The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, some assessments of the just- completed U.N. Conference on Racism, a Newsmaker interview with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, the opening of a series on whether smaller means better for the schools, and a new book conversation about how women saved the city. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Americans are healthier today than 25 years ago. The Centers for Disease Control and prevention said so today in an annual report. It credited reduced levels of smoking, hypertension, and cholesterol, among other things. But it also found people in small towns tend to smoke more, lose more teeth as they age, and die earlier than urban residents. That's partly because they have less access to preventive care and other medical treatment. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld promised today to declare war on bureaucracy in the Pentagon. In a speech there, he said he'd combine some civilian and military positions, and cut duplicate military jobs. He did not give details, but said Congress had mandated a 15% cut in headquarters staff by 2003. He said overall the cuts could save up to $18 billion a year. Prime Minister John Howard of Australia pressed today for talks on a free-trade agreement with the United States. He did so in a meeting with President Bush at the White House. Afterward Howard said preliminary discussions would begin by the end of the year. In his public statements today, Mr. Bush was non-committal. He's currently asking Congress for greater general authority in trade negotiations. The U.N. Security Council today lifted its arms embargo on Yugoslavia. It was the last of the international sanctions imposed on that country in 1998. They were meant to end a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The United States and European nations also imposed economic sanctions. They lifted those penalties after then-President Slobodan Milosevic was voted out of power last year. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Prime Minister Howard of Australia, what happened at the racism conference, smaller schools, and women in the cities.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: The Australian Prime Minister comes to Washington. Ray Suarez begins.

RAY SUAREZ: The island continent of Australia may be 8,000 miles from the West Coast of the United States, but a year ago it was the center of the world, as the site of the summer Olympics. The nation of 18 million people, once a British colony, used the occasion to show the world its ethnic and cultural diversity and to prominently showcase its native aboriginal population. Australians and Americans have fought together in five wars since World War I. And today in Washington, Prime Minister John Howard observed the 50th anniversary of the formal alliance between the nations, the so-called Anzus Pact. A ceremony was held at the Washington Navy Yard.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Australia is a strong and peaceful presence in East Asia and the Pacific. Australia's a generous land, mindful of the struggles of poor nations, always helping when and where it can. Your government and your good people are an example of democracy, individual liberty, and the virtues of free trade amongst all nations.

RAY SUAREZ: Later, at the White House, Howard met with President Bush to discuss trade and other issues. Australia wants a free trade agreement with the United States, but the Bush administration has not yet committed to that idea. Two months ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made an unusual joint visit to Australia to discuss forming tighter security bonds among countries on the periphery of China, including Japan and South Korea. But since that visit, members of the opposition Labor Party have warned against being drawn into an anti-Chinese alliance. Australia's major security issue is to prevent the possible collapse of its next-door neighbor, Indonesia, with its population of over 200 million people. Two years ago, when Indonesia ended its occupation of East Timor and chaos ensued, Australia took the lead in forming an international force to restore order. Australian troops still are the largest component of the UN peacekeeping force there.

JOHN HOWARD: The government has left me no alternative...

RAY SUAREZ: Howard's right of center Liberal Party controls parliament, and new elections may be called within weeks. Even as Australia has emphasized its role as an Asian nation and absorbed more than 800,000 ethnic Asians, immigration issues remain a flashpoint in domestic politics. The government's poll ratings have jumped since it refused t admit a cargo of more than 430 mostly Afghan refugees on a Norwegian ship off the Christmas Islands. After a week of diplomatic maneuvering, a deal was worked out for Australia to pay for the refugees to go to New Zealand and the Pacific island nation of Nauru.

JIM LEHRER: Now to Prime Minister Howard, who joins us for a Newsmaker interview. Mr. Prime Minister, welcome.

JOHN HOWARD: Good evening, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: On this Afghan refugee situation, why did you not allow those people into Australia?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, because they were illegal immigrants. We're very happy to take refugees and on a per capita basis we take more refugees than any country except Canada, but if you allow illegal immigration of that type to interrupt the refugee flow, you really are allowing those people to go ahead of others who may be assessed by the UNHCR as being more in need of refugee acceptance into Australia.

JIM LEHRER: Even 430 people would have made that big a difference in a country as large as yours?

JOHN HOWARD: I mean, that wouldn't have been the end of it. There are estimates of thousands of people wanting to come to Australia. And we have a very large coastline. It is an island continent. If you continually have the situation where we're seen by people smugglers as being an easy touch, the number of people wanting to come will grow rather than diminish.

JIM LEHRER: What do you say to those who say there were domestic political ramifications of this, that if you had not been approaching a probable election you might have taken a different turn?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I would say that we can hardly be accused of having arranged for a vessel out of Indonesia to founder and be picked up by a Norwegian fighter. I mean, those circumstances were impossible to organize; that's what I'd say to them.

JIM LEHRER: But there is no question, is there not, that your decision was politically popular in Australia? The majority of the Australians did not want those people to come in?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, whether it ultimately s out to be politically popular or not is beside the point. We did it because we thought it was the right thing to do, and we did it against the background of having taken refugees on a very generous basis, indeed, a more generous basis, than many of the countries around the world that are criticized us for what we've done.

JIM LEHRER: On your trip to Washington, this unwillingness of President Bush to start free trade negotiations immediately, that must be a great disappointment to you?

JOHN HOWARD: No, I understand there are domestic political reasons here in Washington for that. I mean I'm a realist. I appreciate the domestic political challenges of fellow leaders. He's got....

JIM LEHRER: Everybody has them, in other words.

JOHN HOWARD: Of course they do. I have them. George Bush has got them. You have got to be realistic in this business. And he's got to negotiate a mandate, a trade mandate from Congress, a trade promotion mandate. Right at the moment, those negotiations might be compromised by any commitment in principle, but once that issue is resolved I would hope that we'll return to the question of looking at the possibility of a free trade agreement between our two countries. I think there could be a lot in it. And I hope when the other issues resolve, we can get back to it.

JIM LEHRER: Why this important to you in Australia?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, because there's a great complementarity between Australia and the United States. We're both modern, sophisticated, highly educated, very progressive economies. Obviously there's a huge difference in size. But things like Internet usage and those types of things are almost as high in Australia as they are in the United States. On a per capita basis we're very similar. I think there is great potential. There will be a lot of hurdles particularly in the area of agriculture. We may not in the end find it worth the candle. But we've got to at least have a go and see if we can find the basis of a mutual agreement.

JIM LEHRER: What would be in it for Australia? What would be the advantages of having a free trade agreement with the United States?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, access to an enormous economy.

JIM LEHRER: What is it that you have that you can't sell here now in an open way?

JOHN HOWARD: Well obviously we would like some progress on agriculture.

JIM LEHRER: Like what? What products?

JOHN HOWARD: A whole range right across the board. But when you have a level of sophistication and technological skill, which is very similar, I think the potential is enormous. We get a lot of investment from the United States. The U.S. is our largest foreign investor. We invest quite a bit back. So I think it's a natural fit for the future. And when you have a close relationship, as we do with the Americans, it's always a mistake to sort of just sit on it and assume that it will look after itself. You've got to... Like friendships, you have to keep good relationships in good repair.

JIM LEHRER: What is the relation... The economic relationship between Australia and the United States beyond trade? How do you....

JOHN HOWARD: Well there's a lot of linkages in the financial sector. I mean many of the banking houses of America are operating Australia and of course it comes back the other way. You take an organization like News Corporation that started in Australia.

JIM LEHRER: That's Rupert Murdoch's organization.

JOHN HOWARD: Of course. So it goes both ways.

JIM LEHRER: Now our economy, the U.S. economy right now is having its problems. What's the state of the Australian economy?

JOHN HOWARD: Very strong at the moment. We're actually growing at a very strong clip. I think if things go as predicted, thenext calendar year we could grow faster than any economy in the industrialized world. We've had solid growth of around, average around 4% for the last few years. We have a big budget surplus. We've seen employment growth although our unemployment rate is still higher than yours. Right at the moment the outlook in Australia economically is very strong indeed.

JIM LEHRER: How have you escaped the problems... Even Japan which is closer to you and the other problems in Asia, how have you escaped this - the economic roll of the dice here?

JOHN HOWARD: A number of reasons. One of them is we've run a very flexible exchange rate. We're able to shift a lot of our exports out of Asia to North America and Europe when the Asian downturn hit a few years ago.

JIM LEHRER: You were selling things to Asia, things went bad and you went boom.

JOHN HOWARD: We shifted quite a bit, not all of it but we were able to avoid the hit from Asia. And on top of that we've reformed our tax system and taken about $3.5 billion Australian a year out of the costs of our exports because we have an across-the-board value-added tax now, a goods and services tax; and that doesn't apply to exports. That's given our exporters an enormous boost. We've reformed our waterfront, which has made our export sector a lot more efficient. So a lot of those things have come together to enable us to absorb the shock of what happened in Asia. Now obviously we're watching what is happening here in America because America is the dominant economic power in the world.

JIM LEHRER: It could hurt you in the long run?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, everybody can be affected, but we've done everything we can domestically to insulate ourselves against it, and the omens at the moment are very positive for Australia economically.

JIM LEHRER: All right; the security issue. You and President Bush observed the 50th anniversary of the military alliance today. How do you read security threats in your part of the world? What is it that....

JOHN HOWARD: We don't think anybody is waiting to attack us but we do live in a region, which is very unstable. There will, I think, be in the future I think be the potential for outbreaks of political and domestic instability in our immediate region. We've seen a lot. We've seen East Timor; we've seen Bougainvillea; we've seen difficulties in Fiji. We do live in a more unsettled region. Paradoxically it's more unsettled since the all divide between the Soviet Union, what used to be the Soviet Union and the United States has disappeared. So you do need to have a defense position, which protects your continental position but also gives you a capacity to help when help is needed in the region.

JIM LEHRER: What is your view of China as a threat in your part of the world?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I think... I tend to take a positive view about the relationship with China and the relationship between China and the United States is obvious critical to stability in the whole region. Our urging is also for very constructive dialogue. I think that's the President's view too.

JIM LEHRER: Richard Armitage, who's Deputy U.S. Secretary of State, made a speech in Australia last month and caused a stir when he said, "Australians must understand that being in this military alliance with the United States means being willing to fight and to die." A lot of people jumped on him. What was your reaction?

JOHN HOWARD: Oh, I didn't jump on him. I know Rick Armitage very well. He's a passionate devotee of the Australian/United States relationship. He was, you know, expressing the passionof his feeling. I don't think any of us envisage a situation in the near term where fighting side by side in those terms is going to occur. But, remember, in the past Australians and Americans have fought side by side. By the strength of our alliance we helped to avoid the necessity of it happening again.

JIM LEHRER: Some people interpret that as his saying, hey; we may have to come to the aid of Taiwan against China. We want Australians there by our side and we're going to ask for it. Did you interpret it that way?

JOHN HOWARD: No, I didn't interpret it that way. I just interpreted him as... It was a dramatic and rhetorical way of emphasizing what a close alliance means. We do have a close alliance. I mean, there is no country that we're closer to in a strategic and ideological sense.

JIM LEHRER: So from your point of view he was telling you what you already knew, is that right?

JOHN HOWARD: He was expressing the reality that it's a very close alliance and a very close friendship. Neither he nor I or indeed anybody wants to do anything to provoke a conflict between China and Taiwan. It's in everybody's interest to engage China in dialogue. It's in everybody's interest to reach out consistent with defending our own values and our own system and our own position. I mean, we have a pragmatic approach to the Chinese. We're very different. We tend to focus on the things that we have in common rather than the things that divide us.

JIM LEHRER: But you don't have any problems with the Chinese now, any outstanding controversy?

JOHN HOWARD: We don't. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of Australians of Chinese descent particularly living in Sydney and other major cities. We have a very different philosophy. I mean, we're an open democracy; China is not. But what you do in a situation like that is focus on where you can move forward together.

JIM LEHRER: You don't see them... When you sit down at your desk everyday, as a potential enemy of Australia?

JOHN HOWARD: No, I don't. I don't think anybody wants to attack Australia. But we do live in a region that has the potential for local instability in a number of spots. That's a very different world in a way from what it was a few years ago.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much.

JOHN HOWARD: Thank you.

FOCUS - TOUGH TALKS

JIM LEHRER: Now the U.N. Racism Conference: Gwen Ifill has that story.

GWEN IFILL: By the time the contentious meeting at the United Nations' Racism Conference drew to a close this weekend, participants had agreed on this much: A 27-page declaration condemning anti- Semitism, Islamophobia, religious intolerance, and slavery.

NKOSAZA DLAMINI-ZUMA: May I take it that the world conference wishes to adopt the Durban declaration and the Durban program of action as submitted by the main committee?

GWEN IFILL: But getting to even the most sweeping agreement was anything but simple. Before the meeting even began, disputes flared about efforts to equate Zionism with racism, and to call for reparations for slavery. It took nine long days for a meeting called to promote racial tolerance and diversity to work through the fundamental disagreements that sparked a U.S. walkout. The United Nations Mary Robinson chaired the conference.

MARY ROBINSON: It has been as I said exhausting. I know I've missed my plane. I'm sure that everyone will benefit from a break but not for too long. There is much work to be done. We have made a beginning. Thank you very much. (applause)

GWEN IFILL: Robinson applauded what she said was the meeting's chief accomplishment, the carefully brokered declaration condemning slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as a "crime against humanity." But African delegates wanted an explicit apology for slavery, plus specific promises of compensation or reparations for slavery's victims. The delegation from the European Union refused to accept such language, arguing that reparations would open the door to massive lawsuits.

LOUIS MICHEL: Durban was an opportunity to express a very strong act of repentance-- I said that. Also it is not important to know if we speak about regrets or we speak about remorse or we speak about apology; that is not the question. What is important to me is that it is the recognition of an injustice that we cannot accept.

GWEN IFILL: Diplomats from Europe, Africa, and Latin America, as well as African American attendees, ultimately accepted the compromise as an important sign of atonement.

ADJOA AIYELORO: We feel that it really is a partial victory for us because many of our issues people were laughing at 20 months ago, that the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and colonialism are crimes against humanity and reparations are owed as victims. What this document does is say the transatlantic slave trade should have been a crime against humanity at the time.

GWEN IFILL: The Middle East conflict provided fuel for the conference's major sticking point, as Israel and the U.S. refused to sign on to any document that seemed critical of Israel. The final document did not equate Zionism with racism, but it did express concern about what it called the plight of the Palestinian people, asserting their right to self- determination.

SPOKESMAN: We are not completely satisfied, as everybody knows. We thought that the text as is was not satisfactory, but we nevertheless went along in the interests of the conference and in the interests of our friends in Africa and other places, as well.

GWEN IFILL: The final document also spoke out against a grab bag of other issues, including racial and ethnic profiling, AIDS discrimination, and matters affecting gypsies, Kurds, migrants, and refugees.

GWEN IFILL: In the end, what was accomplished at the UN Racism Conference? For answers and opinions, we turn to Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP. He attended a non-governmental organization session of the conference in Durban. Former Ambassador William Luers. He's now the chairman and President of the United Nations Association of the United States, a group that advocates stronger U.S./UN ties. He was a Foreign Service officer for 31 years. And we will be joined shortly by Representative Tom Lantos of California; he was a U.S. delegate as part of the delegation to Durban. Mr. Luers, was this conference with all of its drama and all of the setting, was it a success for a failure?

WILLIAM LUERS: I guess you can ask that about any UN meeting. My sense is that it's a tremendous success that 165 nations can sit together for ten days and talk about what is arguably the most contentious issue among human beings: Racism. Disorderly, passionate, unbalanced, unfair, but nonetheless a... An effort to reflect so many people, the concerns of so many people who are not heard anywhere in the world. I think from that standpoint, one has to say that the UN the only place where this could happen. Give voice to worries and concerns and passions.

GWEN IFILL: Let's follow up on that point. You say that so many people who are not heard anywhere else in the world got to be heard. But all we heard about in this country were the debates over Zionism and slavery and were there other things, which were obscured by those debates?

WILLIAM LUERS: Well, I think so. I wasn't there but we had a delegation from UNA there, and from my understanding is many of the issues, virtually every country came under some observation on the part of the NGOs and the member states with regard to problems within their countries. I think this is the first time in which countries have tried to put the blame on other people but have recognized that within their own societies, they have problems. I mean the Roma issue, which is not talked about very much, the gypsies of Europe.

GWEN IFILL: Explain to us because it's not heard about very much we'd like to know.

WILLIAM LUERS: Well, the gypsies of Europe have been a downtrodden group, discriminated against for many hundreds of years. And now their cause is being addressed openly within these countries and was discussed at the conference and was specifically listed as they should be given rights to education and to housing. And the black Brazilians got a voice about the problems they're having in Brazil. The whole range of issues of Africa, it wasn't simply about slavery, particularly in the NGO conference I understand that in country after country individual Africans spoke of discrimination within their country against them. Now this type of thing is important to most of the world. I mean, we were in this country obsessed this summer by the sexual habits of one of our congressmen. And these issues are important issues that they were talking about in Durban. I guess I would have to say that they're disturbing the way they were discussed. I think some of the more outspoken members of the delegations captured and almost carried the conference away but the good news is it ended okay.

GWEN IFILL: Let me ask Mr. Shelton for his take on that.

HILARY SHELTON: I agree with the ambassador. There were so many important issues that were to be discussed at this conference that were discussed at this conference. To sit down with so many people from across the world to talk about the struggles, to address issues of racial discrimination and xenophobia was very interesting to us. We learned a lot from speaking to them and wished that our delegation had been led by our head of state like 17 of the delegations that participated in the conference. Issues like AIDS, issues like the disparate treatment of people of color; they are different from the majority of the population in the country. I sat down in my office with representatives from the Romas from the gypsies of Czechoslovakia, as we talked about their issues and concerns, their disparate treatment in their own country, it was so similar to our own that we just laughed because we had so much in common.

GWEN IFILL: Excuse me. But one of the issues, one of the big issues which American civil rights groups like yours took to Durban and didn't get satisfaction on was this issue of reparations or even an apology for slavery and the slave trade.

HILARY SHELTON: Well, we actually did get some satisfaction. We have advanced those issues. The issue of reparations for the transatlantic slave trade was very much front and center. Those discussions are very much alive. It's very clear they need to be continued to be discussed. It's also very clear that we have nations; heads of unions that still refuse to have those discussions. One of the biggest problems with racism today is the refusal of countries, the refusal of legitimate leadership to talk about these issues that affect smaller segments of their societies.

GWEN IFILL: Well, speaking of a nation that decided not to participate at least after the first few days, Congressman Tom Lantos joins us. You were part of the delegation in Durban that decided in fact to walk out. You said at one point that you felt that the participation in this conference made a mockery of the subject. Do you still not that it's over and you've seen the final document, do you still believe that's true?

REP. TOM LANTOS: I certainly do. This was a conference, which showed enormous promise. What would be more uplifting than to begin the 21st century by saying that racism, discrimination, persecution, slavery are things of the past and we are moving ahead in a constructive direction? But the extremists in the Islamic and Arab world hijacked the conference, and the conference, designed to deal with discrimination itself became a discriminatory conference. It decided to discriminate against one country and one country only, and that was the state of Israel. There was no discussion of slavery in the Sudan, there was no discussion of the outrageous behavior of the Taliban in Afghanistan, no discussion of Chinese suppression of Tibet -- no discussion of Saudi suppression of women, just the issue of the Middle East. It was an outrage and I'm very proud of Colin Powell who recalled the American delegation.

GWEN IFILL: Now, Congressman Lantos, Mr. Shelton just said lots of other things were discussed, Mr. Luers said lots of other things did were discussed and that the United States did not serve a purpose by not participating.

REP. TOM LANTOS: Well, that's absolutely untrue. The whole focus of the conference was to be a punitive expedition against the state of Israel. That was the issue, which mesmerized the conference. There was a lynch mob atmosphere there. And while in some committees there were all kinds of discussions, the focus was to single out the state of Israel for international denunciation. That is what the conference was all about. The final document was not as bad as some of the earlier drafts. But even the final document is an outrage use the final document does not deal with discrimination in all of the countries, which had political pull at the conference. The notion that Sudan, a country practicing slavery as we speak, is not criticized, is an indication of the unfairness of this conference. This conference stands self-condemned and it will be a dark chapter in the history of the United Nations.

GWEN IFILL: Ambassador Luers, I'm sure you couldn't be more opposite than Congressman Lantos in your assessment this conference but a chance to respond at least to his comment that for instance there was a lynch mob mentality toward Israel and friends of Israel.

WILLIAM LUERS: Tom Lantos was there. He was part of it. And I think thanks to a large degree to his efforts and persistence, the language against Zionism and against Israel was removed. And I think the fact that he stood there and he argued the case for this single minded concentration, which was unjust-- there's no question about it-- the purpose of this conference was not to single out individual nations but to talk about the generic issues and how they affected the whole range of countries that were involved. I think the fact that the Zionism is racism was removed should remove a lot of the problems that, I think, Tom Lantos mentioned.

GWEN IFILL: Did that debate, Ambassador Luers, did that debate stop the conference from accomplishing even more?

WILLIAM LUERS: I think at least for the American media and for the United States that issue alone casts a very powerful spell over any interest in furthering the work that was done at the conference. It was a negative. On the other hand, it didn't appear, Zionism as racism was eliminated. And I remember that from '75 to '92 that was in all resolutions of the UN; today it will not be. And I think Tom Lantos deserves a lot of credit as does the delegation and the U.S. delegation and particularly the European delegations who finally had it removed.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Let me turn to Hilary Shelton here for a moment because I'm curious about two things. One is Congressman Lantos' comment about Sudan and slavery right now which wasn't addressed and also Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, who was on "Meet the Press" yesterday, and she said that she thought that reparations was an issue of the past that we shouldn't be involved in at all. Respond to those.

HILARY SHELTON: Well, let me start with the first point first. The issue of slavery was addressed in broad. The final language in the UN document speaks very clearly to slavery being an abomination across the board, whether we're talking about the U.S. or any other country, including Sudan.

GWEN IFILL: So no country should have been singled out.

HILARY SHELTON: Exactly. That's the same argument as a matter of fact that we made going in about Israel being singled out. We don't believe Israel should have been singled out going in. We did believe the language of the Zionism equals racism was unfair and not germane to the scope of the conference. Very clearly those issues are on the table and clearly were to do two things that were successful: One is removing that very troubling language and the other is making sure that issues of slavery across the board were addressed, including in the Sudan. I think Mr. Lantos was a little misleading as he talked about those issues not being addressed at all for indeed they were. The last question, if you'll repeat it...

GWEN IFILL: About Condoleezza Rice's comments about reparations.

HILARY SHELTON: I think that she misses the point. The point of addressing the issues of reparations or repairing the damage that was created through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is something we live with even today. It's not just an issue of the past but it's an issue of today; that is, if we look at almost every measuring spoon of our society, whether it's education, employment, home ownership, we find that African-Americans, the descendents of transatlantic slaves, are behind the curve of just about any other group in this country. So not to draw those conclusions and to see the direct correlation to the transatlantic slave trade I think is just, she's just missing the point.

GWEN IFILL: Tom Lantos, a chance to respond to what Hilary Shelton just said, but also, I'd like you to give us an overview about whether we should have gone in the first place, whether everyone wasn't just biting off more than they could chew on this issue?

REP. TOM LANTOS: Well, I thought that we should have gone. And I know that no one wanted to be there more desperately than Colin Powell, who made it clear before this conference began in Durban that he will not go if obnoxious language and the singling out of a country is part of the document. Now I find it amusing that some of my colleagues on the panel are so proud of the fact that Zionism is racism as a phrase is not part of the document. Well, that's true. Zionism was a response to centuries old of persecution of Jews in Europe. It had nothing to do with racism. It was a type of Goebels type propagandaslogan, which the UN kicked out a long time. But even the final document is tendentious, it is unfair, it is inappropriate. And the fact that there is a historic recognition of slavery does not deal with the issue that slavery, as we speak, is being practiced in the Sudan. There was silence about it. There was silence about the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. This is a generic issue. My feeling is that the conference was basically a failure, and my judgment is that our government handled our participation and our withdrawal in a singularly principled fashion, and I congratulate Colin Powell.

GWEN IFILL: Congressman Lantos, Ambassador Luers, and Hilary Shelton, thank you all very much for joining us.

FOCUS - SMALLER SCALE

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, smaller schools and a new book conversation. Is smaller better when it comes to education? Well, we begin a new series tonight. And Betty Ann Bowser reports on a small school experiment in Denver.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: By almost any measurement Manual High School is at rock bottom. It has the worst test schools in the Denver public school system. A third of the kids have difficulty speaking, reading or writing English, and just 67% actually graduate. Even the students themselves seem troubled by the school's reputation. This ninth grader said she almost didn't come to Manuel because of what her middle school teacher said.

STUDENT: She told me that it would be better for me to go to another school. So why would she say something like that?

SPOKESMAN: Well, let me tell you something. We do not do well on standardized tests as a school. We do not succeed. And, in fact we'll fail for the state standards, but that's not because of you students who are here now. But unfortunately, we have a lot of students on our class roll that don't take the test, and they get a zero.

SPOKESPERSON: Where's your ID?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Over the years, Manual's administration has tried a number of things to turn the school around, but so far nothing has worked.

SPOKESMAN: We're breaking it down into three schools to make your education more personal.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: This fall, they're trying something drastic. Instead of having the 1,200 students all in one school, manual has been turned into three smaller schools. Ninth-grade English teacher Mario Giardiello explained it to his students on the first day of school.

MARIO GIARDIELLO: That's what this whole reform is about -- a personalized education, so you guys feel more comfortable being students here and succeeding here. And we're going to make sure no one falls through the cracks. When you're smaller, you're better, because nobody can just sit in the back corner and kind of drift away and be invisible.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Most of the money to create these smaller schools came from a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It provides $600,000 over the next five years. The transformation began over the summer, when each of the school's three floors was turned into a separate school.

SPOKESPERSON: One has been a principal, or is currently a principal?

SPOKESMAN: This one.

SPOKESPERSON: That one.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The faculty of each school pored over resumes looking for the right principal.

SPOKESPERSON: Hopefully it's with all of you guys' blessing.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: One for the leadership and business school...

SPOKESMAN: Buenas Dias. Good morning.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: ...One for the arts and cultural studies school, which also houses the English acquisition program...

SPOKESMAN: Bring technology or medicine into it, because that's the theme of the school.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: ...And one for the science and technology school. Each of the schools teach a basic core curriculum, but with special emphasis on leadership, science, or the arts. A fourth principal was hired to manage the building operations and logistics for sports and other after-school activities, which were not divided.

SPOKESMAN: Good job.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Nancy Sutton has been principal of Manuel for the last five years. Splitting into smaller schools was her idea, and she is now in charge of directing the reform effort.

NANCY SUTTON: If ever there was a compelling reason why, you know, a principal would want to get into this, it's because you stand back and you say, "I'm not providing the leadership that I need to provide for my teachers."

BETTY ANN BOWSER: She said she used to spend too much of her time on operational matters. Now she says principals can focus on teachers and students.

NANCY SUTTON: You have this intense personalization, so you know what every student can do, can't do, will do, won't do, what the family issues are. You have this trust built up, and you can really, I think, make a difference in the life of, you know, a group of students.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In each of the schools, ninth- and tenth-grade instructors work in groups of four-- one each for English, math, science, and social studies.

SPOKESPERSON: Let's say I'm working on percentages, so, like, in geography, you might say, what percentage of the population of this country is...

SPOKESMAN: Yeah, exactly.

SPOKESPERSON: Do this, and then I'd work that, you know, we could do... I think there's a nice cross.

SPOKESMAN: Sure.

SPOKESPERSON: So they don't get hit with it every period.

SPOKESPERSON: Louder.

SPOKESPERSON: You're in the right spot. Come in.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The four-person teams have just over 100 students, and they stay with them for their freshman and sophomore years.

SPOKESPERSON: Hey! I got you again, huh?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Math teacher Kerrie Schultz teaches in the arts and cultural studies school.

KERRIE SCHULTZ: I'm really feeling a lot more support this year than I have in the past; that, you know, there's teachers that have the same kids, that they're all on the same floor, so if I'm having a problem with a kid, they're easy to access. I don't have to chase them up and down floors.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: How is this going to improve your kids' ability to learn?

KERRIE SCHULTZ: In some classes already, I know, like, there have been teams of teachers that have met and talked about every single kid and what's going on with them already, and this is only a week and a half into school. And that's usually something that, if we were lucky, would be happening in December, you know, four months from now.

KERRIE SCHULTZ: Isaac, are you liking classes in English? Sort of? Kind of?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: This is the second year Shultz has taught sophomore Isaac Gonzalez. Last year he took his classes in Spanish. This year they're all in English.

KERRIE SCHULTZ: Homework.

STUDENT: I have only three --

KERRIE SCHULTZ: You have what?

STUDENT: Only three equations.

KERRIE SCHULTZ: Why do you only have three equations?

STUDENT: Because it's hard.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: She hopes the fact that he already knows and trusts her will make him want to continue to work hard at math and at his language skills.

KERRIE SCHULTZ: Okay, so you're going to come visit me after school today?

STUDENT: Yes.

KERRIE SCHULTZ: Okay. Promise?

STUDENT: Yes.

KERRIE SCHULTZ: Okay, after school.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Giardiello, who teaches in the science school, also thinks the smaller size will help him keep his kind engaged. Here, the class discussing the plot and themes of the movie "Titanic."

SPOKESMAN: I don't know. What's the moral?

SPOKESMAN: What's the moral?

STUDENT: Don't pull the plug, because then you die.

STUDENT: That the person who loved "Titanic" died, except for the girl. Romeo and Juliet died - both of them.

TEACHER: You've got to believe in love, don't you?

STUDENT: I don believe in love.

TEACHER: The movie shows us that even though bad things happen...

STUDENT: I'll never fall in love cause I'm afraid that I'll die.

TEACHER: All right, is there anybody here who believes in love?

STUDENT: Me.

MARIO GIARDIELLO: Really? We still have some people who have not been tainted. Good. I think a lot of our students today, you know, if they don't feel like you care, they're not going to work for you. I don't know how many times we used to hear, you know, "I don't like that teacher, so I'm not going to do their homework," which is a really immature idea, of course, but it's a reality. Our kids have to know that we care about them in order for them to care.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Shultz and Giardiello both began their teaching careers at Manuel four years ago, when the reform effort was just starting to be discussed.

MARIO GIARDIELLO: Okay, come get one now. Alan?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: They were excited by the prospect, but not all of the teachers were. About a third of its veteran teachers left because of the proposed reforms.

TEACHER: Who would like to read? Luis, you want to try it?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Special education teacher Stacey Blanas-May has been at Manuel for 16 years. She chose to stay, and is in the leadership school, but she does have some concerns.

STACEY BLANAS-MAY: When you upset the balance, and there are all these novice teachers-- who are fabulous and wonderful-- and very few veterans, it's difficult. It makes things a lot harder. There are things that you know that you've learned when you've taught a long time. It doesn't make you better; it makes you experienced.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And it has been her experience that too many times, reform efforts come and go like fashion trends, with no real commitment to make them work.

STACEY BLANAS-MAY: Oftentimes we've tried many things, and we've never had the opportunity to see it, you know, grow, change, fail, or succeed. And so, I think that our best chance to really evaluate is to give it some time.

MARIO GIARDIELLO: Good job today, guys.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But they won't have much time. The state of Colorado has said that if Manuel does not raise test scores by 25% over the next three years, the three schools will be shut down.

MARIO GIARDIELLO: This is part of the problem with our reform, is that we're feeling a little schizophrenic. Are we a school of personalization, or are we a school of test takers? And I think there has to be a really firm distinction between raising our scores up 25% and developing and nurturing lifelong learners, curiosity in our students. All the focus on the tests worries me. And in fact, the schools that are improving by 25% in three years, I'm suspect of those schools. I mean, what are those teachers doing? Are they only teaching for the test?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But Marcia Pointer, the principal of the leadership and business school, says she doesn't worry about that.

MARCIA POINTER: Everybody has to produce. If you're in private industry, you have to produce, or your business goes out of business, you know? And we just have to produce. That's just the bottom line. And if the test scores are what we're going to be judged on, then we have to do a better job on the test, you know? And I'm not saying teach to the test, but we need to improve our kids' test-taking abilities.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Sutton agrees.

NANCY SUTTON: I think if we have really important work that the students are doing, that we address that around the standards; that the tests are going to have to take care of themselves. It's the best we can do. It's the best we can do.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Students at the three schools will take a series of tests all year so that teachers can track their progress.

JIM LEHRER: And Betty Ann will have updates on Manuel High School throughout this academic year.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation about a new book, and once again, to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: The book is "How Women Saved the City." It tells a little known story of a key period in the history of the American city and women's growing public re at the turn of the 20th century. Author Daphne Spain is a professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia. Implicit in your book's title and, of course, copiously told in the book itself is this idea that the city needed saving. What did it need saving from?

DAPHNE SPAIN: It was a pretty chaotic time as the nation was undergoing industrialization. People were moving from farms into cities, and there were a number of newcomers or strangers that were entering cities. So we had European immigrants arriving. We had large numbers of African-Americans coming from the South into mid western and northeastern cities. And there was a group of women who were learning to earn their own way independently of their families. They were called women adrift - a-d-r--f-t -- because they seemed to be a new category. They were not within their typical families status that was expected of women at the time. And then there were also these women volunteers that were a type of newcomer to the city. And those were the one that I was writing about, the ones who created places.

RAY SUAREZ: What were the institutions that we created this time by the women who were these volunteers?

DAPHNE SPAIN: The YWCA created a number of boarding houses and vocational schools to teach women how to become type writers. That's what they were called at the time. The women themselves were called type writers. The National Association of Colored Women also created vocational schools with domestic skills and so liberal arts skills for African-American women. And the Salvation Army had a number of hotels and rescue homes for fallen women, women who were prostitutes or unwed mothers and trying to get off the streets. So the range of facilities included both lodging, as in the boarding homes and hotels for the Salvation Army and the settlement houses and the YWCA and the NACW. And they provided places for meals. They provided places for bathing, as I mentioned the public baths -- and playgrounds as well. So these were... I call them redemptive places because they served as a way station for newcomers to learn how to become urban Americans.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, why were this class of women that you write about, saving the city, why were they particularly poised at that moment in history to sort of rush in and create a whole voluntary sector?

DAPHNE SPAIN: There were several things going on. Women did not have the vote at the time -- the enfranchisement. So middle class women and working class women, both white and African-American women, had very few avenues outside of the home other than voluntary associations and religious work through the church. And when those combined as they did in some of the organizations I studied like the Young Women's Christian Association and the Salvation Army, it gave them ways to establish public identities through creating actual places in the city, where they came into contact with strangers, where the helped assimilate immigrants, where they helped young women find jobs, where they helped kids stay off the streets in playgrounds.

RAY SUAREZ: Many of the institutions you write about end up taking care of tens of thousands of families. They become enormous institutions -- and almost a parallel women's realm inside the city.

DAPHNE SPAIN: I think that it's a parallel but inter-woven at the same time because when we think about the era of urbanization, the real city building era between the Civil War and World War I, we know about the sky scrapers, we know about magnificent projects like Central Park, but we don't know that much about the settlement houses that were in the lower East side to help immigrants assimilate. We don't know about public baths where people had to go on a daily or weekly basis because they had no running water in their tenements. We tend to disregard playgrounds and yet they were very important spaces in between these other places. So, they were parallel but also integrated into the fabric of the city in a way that facilitated the work of cities at the time, and the work of cities 100 years ago was to assimilate strangers and to move from an agricultural into an industrial economy.

RAY SUAREZ: But to the teeming slums of immigrants on Hallstead Street in Chicago or the lower East side in New York, the fact that women volunteers were visiting their apartments was much more significant and much more tangible than the fact that the Woolworth's building was going up downtown.

DAPHNE SPAIN: I like to think so. That's what I was looking for when I started the research. The Salvation Army had a special brigade of women who were called Slum Sisters. And they went into homes and did things as mundane as feeding children, making tea, preparing people o be buried actually because there were no funeral parlors and immigrants had very little money to be able to do that. So the Slum Sisters were doing absolute daily routine tasks that had to be done in the immigrants' homes, say. In settlement houses, the reason they were called settlement workers is that they went into the neighborhood and settled there as a way to promote some neighborhood change. The settlement workers were somewhat radical by the standards of the day.

RAY SUAREZ: So there were some groups that were more paternalistic, more condescending and some who suffered along with their charges in effect?

DAPHNE SPAIN: Well, there's a large literature on settlement house workers that claims they were paternalistic and they were simply trying to foist their middle class white values on European immigrants. And that may have been part of the program but there was also part of it that was motivated by the social gospel by an attention to poverty as a public issue rather than a personal failing of individuals.

RAY SUAREZ: What is the social gospel?

DAPHNE SPAIN: The social gospel was a Protestant theology, very activist theology at the turn of the century that encouraged people to go out and become involved in changing poverty- ridden neighborhoods and changing social structure as opposed to trying to save the individual so that the Salvation Army was more evangelical. It was not associated with the social gospel. It didn't have that progressive reform agenda that the social gospel advocates did. But the two combined working in tandem or in parallel at the same time had the effect of imposing a fairly religious agenda on the nation, as it was becoming a more secular nation ironically. So I think that was a transition era.

RAY SUAREZ: So here we are a century later, new big cities are growing up in America. We're arguing about thee of the religious and the secular realm.

DAPHNE SPAIN: Exactly.

RAY SUAREZ: And also assimilating a large number of immigrants again.

DAPHNE SPAIN: Exactly, exactly. And the redemptive places that I identified from 100 years, the settlement houses and boarding schools and vocational schools and such were important because they were actual a spaces that people could gather together and they represented the types of issues that were most important to the day. They were religiously motivated then. And we have charitable choice as a provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act now. It's quite controversial, certainly. And President Bush's faith-based initiatives I see as taking us almost full circle back to where voluntary efforts originated 100 years ago.

RAY SUAREZ: The book again is "How Women Saved the City." Daphne Spain, thanks for being with us.

DAPHNE SPAIN: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday: Americans are healthier today than 25 years ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said so today an annual report. And Australian Prime Minister John Howard pressed for a free trade agreement in talks at the White House, but on the NewsHour tonight, Howard said he understands President Bush can't commit to that until Congress grants him broader negotiating power. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.