The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. In the headlines today, the Defense Department canceled a major new weapons system. Anti-apartheid leader Allan Boesak was arrested in South Africa, and space shuttle Discovery had a delayed but successful launch. We'll have the details plus the rest of the news of the day in a moment. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: We focus on three stories on the NewsHour tonight. The Sergeant York anti-aircraft gun: we hear why it took four years and nearly $2 billion to decide it didn't work. The growing teacher shortage: we look at the growing controversy over recruiting teachers who don't have teacher training. We close with a report on how they get those amazing pictures on nature films. They're not always what they seem.News Summary

MacNEIL: The Pentagon today canceled a new weapon designed to shoot down Soviet helicopters at long range because it didn't work. The so-called Sergeant York anti-aircraft weapon, also called DIVAD, had been in production and testing since 1981, and so far has cost $1.8 billion. The Army's plan for a total of 618 would have cost another $3 billion. The system consisted of twin Swedish Bofors guns mounted on a tank chassis and aimed by radar. Sixty-five were made by Ford Aerospace, but were so inaccurate that in one test the aiming device mistook the exhaust fan on a latrine for a target helicopter. At a news conference Defense Secretary Weinberger explained why he was cutting his losses.

CASPAR WEINBERGER, Secretary of Defense: Independent operational tests have demonstrated that the system's performance does not effectively meet the growing military threat, and the tests demonstrated also that while there is marginal improvements that can be made by the DIVAD, these are not significant compared to the capability of current air defense weapons, and therefore not worth the additional cost.

LEHRER: One of South Africa's major anti-apartheid leaders was arrested today. He is the Reverend Allan Boesak, who had planned to lead a mass protest march tomorrow to the prison where black political leader Nelson Mandela is being held. Our report is from James Robbins of the BBC.

JAMES ROBBINS, BBC [voice-over]: Dr. Boesak was arrested shortly after addressing students at the University of Cape Town, latest of a series of meetings designed to mobilize 20,000 people. He had planned to lead them himself in tomorrow's march on Pollsmoor Prison, a deliberately dramatic gesture, campaigning for the release of Nelson Mandela.

Rev. ALLAN BOESAK: We are looking, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, far beyond the police force who will be there. We are looking even way beyond Mr. P.W. Botha's government. We are looking toward the vision that we have.

ROBBINS [voice-over]: After leaving the university, his car was stopped at a roadblock. He just had time to tell a companion he'd been arrested under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act before being driven away. The act allows for indefinite detention without trial, and his wife does not know where he's being held. But about the time Dr. Boesak was detained, the police raided another university where he was due to speak. The rector described the police breaking down doors and arresting 21 students, apparently all part of a strategy to thwart tomorrow's protest. Tonight, State President P.W. Botha warned once more that his government has still greater powers in reserve.

P.JW. BOTHA, President of South Africa: And I can assure you that the government has not used all the force at its disposal yet to fight these forces, and I will -- if necessary, I will take other steps.

ROBBINS [voice-over]: The police have just announced that all access routes to the Athlone Stadium, where the marchers were due to assemble, will be closed tomorrow.

LEHRER: State Department spokesman Charles Redman said the United States was not pleased by the Boesak arrest.

CHARLES REDMAN, State Department spokesman: We've already formally protested this action to the South African government. We believe the detention of Reverend Boesak and other leaders can only exacerbate the current cycle of polarization and tension.

LEHRER: That tension was reflected today in South Africa's financial markets. The South African government suspended trading in stock and currency markets until next week because of what was called "abnormal pressure" on its economy. The announcement came as South Africa's currency, the rand, dropped today to a record low against the dollar.

MacNEIL: The space shuttle Discovery blasted off through a hole in Florida's bad weather today, the worst-weather launching of the shuttle program. The flight had been delayed twice on Saturday and Sunday. In orbit the crew immediately deployed an Australian communications satellite a day early. Its protective covering was damaged and the satellite would have suffered from extremes of heat and cold if not placed in orbit where it could spin. Because of the bad weather, the rocket's red glare in the dawn's early light provided an unusually spectacular sight at launching.

NASA OFFICIAL [voice-over]: And we have main-engine start. Four, three, two, one, ignition and liftoff! Liftoff of 851-I and a commercial deploy and repair mission. It has cleared the tower.

MISSION OFFICIAL: Roger roll, Discovery.

MacNEIL: British aviation authorities today ordered urgent checks of jet engines of the type involved in last week's Manchester airport crash. Fifty-four people were killed after a Pratt-Whitney engine exploded on takeoff. British officials said checks of some of the Boeing 737 engines of the same type had shown combustion chambers with extensive cracking. The order covered Pratt & Whitney JT8-D engines which have had a manufacturer's modification and have been flown a certain number of hours. To meet the order, some planes would be grounded and some flown back to Britain empty. The JT8-D is the most widely used jet engine in the world, powering not only the 737 but the Boeing 727 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-9.

LEHRER: Poverty in the United States is on the decline. That was the upshot of a new report today from the U.S. Census Bureau. The bureau said the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 15.3 in 1983 to 14.4 in '84. It marked the first significant decrease in that rate since 1976. The poverty line for '84 was drawn at $10,609 in income for a family of four.

Also today, the Crocker National Bank of San Francisco agreed to pay a stiff fine for not telling the federal government about its big cash transactions. The fine was $2 million. They're charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Law, which requires banks to report all cash transactions exceeding $10,000, the point of that being to spot drug deals, organized crime and other forms of corruption. The Treasury Department said Crocker, the nation's 11th largest bank, committed more than 7,800 violations of that law.

MacNEIL: The African nation of Nigeria, once lush in oil revenues and more recently a victim of the oil glut, has gone through another military coup. The latest shakeup apparently is the result of infighting among the generals who ousted Nigeria's civilian government nearly two years ago. Today's bloodless coup forced out Major General Mohammed Buhari as head of state. Taking over is another general, Ibrahim Bobangida. The new ruler promised an end to corruption.

LEHRER: And finally, in the two running spy stories, a spokesman for West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said there would be a sweeping shakeup of that country's intelligence services next week. The spokesman said the chancellor was particularly furious over a high-level counterespionage official being kept on the job despite well-known drinking, financial and family problems. That official defected to East Germany last week, as have three other West German government workers. A secretary in the office of the West German president was arrested for espionage yesterday. And, in the France versus New Zealand saga over the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange said a French investigator's report clearing French intelligence officers from responsibility in the incident was inconsistent and transparent. He suggested France recall its ambassador, if nothing else.

MacNEIL: That concludes our summary of the day's news. Coming up, we focus on three stories: the cancellation of the Sergeant York anti-aircraft gun, the argument about how to meet the growing teacher shortage, and the secrets behind some of the amazing pictures in nature films. Killing A Weapon

LEHRER: Secretary of Defense Weinberger did today what his critics said he would never do -- he killed a major weapon system. It's an air defense weapon called officially DIVAD, or the division air defense gun, nicknamed the Sergeant York for the World War I Army hero; $1.8 billion have been spent on it and another three billion was about to go the same route. But as of today, no $3 billion, no more DIVAD.

REPORTER: What was the main problem with the gun?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, the main problem was the range, the reliability and the -- lack of range, I should say, and the lack of reliability. These are always very difficult decisions. When you know you need something, which we urgently do need here, and a division air defense capability, when you've invested substantial sums and time, and when you have to conclude on the basis of the production models that it's not going to work as well as is needed, then you have to decide whether you can try to fix it up or whether you cancel. And in this case it seemed to me there were enough things wrong and enough uncertainty, so we canceled. The total amount that's been invested is $1.8 billion.

REPORTER: What was your best estimate of the amount it would cost to fix the system?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, to deliver what we needed would have been another $3 billion. So we were at a point where cancellation was economically not only possible but was indicated, unless we had far more favorable indications of the value of this system. As I said, the really serious part of this problem is that a decision to cancel what is basically an ineffective system doesn't eliminate the need. So there's always a great worry that having devoted that amount of time and certainly that amount of money to systems that you have to conclude, reluctantly, after they're tested and before you buy -- and that's what we do; we test before we buy -- that it's not going to be all that much of an improvement. It's only a marginal improvement. So we have learned a very great deal, and we are going to apply that. But we're also going to examine all existing systems and also the ways in which we could combine systems. The Stinger Post I think can be used effectively to cover some of these gaps while we're trying to get a better system.

REPORTER: What is going wrong with Army missile research and development --

Sec. WEINBERGER: You've got to bear in mind that --

REPORTER: So what does this mean as far as our interest in European weapons, the two-way street, which is one of your big programs?

Sec. WEINBERGER: Well, what it means, first of all, is we're going to look at all available European systems. We'll look at Canadian systems. We'll look at anybody who has a system to see if it will give us the capability we need. You have to bear in mind also that the gun is perfectly capable. The gun is a Bofors gun and it's a 40mm gun and it does what it's supposed to do. But working with the radar and with the tank bed, it doesn't do what we have to have done and what our requirements were.

LEHRER: Some additional words on the death of the Sergeant York from George Wilson, who covers the Defense Department for the Washington Post. George, was it a technical decision, a political decision, or some of both?

GEORGE WILSON: I think it was all the above, but I also think we're in a new quarter of the moon where the Pentagon has to restructure by subtraction this time around rather than addition as it did the first four years.

LEHRER: Why is that?

Mr. WILSON: Well, the Congress has served notice that the Reagan buildup is over as far as the 10 , 16 real increases are concerned. The only argument now is whether they should have zero growth, or zero-plus-inflation for the upcoming fiscal year. So I think it's a new season for defense, and this is in part is a recognition that the money just isn't there.

LEHRER: Was it a difficult decision for the secretary?

Mr. WILSON: Yes, I think he sincerely wanted to give the Army what the Army said it must have, which was a better air defense gun. And his critics say he waited too long; but to give him credit, he waited until the intensive testing was over and then he bit the bullet.

LEHRER: Is it a kind of bullet that has made a lot of people mad? Are the people upset in the Army over there today as a result of this?

Mr. WILSON: Well, surprisingly, in my rounds of the Pentagon today the Army was not as upset as you might expect. The truth of the matter is that the Soviet missile-carrying helicopters outreach the reach of the gun. It's like a boxer having a longer arm than his opponent. And the testing director at the Pentagon told me that the Army itself did not request the full 618 guns when it went before Weinberger last week. So there was some kind of recognition that it just was not filling the bill for the future threat.

LEHRER: You know, the question, of course, that immediately comes to mind is, how in the world could something like this happen? One-point-eight billion dollars has been spent, four years in the development, and suddenly it's discovered that it does not work and the money is down the tubes. Briefly give me what happened here.

Mr. WILSON: I think what happened was that people looked at the threat of the moment rather than what would be the threat 10 years down the road. And the lesson here, I think, is that it's not good enough to just say, "Well, we're going to throw together an omelette," which is basically what the Sergeant York was. They took an existing old tank, they took an existing radar off an airplane, they took an existing gun, and they threw it all together and tried to get something fielded in a hurry. They went into research and production both at the same time, and now that it's here it's obsolete.

LEHRER: Now, that's unusual, is it not, to do the research and go ahead and build them at the same time?

Mr. WILSON: Well, the Pentagon does it enough to have a name for it. They call it concurrency. But it seldom works, in my experience.

LEHRER: Why is that?

Mr. WILSON: You just can't do two things at once effectively and efficiently, it seems to me. It's been argued that you save time, but I think you can make an even better case that you waste money and don't really end up saving time, and certainly DIVAD is Exhibit A in that argument.

LEHRER: Is it your feeling that this was a one-shot kill, that this particular weapons system, the testing just showed it wouldn't work, or is Secretary Weinberger looking for other things that he may also cut back on? Or is he forced to, I mean?

Mr. WILSON: Well, I think he'll be forced to trim the Pentagon in the future because you can't go from 16 real growth to zero real growth and still buy everything. And I think it's not a matter of whether he will cut but what he will cut. So, as I say, I think what we're seeing is the first part of the dismantling of much of the Reagan buildup in the sense that he just can't buy everything that the services had ordered.

LEHRER: So you think there could be other decisions similar to this coming?

Mr. WILSON: I think the more likely route is going to be stretchouts other than outright cancellations. But there'll have to be --

LEHRER: Stretchouts meaning if we were going to build 100 of something over a period of five years you decide to build them over 10 years, right?

Mr. WILSON: Right. That's easiest. Then the politicians are happy, the contractors are happy. But it ends up that the unit price goes up.

LEHRER: Has there ever been acase, George, where a major weapon system got this far along by the time it was killed?

Mr. WILSON: Well, you remember that President Carter canceled the B-1 in 1977, and way back the Army gave up on the main battle tank before it went into its second reincarnation. So there have been instances in the past, but it is highly unusual for a weapon that has a life of its own like the DIVAD to be canceled.

LEHRER: Is this the kind of situation where Secretary Weinberger or the Congress, more importantly, will now say, "All right, let's go back and find out who's responsible for making the bad decisions that caused us to lose or waste $1.8 billion?" Is that likely to happen?

Mr. WILSON: I don't think that's as likely as, what is the lesson in DIVAD for other weapons? In other words, if we reach the point where precision weapons are here and now to the point if you can see the target you can hit it, if those missiles are really here, as the DIVAD case suggests, then what does that say for all our other weapons that we're building merrily, such as aircraft carriers?

LEHRER: What does that say to you?

Mr. WILSON: It says that we ought to have some kind of a dispassionate royal commission to look at that question. Take it out of the services, maybe used retired military experts, civilians and, first of all, look at where the Soviets are going to be 10 years from now, then look at the weapons we're going to have fielded at that time and see if there's a mismatch. DIVAD basically was a mismatch, a mismatch between what we put in the field and what the Soviet threat was going to be.

LEHRER: And you think that if that procedure had been followed, say, in 1981, there would have never been a Sergeant York or a DIVAD, right?

Mr. WILSON: I don't think it would have lasted as long as it did.

LEHRER: All right, the secretary of course said at that news conference today that the threat from his point of view is still there. So they're still going to be looking for a way to solve the threat.

Mr. WILSON: That's right. They're going to have to cope with precision weapons fired from a standoff distance, and that's tough. And throwing together hardware on the shelf sounded good. I don't think there's a black-hearted, evil man who did this with any malice. It just sounded like a good idea but it did not work. So we're back behind the goal line now, and we have to decide where do we go from here in this new day, when you can hit almost anything you can see?

LEHRER: I gotcha. George Wilson, thank you very much. Robin?

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour, should the teacher shortage be met by hiring people without traditional teacher training, and what's behind the amazing pictures in nature films? Who May Teach?

MacNEIL: What should a person have to know to become a public school teacher? That's a question we debate in our next focus section. The growing shortage of qualified teachers has focused new attention on attracting and retaining teachers. Education Secretary William Bennett chose quality of teaching as his theme today on a visit to schools in Louisiana.

WILLIAM BENNETT, Secretary of Education: We're talking about the American colonies, all right? We're fighting the British for independence.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Secretary Bennett began a national tour of schools by taking over a 7th-grade history class in Shreveport, Louisiana. The secretary came here because the voters of Caddo Parish recently approved a $57-million bond issue which included money for a 10 pay raise for teachers. Bennett said the vote showed that Louisiana parents, like those elsewhere, were ready to pay more for education, but wanted to be sure they were getting their money's worth. The secretary said his venture into substitute teaching was his way of honoring the profession.

Sec.

BENNETT: I thought it was a good idea for the secretary of education to start the school year by being in some of the nation's classrooms. And to show tribute to teaching, to the art of teaching, by trying to teach as well as I could. Whatever my evaluation is, to pay honor to it by imitating. Imitating is a form of flattery, and I intended to flatter good teachers.

MacNEIL: Besides pay, education authorities are being forced to come up with new ways to attract would-be teachers to meet the shortage. One solution being tried in more than a dozen states is to hire people with college degrees in math or history, but who did not take the usual college education courses. One such state is Pennsylvania, and correspondent June Massell has a report on the controversy the program causes there.

Gov. DICK THORNBURGH, (R) Pennsylvania [TV commercial]: Now Pennsylvanians with a college degree can begin teaching while they earn both a salary and a teaching certificate.

BRUCE RILEY, teacherfiintern: Look into it. I did.

Gov. THORNBURGH: Your second career can be even better than your first.

JUNE MASSELL [voice-over]: Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh is pushing a program to lure established professionals into second careers as teachers.

Mr. RILEY: How long does a budget last, or a fiscal policy within the government? Do you know that?

MASSELL [voice-over]: People like Bruce Riley. A former policeman for 22 years, Riley is now a teacherfiintern. That means he could begin teaching in the public schools without getting traditional education credentials first.

Mr. RILEY: The intern program was an incentive for me to go into it speedily. I mean, I could -- oh, there's a track, I can jump on that.

MASSELL [voice-over]: The intern program allows Riley to teach and get paid at the same time that he completes coursework for a masters degree in education instead of having to go back to school for two years first, something Riley says he would not have done at age 47.

Mr. RILEY: One of the greatest things concerning the intern program is that you're getting folks from other areas with real experiences. And I think nowadays the kids are more alert to real things, in a sense. They want you to bring a relationship between something theoretical and something real in the classroom.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Maybe good for Riley, some critics feel, but not necessarily good for the classroom.

[on camera] The Pennsylvania State Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, would like to see the teacherfiintern program killed. The union feels that the program actually lowers the standards for in coming teachers.

[voice-over] Nancy Noonan is the union president.

NANCY NOONAN, Pennsylvania State Education Association: There is not the same amount of time, the same amount of coursework, the same amount of hours under supervision of experienced teachers through a practicum prior to someone actually being given the responsibility, being told go do it, you're now a teacher.

MARGARET SMITH, Pennsylvania Secretary of Education: I can't accept that at all. The program is very carefully designed.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Dr. Margaret Smith is Pennsylvania's secretary of education. She says the interns are both carefully screened and supervised.

Dr. SMITH: I don't see it in any way as lowering the profession. In fact, I see it as enhancing the profession because it is providing an alternative method for those who are attracted to teaching to enter that profession, and it gives us a wider diversity of individuals who in fact are in the classroom interacting with students.

MASSELL [voice-over]: But the state's defense of the program does not satisfy the union.

Ms. NOONAN: We don't want people to believe that we're going to get better teachers by going outside into other fields because somehow or other they're anointed and they're going to end up doing a much better job with children.

PROFESSOR ,LaSalle University: Can you think of some ways in which you were taught how children learn signs in a classroom? What type of methods, what type of techniques are used? Okay, learning by doing.

MASSELL [voice-over]: This is an education class at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, the kind of traditional training the union would like to see would-be teachers get. Here students attend classes for four years to get a bachelor's degree in education.

Prof. GARY CLABAUGH, LaSalle University: Sure, it's true that some people have an intuitive sense of how to teach that is rooted deeply in their personality. But does that mean, then, that they should know nothing about how children develop, for instance, how children's thinking develops? I think not.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Professors of education think the intern program sidesteps the real issue -- why the best and the brightest college students are no longer choosing teaching as a profession.

Prof. CLABAUGH: The alternative solution is that the rewards system has to be changed. If you want to attract people who are bright in mathematics and chemistry, for instance, to the classroom, one way you do that is to pay them competitive wages with private industry.

MASSELL: But how can the public school system ever compete with private industry along those lines?

Prof. CLABAUGH: Oh, I think they could, but they have to spend money.

MASSELL [voice-over]: There is little disagreement that one key to attracting good teachers is raising salaries, but regardless of that, states like Pennsylvania will keep their innovative programs, and the debate over teacher qualifications will continue.

MacNEIL: Another alternative way of attracting teachers is being used in New Jersey, whose commissioner of education is Saul Cooperman. Also with us is a leading critic of such plans, Gary Clabaugh, professor of education at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, who just appeared in the report we saw.

Starting with you, Commissioner Cooperman, how does New Jersey's alternative differ from Pennsylvania's?

SAUL COOPERMAN: It differs greatly. Ours is focused on quality and we're trying to attract people to come in who have great qualities, and we want them to have a rigorous program. Not to skirt anything, not to come in unprepared, but to have the exact same training, in fact, in some cases a little better training than the traditional route. We found great fault with our traditional route. We found that there was no consensus on the training in New Jersey, courses offered in one college were required in another. We saw just 43 years of accepting the system which had no uniformity, no consensus. And so we were out to change that, and I'm happy we did.

MacNEIL: So you take -- for this alternative route you will take recent graduates in particular subjects, university graduates, and can they start teaching immediately?

Comm. COOPERMAN: Well, they have to, first of all, have a degree. They have to pass a subject-matter test, and they have to have an academic major. For 43 years in New Jersey we allowed people to come in when there was a quantitative shortage without any of that. It was tolerated by the total education system. It was indeed a non-system. We will take in a person whether they're a recent graduate or whether they've been working in industry, and if they can pass that subject matter test, they have to go through a very rigorous one-year internship. They must take the same training, what is essential for the beginning teacher to know, that they must take in our college program.

MacNEIL: But they're taking it while they're working, while they're teaching, on the side, so to speak?

Comm. COOPERMAN: That is absolutely correct. They take 80 hours of training before they take over a class; they take 120 hours of training after they take over the class. The total amount of time is exactly the same that our colleges require for the five subjects in education. One of the things that we were determined to do was to find out what is essential for a beginning teacher to know, and that's why we asked Dr. Ernest Boyer, the former commissioner of education, and 10 outstanding teacher-educators, to come into New Jersey and to once and for all tell us exactly what beginning teachers should have. So whether they take it in our alternative route or whether they take it in the traditional route, they're going to get exactly the same information.

MacNEIL: Mr. Clabaugh, you are an educator of educators, of teachers. What's wrong with the system that New Jersey's just instituted? We heard your objections to the Pennsylvania one earlier.

Prof. CLABAUGH: Well, I think basically what's wrong with it is that it puts the children of the state in the hands of people who don't know why they do what they do. Their practice is uninformed by theory. He claims, for example, that these young people, or anyone seeking a teaching career, is going to get the same kind of training that they get in a college or university. Well, what it amounts to, it would appear, is less than nine semester hours as measured by amount of contact in a classroom studying theory. Nine semester hours. And the 80 hours that you mention has been waived for the first year's candidates, if you can believe what you read in the paper, an announcement by one of your own officials. So you've got 258 hours to be a podiatrist, for example, and in New Jersey, with less than nine hours of study, you can enter a classroom and start to interact with the lives of children.

MacNEIL: Is that strictly true? I mean, somebody coming in who's got a degree with a major in mathematics and goes in to teach students mathematics is hardly starting from scratch, is he? What is it that you feel he doesn't know that he has to know to start teaching?

Prof. CLABAUGH: He doesn't know, for example, how children master quantitative reasoning. He knows nothing about the development of the intellect in that sense. So he may know a great deal about mathematics, but he knows very little about children. And at the end of the New Jersey program, he'll know not a lot more than that.

Comm. COOPERMAN: May I comment on that? He is just absolutely, with all due respect -- you are uninformed about our program and you don't know what our people don't know. Let me, first of all, say that as far as what the university taught, I'm going to read just 10 courses that were required in colleges in New Jersey whereas 10 or 15 miles down the road they weren't even offered. These were the courses.

MacNEIL: Colleges in education courses?

Comm. COOPERMAN: Colleges in education. "Descriptive Linguistics, Instructional Innovations, Consumer Behavior, Teaching Your Teaching Self, Functional Literacy, Human Awareness in the Elementary School, Human Adaptation and Alternatives, The Book as an Art Form, Adventures in Affective Education, and Education of Self." What we asked Dr. Boyer to do, and others, and I have to repeat this again. We said, "Will you let us know what is essential for a beginning teacher to know?" They said, and I'll just repeat it rather quickly -- their results were put in the report on the panel of preparation of teachers. They said the curriculum priorities, how to assess student progress, how to develop and use evaulation, how students learn, how to motivate students, and so forth. They said --

Prof. CLABAUGH: You learn all of that in nine semester hours?

Comm. COOPERMAN: We can learn that in 30 credits. Whether they go -- it's the exact same thing that they're going to learn whether they go to one of our teacher-training institutions or not. You were, I know, around back in the 1960s, so you know the reputation of James Bryant Conant. He said, and I quote, that "students who completed the sequence of education courses in one college may not have considered the same or even a similar set of facts or principles that their contemporaries in another institution in the same state." He then went on to say, "This is surely a national scandal." What we're trying to do in education is we're trying to say there must be some consensus. There must be some distillation of knowledge --

MacNEIL: On what somebody who wants to teach really must learn in order to be an effective teacher?

Comm. COOPERMAN: Absolutely.

MacNEIL: Is there no consensus?

Prof. CLABAUGH: Oh, I think there's consensus. I believe that you could have exceptions made to any given specific, but in terms of a general consensus, yes. We know, for example, that you need to know about children and how they learn and how they grow and develop morally and intellectually and sexually and socially, and every other dimension, as that relates to the task of the teacher. Everyone would agree to that.

MacNEIL: Do they need to spend two years, which is the typical time, to get a teaching diploma? Do they need to -- or an advanced degree -- to qualify as a teacher or be certified? Do they need to spend two years learning those things?

Comm. COOPERMAN: Oh, I think they need to spend at least two years, yes, because the lives of children -- very important. If you want to be an accountant, how long does it take? If you want to be a veterinarian and doctor people's dogs and cats, how long does that take?

MacNEIL: Mr. Cooperman, are you saying that what Mr. Clabaugh and his colleagues teach isn't necessary?

Comm. COOPERMAN: Not at all, but I'm saying that if we left it to Gary we would have had what we had in New Jersey, was 50, 60, 70 credits out of the undergraduate was in education. I could go on. It would take the duration of this program. Please let me finish. In listing the number of courses that they thought were essential because they had a monopoly. At the same time, they would artificially deny extremely talented and caring people from coming into the profession. We're not saying that there isn't a body of knowledge. We're saying, let's get the best people in the United States to define that knowledge, and we've done it.

MacNEIL: Are you and your fellow professionals just preserving the mystique of the guild?

Prof. CLABAUGH: I don't think so. Ithink you really need to know why you're doing what you're doing. Otherwise it just becomes a kind of mimicry. And despite what our good friend here says, I think that I am quite correct about the number of hours it takes to study all of these different things.

MacNEIL: Let me ask a layman's question in this, not being the expert that either of you are. In the old days when teachers taught subjects, did they spend as much time in learning how to teach as they did in mastering their subjects?

Comm. COOPERMAN: I'd like to comment on that one.

Prof. CLABAUGH: I think -- let me comment first. I think that, number one, yes, they did. For instance, in the normal school one had to spend at least two years getting prepared 100 years ago or so. New Jersey's a retrograde movement. It takes us before 1885, you know, in that respect. Secondly, LaSalle University's program of education is not any 60 or 70 hours, although I would not apologize for that. If it takes 200 and some hours to be a podiatrist, perhaps it should take that long to deal with children as well, okay, but it's not. Secondly, if the programs in New Jersey were inadequate prior to the coming of this new millenium here, they were inadequate because the state of New Jersey neglected its constitutional responsibility to check up on the quality of these schools because it was New Jersey's responsibility to write the laws and enforce the law.

MacNEIL: Of its education schools, you mean?

Prof. CLABAUGH: Of course. Of course. They existed at their pleasure.

Comm. COOPERMAN: First of all, all states have an emergency route. Pennsylvania has it. We claim no millenium, and I'm certainly not going to get into --

MacNEIL: The emergency route is [TEXT OMITTED FROM SOURCE] from what we're talking about. It's when states panic because they've got to have teachers and they put people in without university degrees or without teacher training as temporaries or whatever.

Comm. COOPERMAN: That they've done, Pennsylvania as well, and what the college professors haven't done is, when there has been an emergency, they've tolerated this situation. It's like the emperor has no clothes.

Prof. CLABAUGH: Who are we to tolerate it? We have no authority to change it.

Comm. COOPERMAN: Will you please -- will you please let me talk? I'll give you as much time --

Prof. CLABAUGH: You're doing a lot of it.

Comm. COOPERMAN: -- as you want.

MacNEIL: Well, would you do it briefly because we're just coming to the end of our time.

Comm. COOPERMAN: Sure. If we allowed 60 to 70 credits, as Gary would wish, we would only have 20, 30, 40 credits for liberal arts and for the academic major. And so what has been the problem is we've had people come out who can't pass simple tests. That's why we've given a test in academics. We feel --

MacNEIL: Excuse me. We are right at the end of our thing, but isn't that a point that's frequently made in criticism of the product of teacher training schools, that they've spent a lot of time studying teacher training subjects and not as much on the disciplines that they're going to have to teach?

Comm. COOPERMAN: It is, and that, if it were true of the program which I'm involved in, for instance, would be a very good criticism. But it is not true. Our people take more than the typical major does in their academic field.

MacNEIL: I hate to leave this, as I suspect it is an argument that's going to go on. We will leave it there. Thank you both.

Comm. COOPERMAN: Okay, thank you very much. Unnatural Nature

LEHRER: Finally tonight, a story about fakes and fakers. Thefakers are photographers, the fakes being some of the most dazzling shots in nature and wildlife documentaries on television, public television most definitely included. Discover magazine wrote the story. The writer was freelancer Jamie James, who exlpained to Elizabeth Brackett how it works.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Jamie, tell me, what are we going to see on the first film clip?

JAMIE JAMES: The first clip shows the metamorphosis of the mayfly. It's from a film called "Insects: Secrets of an Alien World," shot by an Englishman named Christopher Robson, who's working out of San Francisco now.

NARRATOR [voice-over]: Living for only a few hours on stored energy, their only goal is to join the gathering swarm and mate before they fall exhausted back to the water. The dying female ruptures her abdomen, sending a cascade of 8,000 tiny eggs to the river-bottom.

Mr. JAMES: Okay, now we'll run back to the shot, and we'll see what really happens. It appears to be one seamless shot showing the life of the mayfly. This is a shot of the synchronous emergence, all of these mayflies come bursting forth at the same time. This is done, as it happened, in Minnesota.

BRACKETT: This is over the Mississippi.

Mr. JAMES: Over the Mississippi River, right. Okay, now we cut to the mayfly. The only problem is that this was filmed in his hotel room. What he did was, there was an intermediate stage in the metamorphosis and he went and got garbage bags, gathered up thousands of these things, brought them back to the Holiday Inn and sort of nursed them along in his bathtub, and then at three a.m. in the morning they started to become mayflies. So he rousted the crew out of bed, brought them into his room and shot the rest of the scene.

BRACKETT: So none of this is done outside? None of this was done anywhere the Mississippi River?

Mr. JAMES: Right. This is all done in his hotel room. These next clips are from David Attenborough's "Living Planet." Attenborough wrote and narrated. Here we're seeing a snake in the Amazon climbing up the tree, about to do his best trick.

BRACKETT: It looks like he just leaped off the tree branch.

Mr. JAMES: Wrong again.

BRACKETT: That is an amazing shot.

Mr. JAMES: This is a classic shot. What they did was, they just released the snake and it began slithering up the trunk, as it would naturally. I mean, this is just a very straightforward shot of the snake going up the trunk.

BRACKETT: That's a real shot.

Mr. JAMES: Yeah. There's nothing tricky about that. But when you see the snake actually flying, that was done at an airstrip. The snake was sent up on a helium balloon, and when the balloon got up so high that the snake was uncomfortable, it leaped out and they were able to get that swimming motion of the flying snake.

BRACKETT: Well, do those snakes really fly?

Mr. JAMES: Yes, they do. They do it occasionally. It would be -- the analogy would be if you wanted to make a film of a comet, you could sit out all night for weeks and weeks and weeks just waiting for a comet. But they have a way of making these things happen. And the motion of the snake is exactly the same, and they're just getting it to do it on cue. The next clip is also from "The Living Planet," and it shows a capybara, which is the world's largest rodent, being consumed by a piranha in the Amazon River. That's what it intends to portray. And I'd especially want you to notice the way Attenborough narrates the scene, the kind of breathless excitement of his narration.

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH [voice-over]: Piranha, the most savage of all the Amazon's fish. A swimming capybara suddenly realizes their presence and tries to retreat, but it's too late. The splashing, the taste of blood spreading rapidly through the water attracts more and more of the shoal until there are hundreds of the fish, all possessed by a frenzy for flesh. None are much more than a foot long, but their teeth are sharp enough to cut clean through bone.

BRACKETT: Ooh!

Mr. JAMES: Don't worry, that horrific scene of that poor little capybara -- the capybara never got touched by the piranha. What they did was they took a capybara and showed him swimming, and the shot does show him looking very scared. We don't know, maybe they were throwing sticks at him or something.

BRACKETT: It was so fast, the rest of it.

Mr. JAMES: Right. Well, the7hea(ith we would have to spend nights and nights in the wild. Beavers are nocturnal. We would have to work 40 years to do a decent beaver film for an educational film where we wanted to show what a beaver family actually is all about. So we had the choice of bringing in a captive beaver and a captive bear.

LEHRER: Now, do you do this often? I mean, is this par for the course of doing -- of being a wildlife photographer?

Mr. BAYER: I think it's part of the course because certain things the audience wants to see, and in order to do all this we have to create certain situations where we have to invade the private life and the privacy of animals. We have to follow them inside, in this case, a beaver lodge. We tried to crawl into a beaver lodge and it's virtually impossible to film in there because, by the time you get in there with light and the camera they're all gone. So essentially we had to rebuild the beaver lodge, we cut the top open and we brought in, like we said, the captive beavers which, then again, it took them about two to three weeks to really get nicely settled in there. And once it got settled, then it started to behave quite naturally in that beaver lodge.

LEHRER: I see. Look, let's look at another one of your films. This is from one called "Yellowstone in Winter." It's from the "Nature" television series. Let's look at that a minute, and then I want to ask you a question about it. Let's see, where is it? Okay, there it is. Tell me what's happening here.

Mr. BAYER [voice-over]: Well, we are here under the ice and under the snow, and the coyote is looking for gophers in Yellowstone. Now, all this that the coyote was filmed in Yellowstone under totally natural conditions with a long lens. And he goes through the newly fallen snow, and he has a tremendous sense of hearing, and listens for under the snow for noises of the gopher digging. But we wanted to show the other side of the snow, down below the snow and in the ground, where the gopher now comes up and digs and pushes the dirt up as it digs tunnels. And in this case the coyote got a wild gopher. I mean, we, again were far away here, but the underground sequences couldn't obviously be shot in Yellowstone. How can you get a camera under the snow below a coyote that's wild and expect to have him just jump down and grab a gopher?

LEHRER: Well, how did you do it?

Mr. BAYER: Well, we brought in a gopher into our studio. We had to build underground dens as such, and we brought in a gopher from the University of Colorado actually that was the real gopher that appears up there, and then we followed this gopher around in this environment that we built for him. And he started to dig holes and excavated the holes and pushed up into the snow. And when we then intercut the wild coyote with the not-so-wild gopher,it's a sequence that is totally natural as far as the scientific end of it is concerned.

LEHRER: Well, look. The real question here is, from your perspective as a professional who has been doing this for years, do you consider what you do in these cases that we've just gone through as deception and deceit of your audience?

Mr. BAYER: No, I don't think so at all. I don't think it's deceiving the audience. We have a choice here of, if we want to go back to just pure wildlife films where we walk around with the camera and a tripod and a long lens, I think the audience would be dropping off so drastically watching television because you don't really see much. You have to get in closer to the animals. The audience got much more sophisticated. They want to see more behavior. They want to see more of the private life of the animals. And in order to do all this, we have to pull certain tricks in order to do it.

LEHRER: Well, let's go back to Mr. James. Mr. James, do you think what Mr. Bayer has done in these two cases that we just saw, is that something that should not have been done or should have been handled in a different way, or the public should have been told about it? What do you think?

Mr. JAMES: Well, that's several questions. I would say, no, I think that he's done an excellent job at portraying a kind of animal behavior that couldn't be shown without that kind of deceitfulness. I would only say that let us call deceitfulness what it is, and instead of sort of sloughing it off, to show that -- I mean, there is a real ingenuity there and yet it is deceptive, but the way Attenborough phrased it to me was that when the camera is being most truthful it is often employing the most artifice. And there's a film truth as opposed to a live truth -- not to get too heavy about it, but what I'm driving at is that any time you have a camera frame you're already imposing restrictions on reality, so you have to make the whole -- you have a cohesive film as the end product, and yo5j0have to trust the filmmaker. Andsoyif the filmmaker is qoing his work, then you'll end up with something that is essentially truthful and informative.

LEHRER: Mr. Bayer, I would assume you would endorse everything Mr. James just said, right?

Mr. BAYER: Oh, right, yeah, yeah. I agree with him.

LEHRER: What about his earlier suggestion that films that do have elements of staging in them, there should be better labeling, that the public should be told, for instance, that that gopher was really done in a television studio back in Denver somewhere rather than out on the prairie with that coyote?

Mr. BAYER: Yeah, but would it make any difference? If we filmed the gopher, let's say, out in Yellowstone, provided we get permission from the national parks to dig a hole someplace in the wilds of Yellowstone, bring up some lights, bring the camera around there, pull the tent over all this, and then film a real gopher in the wild doing what he's always doing? Or, if we do it in the studio, where we have better control of the lighting situation and we don't have to worry about the --

LEHRER: Do you think the public should be told, "Hey, look, these beavers, we brought these beavers in here and we brought the bear in and we got them together. This was not a natural thing that just happened out of the blue and we happened to be sitting there." Do you think the public should have been told that some way, through a super of some kind on your film?

Mr. BAYER: Oh, quite a few television programs carry a disclaimer in the end credits, and I don't think it really makes too much difference to the audience. It's really easy to put a disclaimer on there. I wouldn't be at all against it.

LEHRER: Wouldn't bother you if --

Mr. BAYER: No.

LEHRER: That's really what you think should be done, right, Mr. James?

Mr. JAMES: Well, I'm not really advocating that, but it seems to me that if you're going to present a kind of glamorized and, you know, beautifully vetted version of reality, then why not admit that this is what you're doing?

LEHRER: All right. Well, Mr. James -- yeah, Mr. Bayer?

Mr. BAYER: The question is where do you draw a line of when you put a disclaimer in there and where not? In our case of the film in Yellowstone, we filmed up there for close to five winters, and it was 99 wild. We cannot film controlled conditions in Yellowstone. It's a national park; they wouldn't allow it. So a very small sequence was done with the gopher in our studio. If we put a disclaimer on this film --

LEHRER: What do you put it on? Yeah, I got you.

Mr. BAYER: Yeah, people would think --

LEHRER: The whole thing was -- all right, I'm sorry to --

Mr. BAYER: Where do you want we should put it?

LEHRER: All right, I'm sorry to interrupt you there, but we've got to leave it there. Mr. Bayer in Denver, thank you very much. Mr. James, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Once again the main stories of the day. The Pentagon canceled a weapon designed to shoot down helicopters, saying the $1.8-billion gun didn't work. On the eve of a mass protest march, South African security forces arrested the Reverend Allan Boesak, one of the country's most important anti-apartheid leaders. And the space shuttle Discovery lifted off this morning after two delays and promptly deployed an Australian communications satellite. Good night, Jim.

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