The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news today, world leaders paid tribute to Andrei Sakharov who died last night. In Colombia, a top drug trafficker was killed in a shootout with police and Panama's military ruler, Gen. Noriega, was given more power to run the country. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, two former associates and friends of Andrei Sakharov speak of his legacy as a scientist and dissident, then Tom Bearden looks at the rising of airline fares, our regular Friday night analysis of Gergen & Shields follows that and we close with a report from John Merrow on working together to learn. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Messages of condolence and praise came in from around the world today for Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet human rights leader. Sakharov died last night at 68, apparently of a heart attack. World leaders from Pres. Bush to Mikhail Gorbachev paid tribute today. We have a report from Moscow by Robert Moore of Independent Television News.

MR. MOORE: This morning a small crowd gathered outside the Moscow home of Andrei Sakharov. A few held flowers in memory of the man whose spirit had never been broken despite years of constant harassment and internal exile, his body then taken to a clinic where the cause of death was established. Today at the congress of people's deputies, the parliament where Sakharov had served for the last six months, a short tribute and a moment's silence from the deputies. Few in the vast hall can have missed the irony of paying respects to a man who a previous Kremlin leadership had tried to crush. Friends and fellow reformers paid tribute to Sakharov, the moral leader of a generation scarred by human rights abuses. Only yesterday hours before he died he was meeting in the Kremlin with fellow radicals to discuss the formation of a new opposition group in the Soviet parliament. Visibly tired and ill, it was typical he should be working towards his vision of turning the Soviet Union into a multiparty and liberal nation.

MR. MacNeil: The Soviet military today announced it will cut its defense budget by 8 percent next year, bringing it down to $115 billion. That's less than half the U.S. defense budget, but analysts say the figures are difficult to compare because costs are different. At NATO headquarters in Brussels today, the members agreed to let Warsaw Pact planes fly over NATO countries. The policy is called open skies. It was originally proposed 30 years ago by Pres. Eisenhower and recently revived by Pres. Bush. Sec. of State Baker in Brussels for the Nato meeting explained why the agreement is important.

JAMES BAKER, Sec. of State: And I think this is an important step because an effective open skies regime can provide real transparency and insight into a still closed Soviet military establishment. This should assist us as well in verifying a broad range of arms control agreements.

MR. MacNeil: The Warsaw Pact will take up the open skies proposal in February. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: One of the world's most powerful drug traffickers was killed today. Colombian officials said Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, his son, and 11 body guards were shot to death in a gun battle with police in Northern Colombia. Rodriguez Gacha was a leader of the Medillin Drug Cartel. He was sought by U.S. officials to face drug charges in Miami and Detroit. Earlier today another alleged Colombian drug dealer was extradited to the United States. Nelson Cuevas Ramirez faces charges of bringing more than 200 pounds of cocaine into this country and conspiring to import another 300 pounds. This afternoon he entered a "not guilty" plea at the federal courthouse in New York City. Ramirez is the 10th person to be extradited from Colombia since August.

MR. MacNeil: Panama's congress today named Gen. Manuel Noriega head of the government to deal with what it called a state of war with the United States. Noriega was already the de facto ruler of the country but this new title awarded by his hand picked congress gives him the legal authority has well. Panama had a presidential election in May, but it was annulled by Noriega. The results of yesterday's presidential election in Chile are in. The winner is 71 year old Patrico Aylwin. He will succeed military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. In a victory speech today Aylwin had a message for the military. He said the armed forces are subordinate to the president and owe him obedience. In South Africa today the Supreme Court overturned the treason convictions of five prominent black anti-apartheid activists. They'd been convicted of trying to incite a violent uprising against the government. But the high court said the trial was conducted improperly. We have a report narrated by Roderick Pratt of Worldwide Television News.

MR. PRATT: The successful appeal brought to an end the country's longest treason case; a huge crowd gathered outside the high court in Blane Fontaine to hear the decision. When the news came that the charges against the five black activists had been overturned, there was much relief. Even after spending four years in jail, the men held no bitterness.

PATRICK LEKOTA, Anti-Apartheid Activist: We are only happy that we have had the privilege of contributing to advance the struggle for our country to this point.

MR. PRATT: Five were released when the court accepted that a key legal expert had been improperly dismissed at the trial. Human rights activists hailed the ruling as a victory for justice. Archbishop Desmond Tutu like many others couldn't contain his joy.

THE RIGHT REV. DESMOND TUTU, Archbishop Of Capetown: We say when we started marching that we are unstoppable and justice is unstoppable.

MR. MacNeil: The State Dept. issued a terrorism alert today. The warnings said terrorists from the Middle East may be planning attacks against American targets in Western Europe or West Africa, but based the concern on reported movements of terrorists and weapons to pro-Iranian groups in Spain and Africa. The French government announced a nationwide alert yesterday that involved special precautions at airports and other locations throughout France.

MR. LEHRER: There were two sets of economic numbers out today. The Commerce Department said wholesale prices fell .1 percent in November. That drop brought the annual inflation rate down to 4.6 percent. But on the not so bright side, the U.S. merchandise trade deficit rose to $10.2 billion in October, 20 percent higher than the September figure. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to remembering Andrei Sakharov, high flying air fares, Gergen & Shields and cooperative learning. FOCUS - VOICE OF CONSCIENCE

MR. MacNeil: First tonight we examine the life and legacy of the Soviet scientist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, who died last night at his home in Moscow. Leaders throughout the world eulogized the 68 year old Nobel Peace Prize winner as a powerful force for freedom and democratic reform. In the Kremlin, whose leaders had once been his persecutors, Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev said that Sakharov's death was a very big loss. In a moment we'll hear from two friends of Sakharov. First David Smith of Independent Television News has this background report on the Soviet Union's most famous dissident.

MR. SMITH: Right to the end Andrei Sakharov was campaigning. This yesterday afternoon was his last public appearance with radical deputies at the Soviet Parliament. If he looked exhausted, he was, but Dr. Sakharov knew no other way. His life mirrored the modern history of the Soviet Union. His imprisonment encapsulated the tragedy of the lost years under Brezhnev. His release in 1986 personified the country's reawakening under Gorbachev. His death at such a critical moment leaves an enormous vacuum. No one will fill it because no one has the moral authority Sakharov had and no Soviet politician enjoys the respect that was his.

VITALY KOROTICH, Soviet Deputy: It was more important for us than maybe Gandhi for India, because he tried to save the face of our country, of our nation in face of civilized people. He was very important to it and now I feel myself as orphaned.

MR. SMITH: Andrei Sakharov began as the son of the establishment. He was a brilliant physicist, the creator of the Soviet H Bomb. But he knew the ruling class and was appalled what they were doing, accountable to no one. That was what made him a dissident, a champion of Soviet rights and that was what cost him his freedom. Brezhnev sent him into external exile in Gorky. The establishment would now call him and his wife, Elana Bonner, political simpletons, the tools of imperialism. But Sakharov survived, the body weaker by the year the spirit ever more indominatable

DR. MEDVEDEV: The most important driving force was his conviction was that society could be changed, and that his personal efforts as man of acknowledged position Soviet science would make a difference.

MR. SMITH: When Mr. Gorbachev released him three years ago he was not just passionate about his cause. He had, as he said on his first night back in Moscow a manifesto for change. Under Gorbachev, he would become a leader, he would run for parliament and win by a landslide, he would ally himself with the likes of Boris Yeltsun, forming the first opposition the Soviet Leadership has ever had. And at every turn up and down the country he would fight for greater political freedom, for the rule of law, not the Communist Party, for free market economics. When the new parliament opened in March, Pres. Gorbachev paid him the ultimate compliment calling him to be the first speaker on the stone of democracy The president knew that the sight of Sakharov, a man of his time, on this podium would convince all those who questioned whether the Soviet Union could ever change.

DR. ZHORES MEDVEDEV, Soviet Scientist: Well, the first who started actually all these ideas which now are considered as peristroika, all this about individual labor, all the recent treaties with Americans they were all advocated by Sakharov 15, 20 years ago well before Gorbachev even was known.

MR. SMITH: Two moments from the Soviet parliament this week say more than any words about Sakharov, on Tuesday, this row with Pres. Gorbachev about something that's on everyone's mind after a East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the role of the Communist Party, today a minute's silence. The politicians of The Soviet Union may be bitterly divided but they were united about this man. Mr. Sakharov had a favorite line from Chekhov he quoted often. "We must squeeze the fear out of us drop by drop." That may be his epitaph.

MR. MacNeil: Joining us now are two exiled Soviet scientists who worked closely with Sakharov during the early days of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union. Valentin Turchin was a physicist and leading dissident in Moscow. After forming the Soviet Union's first Amnesty International Section. he was fired from his job, was forced to emigrate in 1977 he currently is a Professor of Computer Science at the City College of New York and Pavel Litvinov who was also a physicist and active in MOscow's dissident circles. In the late 1960s, he was arrested for his political actives and sentenced to 5 years in internal exile in Siberia before being expelled from his country in 1973. He now teaches physics at a private school in Tarreytown, New York. Mr. Turchin, what is the source of Sakharov's great moral force? Was it something that he grew up and had as a young man or just where did it come from?

VALENTIN TURCHIN, Exiled Soviet Physicist: Well, I think from his individual personality. Nobody knows yet how personalities appear in this world. But suddenly we see that such a bright and outstanding personality as Sakharov has been born in the body of a Soviet man, and he did all his life actually.

MR. MacNeil: How much did it grow out, was it a moral conversion experienced with his work on the hydrogen bomb. How much did it grow out of that?

PAVEL LITVINOV, Exiled Soviet Physicist: It's difficult to say. He probably will kind of answer this question when his memoirs will be published but I believe that it is was very important that he worked on that terrible weapon but one has to remember he started his work right at the end of the second world war. So it was national patriotism and fear for his country that probably moved him to that work. But very early in his life he started to think about all other problems like radiated fall out and he eventually was instrumental in the treaty against atmospheric test of nuclear weapons. So very early he start to feel responsibility for weapons which he helped bring to this world.

MR. MacNeil: Should Americans think of him as something like a Robert Oppenheimer who contributed enormously to the American bomb and then suffered a crisis of conscience about it afterwards. Do you see a resemblance there in that history.

MR. TURCHIN: Well, there is some parallels of course, but Sakharov was in an immeasurably more difficult situations of course that Oppenhiemer and he put on line everything. He suffered tremendously for the lesson which taught to the World. The lesson of the highest responsibility of a scientist. And nowadays, the science brings more miracles and some of them rather scary. It's an extremely important message for the whole world. This is why his name is so well known throughout the World.

MR. MacNeil: How did you actually see his concern about the dangers, scientific dangers to the world through radiation and so on and the danger from the bomb itself directly. How did you see that growing in to the moral human rights crusade that it grew in to? You were present at some of the early stages of his thinking on this.

MR. TURCHIN: That's right. I met him first in 1968. That's hard to say probably it is one process and you can not separate him from another.

MR. MacNeil: There's a lot of talk today about the nature of his courage, that he always seemed to exhibit . Can you describe the way his courage appeared to you or the way he demonstrated it to you?

MR. TURCHIN: Yes, it could be seen all the time. He was a courageous man from the very beginning. I believe that the root of his courage is his very important feature of Sakharov it is responsibility. More than anything else, he felt responsible for things around him and because of that he couldn't remain silent. And I think this is the key, the extremely high responsibility before mankind, before his country, before his family before his friends. This is one of the most important features.

MR. MacNeil: How did you see him, Mr. Litvinov displaying courage?

MR. LITVINOV: Well, the courage I can only second what was said but I think courage is a very important feature of him. There is absolutely courageous and when he wanted to say something he would say it at any time. But I find may be more important feature of him is not only courage but his real feeling of respect to any person any human being. There is much evidence of that and his idea was to reconciliate different type of people, reconciliate people with their government. Recently, for example, he tried to help to resolve but didn't succeed resolve the conflict between the Armenias and different groups of people. He believed that peace in the deepest sense was his main motivation. He believed that people have to meet and have to talk and have to discuss and there was dignity in almost any position when any approach when people would understand each other. He believed something will move and will change this world.

MR. MacNeil: Describe his personality and his habits and his mannerisms. Describe him as a man. Apparently after leading a very well to do life because of his preeminent position in Soviet science and the awards and everything he got and the priveldges he got from that. Apparently he adapted very easily to a much smaller standard of living didn't seem to care about that.

MR. TURCHIN: Yes, he didn't care about that but he cared about people. Sakharov was really combination of a sharp analytical mind with I say with a tender soul.

MR. MacNeil: A tender soul.

MR. TURCHIN: Yes. And you should see how he loved, how he cared about his members of his family about his friends and with people who were close to him, he just love them as members of family. He was absolutely outstanding man. Its a great loss.

MR. LITVINOV: I wasn't that close as Valentin to him personally although I met him many times. And sometimes I felt that I was his friend but never was that close. But one thing is very important about him. He was always very quiet. He would never raise his voice. Whatever point of view he would disagree with he would say it. But he would say it in such a way that it wouldn't insult anybody. And I think his attitude about human rights came from this type of thing that he didn't want to impose his point of view. He just would say it quietly and many times hoping that people will hear him.For example, I remember his wife, Elana,said that when they were in Gorky they would be watched by KGB man all the time 24 hours a day and he would always say hello to him, he would take his hat off because he even in that life he would still see the human being.His wife was angry about that but that it is the way he was. And I think his human rights struggle came at least partly from this type of thing.

MR. MacNeil: These qualities in our Western tradition are often the selflessness, the courage the firm persistence in what he saw as right they are often thought of being religion or having a religious basis. Was there any religious formal religious basis to this or was this just a humanist?

MR. TURCHIN: In the very wide basis, of course, the humanism is to some extent is religion. That whether we call this something which exists God or history or humanity, we feel about it more or less the same way. Anyway it is about us. It is super personal, of Sakharov had this feeling. As a scientist he had this feeling of a super personal things, things which go beyond our existence, but at the same time of course, he was a scientist to the marrow of his bones and you could see that when you spoke to him. It was an enjoyment to speak to him. You saw how his thoughts was working and it reflected on his person. You know, Sakharov very often said, well, I don't know, or I am not sure, because he was scientist. He was nothing like preacher who beforehand knows what the truth was. He always thought and discussed things together and this was why when he was sure about things it was so convincing.

MR. MacNeil: There seems to have been a kind of symbiotic relationship between him and Gorbachev. They needed each other in an certain way. Is that right? And can you describe that?

MR. LITVINOV: Definitely. Gorbachev was the one who brought him from Gorky after all these years of exile and almost death there and very difficult hunger strikes and all those things how he was tortured there and Gorbachev brought him, and to some degree, of course, somebody would say that he was greatful to Gorbachev but I think he was greatful but it was much more. I think Sakharov saw in Gorbachev at least at that time a man who really brings his country tosomething what he dreamed about and in a way he started to support Gorbachev and Gorbachev's peristroika and some people would say oh he really was being used. But very soon he showed he was not a man to be used. He was ready to go and support and supported perestroika and Gorbachev I think that even in the day of his death he in principal agreed with most of things. And at the same time he would always speak up his mind and never would go farther than what he believe in. And he showed it all the time.

MR. MacNeil: We heard in that little report the Soviet Editor, Vitaly Korotich say that perhaps he was important for us that Ghandi was for India. If you had to put Sakharov in the context of other great figures in history who would you compare him with.

MR. TURCHIN: Well, it's really hard to find anybody, Galileo maybe.

MR. MacNeil: Why Galileo?

MR. TURCHIN: Well, Galileo was associated in our minds with fight for scientific truth and against what them was the Inquisition and what is in the 20th century became totalitarian rule. So did Sakharov and he had more to sacrifice and more to suffer than Galileo.

MR. MacNeil: Just briefly go ahead.

MR. LITVINOV: I would say in my opinion he is close to figures like Ghandi as you mentioned. It is difficult to say who gave more to each country. But I think I would compare him to Albert Schweitzer because of his humanity and his attention to human beings.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Mr. Litvinov and Mr. Turchin, thank you both for joining us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the Newshour tonight, rising air fares, Gergen & Shields, and learning together. FOCUS - SKY HIGH FARES

MR. LEHRER: Next a look at rising airline fares. The Justice Department this week announced an investigation into charges some of the increase is due to price fixing. Correspondent Tom Bearden reports on something else that has a great deal to do with the price of an airline ticket.

MR. BEARDEN: For today's airline passenger, the proverbial journey of a thousand miles begins with a single key stroke. Ask your travel agent a question and the answer pops up on a computer screen, schedules, fares, connections, discounts. This is Morris Travel of Salt Lake City, one of the biggest travel agencies in the West. It's in agencies like this where the real battle for your travel dollar takes place, behind the scenes on the screens of powerful computer reservations systems. The agency's president, Rick Frendt, says there are thousands of fare changes each day and the travel industry couldn't even operate without these systems.

MR. FRENDT: Let me just do a quick fare display with Salt Lake to Los Angeles, and you can see that the fares go from $149 to 620, and the first class fare is 930. So there must be what, fifty, sixty fares between here and Los Angeles.

MR. BEARDEN: Every airline has a computer reservation system like this called CRS's for short with terminals in travel agencies connected to a large main frame computer at the airline headquarters. This is System 1 which belongs to Continental. And this is Datus 2, Delta's computer reservation system. CRS's started out years ago as a kind of giant bookkeeping system and gradually evolved into a powerful competitive weapon to sell seats. Most observers say travel agencies using one airline's system tend to book more tickets on that airline. CRS's are so important that airlines fight amazingly expensive battles to control them. This is the story of one of those battles. It started two years ago when Delta Airlines bought out Western Airlines and became the dominant carrier in Salt Lake City. Delta had a computer like everyone else, but most agencies didn't have Delta terminals in their office. Not having a competitive system left Delta with a very big problem. Like every airline, Delta had to pay a fee every time one of its seats was booked on another airline's CRS. Delta vice president Cal Rader who helped fight that battle says those fees were particularly burdensome in Salt Lake City.

CAL RADER, VP, Delta Airlines: We were having to carry a heavy distribution cost to sell tickets there. That whole thing carried over into Delta so you just targeted that particular market to grow your CRS share.

MR. BEARDEN: Salt Lake City has 150 travel agencies, but just three of them get 60 percent of the business. Delta targeted, the big three, including Richard Frendt's Morris Travel, which was then using United's Apollo System. To get their Datus 2 systems installed, Delta had to convince Frendt to throw out Apollo. Did Delta go to unusual lengths to try to bring their system into this market?

RICHARD FRENDT, Pres., Morris Travel: I see Delta as being a very conservative airline and that they've always seen themselves a little bit differently than others and that they didn't need to get down in the mud and wrestle like some of the other carriers did. When they came to Salt Lake and they found it was very difficult to get people to change to their computers, I think they realized that they needed to do the things that the other carriers were doing and they got aggressive.

MR. BEARDEN: So aggressive in fact that some of the smaller travel agents cried foul. They complained to the Department of Transportation that Delta was giving the big agencies special deals and lower prices on tickets in return for converting to Delta computers. Travel Agent Coy Preece says the big agencies were offering prices the small agents couldn't even find on their CRS screens.

COY PREECE, Salt Lake City Travel Agent: We give them a price and it's showing in the computer that we can give them a price of $428, and then they call around, and people are going to do that, they're going to shop, okay, and they call around and get a price for $238, of course, they're going to go and buy from that, they're going to take $238 ticket. We've lost the business. We can't, we just plain can't sell the seat.

MR. BEARDEN: Delta denies playing favorites, but they do acknowledge using some marketing tools that may have gotten out of hand, for example, something called soft dollar rebates. Like all airlines, Delta pays travel agents a commission for each ticket sold, the more tickets, the bigger the commission. But the payments aren't always made in cash. Sometimes they're in the form of free air transportation, which the agent can use any way they see fit. Delta was so eager to crack the CRS market that some observers say Salt Lake City was literally awash in free ticket vouchers. At Morris Travel, Frendt converted some of that free transportation into his own company's travel vouchers. He then bartered the vouchers for among other things office furniture and commercials on local radio and TV stations. Another agency even tried to buy Toyotas from a local dealer with free tickets. Delta said what it did in Salt Lake City was not illegal or even all that unusual. Still the smaller agencies say the process began to fuel a kind of underground economy in free plane tickets. Delta says they didn't do anything here they don't do anywhere else, that if anything, perhaps the situation here got a little out of control.

BEVERLY MORRIS, Salt Lake City Travel Agent: I think it got very much out of control, very much.

MR. BEARDEN: Why? Was it the effort to get those CRS's installed?

MS. MORRIS: I think so and the commitment that had to be made in connection with the effort in getting the automation systems into those agencies.

MR. BEARDEN: Why was that such a big commitment?

MS. MORRIS: There would be no reason for me to change automation systems unless there was a pretty hefty carrot hanging out there for me.

MR. BEARDEN: There was another hefty carrot for Delta. Is it fair to say that having the Delta terminals makes it easier to sell tickets on Delta?

MR. FRENDT: I think it does. I think it does.

MR. BEARDEN: Does it make you want to sell tickets on Delta?

MR. FRENDT: Want to? I think it happens. The statistics that I've heard from the airlines [technical difficulty] -- tend to sell a slightly higher percent on American.

MR. BEARDEN: It's a natural part of the process of operating the system?

MR. FRENDT: And I think you're right. I think it probably is the halo effect as much as anything else.

MR. BEARDEN: Delta already had the majority of traffic in Salt Lake City when they began their campaign -- [technical difficulty] come together in one city. It gives the airline an unbreakable hold on the market. Small agents like DeAnn Palmer felt they were on the outside looking in.

DeANN PALMER, Salt Lake City Travel Agent: When you control all of the air, you control all of the in-house, the travel agents being paid to put their people on your airline. I mean, you have everything right in your pockets.

MR. BEARDEN: Some people might call that a strangle hold.

MS. PALMER: It's a killer.

MR. BEARDEN: There is more than one way to look at what happened in Salt Lake City. The small travel agencies saw themselves as victims, fighting big, powerful Delta Airlines, but Delta executives thought of themselves as victims too. They saw their small vulnerable computer system locked out because the big airline reservation systems had long-term contracts with most of the agencies.

MR. RADER: We've had some success in trying to grow our market share but it's been very expensive, it's been very time consuming, and to move from the roughly 10 percent automation market share that we have now and to a level that's meaning and productive for us would just take too long.

MR. BEARDEN: Delta was successful in bullying its way into a dominant share of the Salt Lake City CRS market, but apparently the airline has seen the handwriting on the wall nationally and has abandoned its efforts to build a big CRS on its own. Recently the airline announced it was combining its system with those at TWA and Northwest Airlines and would operate jointly. That leaves American Airlines' Saber and United Airlines' Apollo System with a 65 percent share of the market. People at other airlines say that sort of dominance is bad for air travelers.

PAUL SCHOELLHAMER, VP, Northwest Airlines: The computer reservation system is without question the most important and most serious anti-competitive force in the industry today.

RANDY MALIN, VP, USAir: Bob Crandall of American has been very forthright in admitting that a large hunk of American Airlines' profits is coming from the Saber System. We felt so strongly on that several years ago that we and a number of airlines sued United and American on this very point.

EDWARD BEAUVAIS, Chairman, America West Airlines: CRS carrier owners, particularly too namely American's Saber System and United's Apollo System is very troublesome to the rest of the industry because it allows these carriers to gain enormous advantage in the marketplace, and if you can't compete with an equitable share of the market, and you're not going to be making money and you're going to be forced to either give in or sell out.

MR. BEARDEN: Neither United nor American would agree to talk to us on camera for this story. Some like Yale economist Michael Levine are calling for major changes. He's a veteran airline watcher.

YALE LEVINE, Dean, Yale School of Mgmt.: I do think we really ought to require that airlines divest themselves of their computer reservation systems. That way a competitor who comes in will be able to get a fair shake from the computer reservation system which is not now dominated by a competitor.

MR. BEARDEN: Missouri Sen. John Danforth, who has raised a whole series of questions about airline competition, has already written a bill that would force the airlines to sell their CRS's. The Department of Transportation has been studying the whole issue for some time. It's now seeking comment on what to do when the existing regulations governing CRS regulations expire next year. The next time you call to book a ticket, when you hear the clicking of the travel agent's keyboard, remember that you are going through the least understood and yet perhaps most financially important part of your trip, to you the agent, and the airline. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MR. LEHRER: Now to our Friday conversation with Gergen & Shields, David Gergen, Editor at Large of U.S. News & World Report, Mark Shields, Syndicated Columnist with the Washington Post. Mark, this was the week of the China fire storm. How do you read the fallout from the Scowcroft-Eagleburger visit?

MARK SHIELDS, Washington Post: It was phenomenal in its reach, first of all. It was across the board, left to right from the most liberal precincts to the most conservative, and it was a genuine reaction, a sense of outrage. I think it was both the substance of it, the fact that after the fact we learn that the veto of the student bill which the President did, that was the bill that required or enabled Chinese students to remain in the United States after their time had run out here, was part of the price of the mission, the secrecy of the mission, the fact that Henry Kissinger was told two hours before the Senate leadership, and George Mitchell, the Democratic Majority Leader of the United States Senate, learned about the visit and the mission from the press. So I mean, it was process and it was substance and there was a sense of outrage.

MR. LEHRER: Now that explains the Washington reaction. I mean, the fact of --

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: -- Kissinger and the fact of this.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: But the reaction out in the country. I went through editorials yesterday and in Cincinnati and Houston and in everywhere --

MR. SHIELDS: San Diego.

MR. LEHRER: San Diego, it was the same kind of intensity, ferocity, David, why? I couldn't figure it out.

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: The entire world has now been marching toward freedom and democracy. And here's one country that seems to be going in the other direction and the administration gave the appearance of rushing out to embrace the wrong guys and embracing the wrong concept. It seems so inconsistent with what's going on and with the administration's own policy of not having any high level contacts with the Chinese until, as the administration said six months ago when the tanks were mowing down the kids in the streets, there would be no high level contacts until the Chinese took steps on their own to demonstrate that they were going to show greater respect for human rights. And there's been this very week of course there have been reports coming out of China that they're now engaged in secret trials of some of the students. So I think the fire storm was natural. I have to tell you I think that the President's goal of trying to restore relations with Chinese and making sure that they're not isolated that's fundamentally I think sound. It was very much the way it was done, the timing of it, and the surprise element of it, and particularly when so many other countries are now bursting toward democracy, that was deeply offensive to people.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, you have made comments on this program and others have too elsewhere about George Bush's unwillingness to take risk. He uses the term himself, a man of prudence. This was not the act of a man unwilling to take risk.

MR. SHIELDS: No, it was not. It was a big risk. I really question whether they calculated or calibrated the outrage, and I think that's something that didn't go into the equation, because I think George Bush was counseled on this by Brent Scowcroft, by Henry Kissinger, by Richard --

MR. LEHRER: Now Henry Kissinger says he had absolutely nothing to do with this and that had he been asked, he would have suggested no, this was too early.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, Henry Kissinger certainly had advocated a broad policy approach toward the Chinese --

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. SHIELDS: That they not be isolated. I think that nomenclature is a little bit of a problem. It is not like we're isolating or the world community. The Chinese performed an act that led to self- isolation. I mean, it wasn't some punitive act administered by the world community. What they did on television before the world I think was remarkable. I don't think that George Bush understood or anticipated the depth and intensity and ferocity of the outrage.

MR. GERGEN: I think it's very clear the administration did not anticipate it. And one of the reasons was --

MR. LEHRER: Excuse me, just to interrupt, John Sununu, White House Chief of Staff, was on this program last night. I asked him that very question and he said, oh, yes, they did, they knew full well that, the left and the right, they knew that they were going to get beaten up on.

MR. GERGEN: I don't believe that. I mean, I respect Mr. Sununu very deeply but I've talked to others in the administration who've expressed surprise. But I think in part they expected less because they hadn't anticipated the way it would be portrayed from China. It was not only done secretly but of course when Mr. Scowcroft got there, there was the --

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. GERGEN: The signals were all, when Richard Nixon went there, he managed to avoid all those kinds of pictures. And he was also the Chinese for what they had done. He was very firm with them, he was very tough. And I think had they taken that lesson, had they understood what Nixon did, I think they would have been much better off.

MR. SHIELDS: The toast, the Scowcroft toast, it doesn't parse well, Jim. It said there are those in both our countries who are trying to discourage the rapprochement, the sort of sinister forces at work. I mean, the question asked this week, I mean, who are they in the United States, I mean, who are these sinister forces?

MR. LEHRER: What is your feeling about what this says about George Bush, David?

MR. GERGEN: I think it's often not well understood that George Bush is very much his own man on foreign policy, particularly when it comes to China, but in general in foreign policy, he likes to set the course. And he feels, and I think coming out of Malta, as he did, with a real head of steam, with the world praising him as it should have I think, it's not surprising that a President in those circumstances might say, well, I think I know the best thing.

MR. LEHRER: Let's try something else.

MR. GERGEN: Let's try something else, I've got something I want to do here. Where it leaves us now, Jim, I think is the interesting point. I think we now have essentially a five week window in which the Chinese must take steps, serious steps, either to lift martial law, release students, release Fang Lixao who's held up in our embassy before the Congress comes back to town, because what we're going to have when Congress comes back in January is they're going to override the President's veto on the students, they're going to pass stronger sanctions, you're going to find trade deteriorating, and there will be a real downward spiral in U.S./China relations unless the Chinese now act, and the Chinese and the administration both know that.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, that occurred to me after talking to Sununu yesterday, that the heat is really on the Chinese now because of this incredible reaction in the United States. If the Chinese are going to do anything as a result of pressure, they're not going to get any more than they've got on them now.

MR. SHIELDS: Democrats on the Hill today, those who are still in town, put it this way, one put it this way to me, and said, where's the quid pro quo? I mean, there's no pro quo for the dead students. Whatever it is, it has to be big, it has to be dramatic, and it has to be soon because David's absolutely right, the move to override in addition the State Department Appropriations Bill is now in the Senate, waiting for Senate action. So that's just going to be loaded up with restrictions.

MR. SHIELDS: David, one of the concerns about all of this of course is how it's going to be, how it will be read or is being read in the Eastern Bloc in the Soviet Union. You just came back from Berlin. Do you have any wisdom to share with us on that?

MR. GERGEN: I'm not sure I have any wisdom to share, but there's very little reaction --

MR. LEHRER: Let's be the judge of that.

MR. GERGEN: Not Mark. There's very little reaction in Eastern Europe because they're so preoccupied now and a move toward freedom there, I don't think that they can roll that back very easily. I think the more important question is what signal the Soviets now read into this. The Soviet leadership thinks that it can crack down on outbreaks in the Baltics or say in the Ukraine or so forth and six months later the administration will be over, business as usual, then I think that would be very very dangerous.

MR. LEHRER: But there's no way to read that now?

MR. GERGEN: It's very hard to read.

MR. LEHRER: Quick thing, Mark. William Bennett, the drug czar, took on the drug legalization advocates in a big way this week. Is that an issue that's real and is going to grow, or is it a one shotter do you think?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think it's on both sides. I mean, it's coming from left and right. David's old colleague, George Shultz, former Sec. of State, the Nobel Laureate, Mr. Friedman --

MR. LEHRER: Milton Friedman.

MR. SHIELDS: Milton Friedman, William Buckley, so you've got a libertarian and sort of a softy lining left position on this convergence. I think Bill Bennett, and Bill Bennett quite frankly is absolutely right, I'll state my bias. I think Charlie Rangel, Democratic House Chairman of the Narcotics Committee, from Harlem, himself, puts it as bluntly as anybody. He says Charlie Rangel is dead set against legalization or de- criminalization, call it what you want, and Charlie Rangel's argument is what are we going to do then, are we going to have a quota for each person? Does the person who's an addict get more than someone who's just experimenting, and what about the person who's jobless and wants to use drugs, do they get drug stamps? There are some very very tough questions. And I think the serious problem here is once you start talking about de-criminalization, education goes right out the window. I mean, it's tough then once you've sanctioned it.

MR. LEHRER: Your position aside, Mark, David, does this have the potential for being a real national debate?

MR. GERGEN: Yes, it does, because a growing number of people are embracing it. It's not just a libertarian view but federal judges come out for it, the Mayor of Baltimore, there are other mayors who are starting to come out for it. They're coming out for it, Jim, because there's a frustration about the drug war. We're not making enough progress in their view. And I think the answer to that is to step up the drug war.

MR. LEHRER: I'm sorry to stop you there, but Mark took so much time with his answer that I have to trim yours.

MR. SHIELDS: He's tired.

MR. GERGEN: Business as usual.

MR. LEHRER: Business as usual. Gentlemen, thank you very much. FOCUS - LEARNING TOGETHER

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight Education Correspondent John Merrow reports on a new technique in teaching children not just their 3 R's but how to work together.

MR. MERROW: Most of us went to school in classrooms like this one. So did our parents and so too probably do our children. However much Algebra, English grammar and Geography we may have learned, chances are that sitting in rows and answering the teacher's questions did not teach us very much about working together, did not prepare us for the fact that as adults we'd have to work cooperatively to get the job done. Think about it. Working together, working cooperatively is just common sense in the work world. In classrooms, it's called cheating. Not in this school. This school is built around the idea of learning together. [KIDS WORKING TOGETHER IN CLASSROOM]

MR. MERROW: These 6th graders at Hoaglund Elementary School outside Ft. Wayne, Indiana, are reviewing material their teacher has already introduced to the class. The conventional classroom emphasizes individual success, but in cooperative learning, students at varying achievement levels are organized into small teams like this one that work together toward a group goal. These students will still take tests and receive individual scores, but because they're also reward for their team's accomplishments, students are encouraged to help each other. That's the basic theory of cooperative learning, that students can learn more from each other, in effect, they can be their own best teachers. [TEACHER TALKING TO CLASS]

MR. MERROW: Susan Johns has been teaching for 16 years. She was one of the pioneers chosen to introduce cooperative learning to Hoaglund Elementary two years ago.

SUSAN JOHNS, Teacher: Another lady and I tried it both with our classrooms, we saw the same thing happening, the children were studying their spelling words more, they were getting higher grades on their tests, they were talking with kids on their teams who they didn't normally associate with because there was a reason to talk to them. And when kids begin to talk to each other on an academic level, try to help each other, they suddenly become friends because they learn about things that they have in common. And we saw some of that happening in just a couple of weeks, which I think was incredible.

MR. MERROW: Susan Johns uses cooperative learning techniques to improve her 6th graders' reading comprehension.

MS. JOHNS: When the children came into the classroom, I discussed with them what they were going to do for the day and that's important because I set the tone for that hour for reading. And then I called one of my groups up to the chalkboard, and with that small group of about fourteen or fifteen kids, I taught them the vocabulary that they needed to know for this particular story that they're going to be working on. I not only pronounced the words for them, I had them pronounce the words back to me, and I talked about the meaning of those words. [TEACHER TALKING TO GROUP]

MR. MERROW: That's pretty straightforward teaching.

MS. JOHNS: Pretty much, very direct teaching, a lot of contact with the children there, making sure that I know that they have understood what I have talked to them about, real important there.

MR. MERROW: What then?

MS. JOHNS: They silently read and usually till about half of the story and they read out loud. We call it partner reading. [TWO CHILDREN READING TO EACH OTHER OUT LOUD]

MR. MERROW: And why do you do this?

MS. JOHNS: There's a real benefit in doing oral reading. Teachers for years have known that's true but this just provides more children with more opportunities during the same amount of time. They have a listener right there beside them, somebody who really wants to hear what they're saying.

MR. MERROW: But suppose you and I were partners and I mispronounced a word and you knew it. Would you help me out?

MS. JOHNS: Definitely, yes, because we're in this thing together, we're working as a team. I want you to succeed and you want me to succeed. [TWO CHILDREN REACHING TO EACH OTHER OUT LOUD]

MR. MERROW: Cooperative learning classes take different forms. Here for example these third graders studying by spell by holding a tournament in which team mates quiz each other. These fourth graders are honing their math skills in a similar way. Whatever the variation, every cooperative learning format shares several fundamental principles. The teacher introduces new material, students review the lesson individually and as a team before taking a test, and finally to emphasize the value of working together, those teams that show the most progress are recognized as a team. [TEACHER ANNOUNCING NAMES OF BEST TEAM]

MR. MERROW: The man who brought cooperative learning here is Dr. Michael Benway, superintendent of East Allen County Schools. Ironically Benway introduced cooperative learning for what he calls sociological reasons, not educational ones.

MICHAEL BENWAY, Superintendent, East Allen County Schools: About two years ago we were getting ready to move some inner-city minority kids to an all white school in the country, and we were looking for some strategy that would facilitate their transition and also facilitate the white kids associating, understanding, coming to accept the minority kids and also a strategy for helping teachers. So initially we looked at it from a sociological point of view.

MR. MERROW: Superintendent Benway sent two teachers, including Susan Johns and their principal, to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore for a week of training in cooperative training learning techniques. Their first classes back in East Allen proved successful, no racial conflict, and to their surprise, improved academic performance. So Benway introduced cooperative learning to all 18 of the district's schools. This fall he invited the head of the Johns Hopkins program, Dr. Robert Slavin, to East Allen to address teachers and administrators. Slavin drew the rapt attention of the curious and the converted. [SLAVIN TALKING TO TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS]

MR. MERROW: Slavin is the leading advocate of cooperative learning and he often takes to the road spreading the gospel. He estimates that cooperative learning is employed in only about 5 percent of the nation's schools, not, Slavin says, because it's new, it's actually been around for about 10 years, but because it's different. That takes getting used to.

ROBERT SLAVIN, Johns Hopkins University: I think for most teachers that's what happens is that there's a shake-down period of two weeks, sometimes less, sometimes more, and after that the kids know how it operates, and when the kids really understand how it operates and they support it, then they will carry it on, you know, a lot of the details and problems that would otherwise occur don't occur, because the kids want this to continue, they know what they need to do to have it continue.

MR. MERROW: Do kids think it's more fun?

MR. SLAVIN: Absolutely. I think 99 percent of kids if asked whether you would rather work in a small group or would you rather work independently will say that they'd rather work in a small group.

MR. MERROW: Let's talk about flaws in this panacea.

MR. SLAVIN: The one thing that's always a concern is that the most effective forms of cooperative learning are ones that involve some kind of group scoring. This means some record keeping and that's always a concern, you know, teachers don't like to have any more paper work than they already have.

MR. MERROW: Cooperative learning flaw, the smart kids would resent the not so smart kids because they're holding the team back.

MR. SLAVIN: One of the key elements of the forms of cooperative learning that we've developed and researched is that students' contributions to the teams are based on improvement over their own past records, and what this means is that students of all levels of past performance have an equal chance to contribute to the team.

MR. MERROW: But if you're the smart kid and I'm the dumb kid, you might not want me on your team.

MR. SLAVIN: Initially I might not, but as we get going in the program, I'm going to begin to realize that what you've got to do is to do better than what you've done in the past and in a given week you might be the most successful kid on the team because you've done much better than what you ordinarily do. Think about kids learning to write compositions as another case. Quite often kids who are very good writers but they don't know why they're good writers, they're just naturally good writers, if I'm trying to help you become a good writer and you're trying to help me become a good writer in the process of my explaining to you what I'm doing that makes me a good writer, I'm going to get some insight into why I'm a good writer into as well as helping you to become a better writer.

MR. MERROW: Dr. Robert Slavin says that more than 30 studies proved that cooperative learning works. This new study by the Center for Policy Research and Education at Rutgers University indicates that traditional reforms like more money, more testing and tougher standards for graduating seniors and new teachers produce only modest improvements. So for cooperative learners it's an open and shut case. Genuine school improvement they believe won't be possible until cooperative learning becomes standard operating procedure in the classroom. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Friday, the world mourned the death of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, a top Colombian drug trafficker was killed in a shoot out with police, military leader Manuel Noriega was given more power to rule Panama and a South African court threw out treason convictions against five anti-apartheid activists. Good night, Robin.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight. Have a nice weekend and we'll see you on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.