Taylor Fleming looks at the rush of recent events in Iran and China.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: For a while there it seemed we were witnessing a wild carnival of history, insta history coming at us from every corner through every medium. It was such a lot to take in at one time to digest, to make sense of. In China, there was the undreamt of democratic upheaval and the much feared too soon realized heartbreaking retaliation. In Iran, there was the frenzy of mourning for the fierce eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, haunter of our Western dreams. What we had for a moment were parallel mobs, people in the streets agitating, flailing, hoping and grieving. They seemed of a piece, these mobs, for a moment anyway, people yearning for something, someone beyond reach. The stars of these shows were two old men, one, allegedly ailing, Deng Xiaoping, the other, the Ayatollah, already dead. They were the tune callers, the focus of attention, the masters of the mobs. These were ogres, these old men, control freaks with blood on their hands. One assumed the state was God. The other made God the state, variations on the other, made the God the state, variations on a theme. We didn't have to be told. We know villains when we see them. But we also looked for the good guys in these two dramas and found them easily in Tiananmen Square, the agitating students and workers swept away like so much debris. Their ghosts still dance in that square. We mourn for them. We hold our breaths. Will they be back soon in our lifetimes, when? But what of the other mob, the mourning mob of Tehran? Were they good guys too? Not to most Westerners. The Iranian demonstrators are a different breed, almost unimaginable in their religious fervor. They were calling not for the overthrow of their leader, but for his resurrection, writhing in grief, chanting and pounding their heads and even trampling each other to death to get closer to his coffin. They werefrantic with the loss of him, their grief seeming perilously close to rage. How far we are from really understanding these people, their ruling and unruly passions. We try to understand but can't. We cannot get them in focus. They exist on another planet, in another time, an earlier time. They wish, in effect, to stop time, turn it back, and to put a stop to our sloppy Western freedoms. The Chinese students were willing to die for a piece of these freedoms. These Iranians are willing to die, it seems for the reverse. We have no answer for that, no rejoinder, no way to go. They hold us hostage to their notion of time. They've done it before; they will do it again. They alarm us because we have no moral vocabulary in common with them. They're working off completely different definitions of virtue and vice. Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, did seem to be speaking our language for one teasing moment, free market lingo had infected his thinking. His own people were teased towards freedom and abashed and angry when he quashed their dreams. A freer economy was one thing, he, in effect, said, a freer political society quite another. With troops and tanks he shut the door he, himself had cracked open, he slipped back into an old dialect, but even then, abhorrent as his actions were, Deng Xiaoping did not seem as strange, as foreign, as unknowable to us as the Ayatollah Khomeini. Now the mobs are off centerstage for a moment. There is an erie silence. It seems as if history, itself has quieted down, like a momentarily spent volcano, but from our safe distance, we wonder who will be heard from next, what voices from out there, from Iran, from China. We hope for the best but brace for the worst. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Once again, the main stories of the day, the U.S./Soviet talks on long range nuclear missiles resumed in Geneva, and a new report concluded that America's middle schools are too large to meet the intellectual and emotional needs of its sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. We end tonight with a remembrance of I.F. Stone. The self-described radical journalist and scholar died of a heart attack yesterday at the age of 81. He was the editor of his only weekly political letter from the 1950s through the '70s. In it, he attacked McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, racism, and hypocrisy wherever he found it. He turned his attention in later life to a fascination with the classics. I spoke to him in March of '88 about his book on the death of Socrates, and asked what he thought about the tolerance for freedom of speech in America today.

I.F. STONE: [March, 1988] Free speech has always had to battle in every society, in every age, and in fact, in every group, little coteries of radicals have their party line and if you go against it, why you find your freedom of speech looked at as scarce. But if you look at it objectively in large terms, we have a tradition that is more powerful than that of any other Western society. When it comes to freedom of speech, the Constitution itself and the Bill of Rights embody the enlightenment and the best fruits of the English, American and French Revolution. Whereas, in Europe generally, constitutions are full of ifs and buts. The French after affirming freedom of speech on press and assembly in the French Revolution then backed away a bit and it's not quite as sacred, so I consider ancient Athens, the 200 years of freedom, one of the bright spots of human history and I think the 200 years of the American republic is comparable. In-between, there's such a wilderness of bigotry, persecution, murder, and talk about the follies of the common man. Look at the follies of the uncommon man, how many stupid and silly ideas people were burned at the stake for advancing so it's precarious, it's always precarious. It's always going to have to be fought for. It's the sacred American ideology so that those of us who are dissenters and mavericks can feel part of the American tradition.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.