Transcripts For CSPAN2 Robert Putnam On Our Kids 20150524 :

No one mreefb believes it will creep up slowly. The higher the temperature gets the more the Tipping Point the more events happen that will make it more dramatic. You can watch this and other programs online. Robert putnam reports on the lack of opportunities for children growing up in the United States today and questions whether the American Dream is dead. His book is our kids. All right. Everybody. Welcome. Can where ask everybody to take their seats, please. I thank you all for being here. This is a particular important book talk. I know to thank alvin and others who helped sponsor this. Your daughter, all of the people thank you for doing this. This is an important book talk because this is most important book you can read this year. In fact it may be the most important book you read this decade because the growing Economic Opportunity gap is the biggest political and moral and economic issue of our time. I want to make sure everybody afterwards gets a books from politics and pros. And then i want you to buy another book and give to the most political person you know test them on it make sure they read it and tell five others to buy copies of the book. It could help transform a political debate in an exceeding way. Robert putnam is a professor at Harvard University and a lot more than that. He is a a writer of civic discourse and society and he is a rock star when it comes to harvard professors which is saying a lot since all harvard professors inspire to be a rock star. I will never be allowed to go back now. I want to begin by just asking you, Everybody Knows you wrote bowling alone tell us about this book and why you wrote it. Well, thanks very much walter, for inviting me here to have a chance to talk and thanks very much for coming. I feel passionatenatallypassionately about this book. We have become economically polarized and less well known as socially segregated society but that is likely you go to school with people or marry people from a different class than we were several generations ago. It is more socially and economically polarized. And it is an honor to work for those changes for our kids; for children in america. And the more we look the more horrified frankly we were by what we found. What we found was growing gaps between in this book we call rich kids and poor kids and many many measures of child wellbeing. By rich kids and poor kids i dont mean bill gates kids and warren buffets kids and some homeless family. The upper part of the social economic chain are just people who are College Graduates and their children. Can i see the hands of College Graduates in the room . So when i say rich i mean you. By having a College Degree you are in the upper third of American Society and the lower third of people who have not gotten past high school. And you can see the gap between college backgrounds and high school backgrounds and many measures of how much time parents spend on them with Good Night Moon time is what we call it the quality of school they go to the stability of their family, big difference between stability of family and in the support they get from neighbors and churches and communities and institutions and that is the connection with my earlier work. Now i can see more clearly than i did when i wrote bully on that the ultimate victims of this increasing individualism of American Society are our kids. Or rather amounts to the facts of what i described previously meant that to use the word our kids we have have more shrishrivle tense. When my parents used to say we need to pay higher taxes for kids to get a Swimming Pool in town they didnt mean their kids. Now but now they mean their biological kids. That is the way in which the trends focus on more individuals than shared responsibility that is the way those trends come to bear on kids. Your other book is a combination of stories and facts and Economic Analysis but real people real kids. It starts in port clinton ohio 1959 when you graduate. I dont want to give away your age. I am 74. What were the stories of people from your class in port clinton verses the storeies that happen now . America in the 1950s wasnt an ideal place. There was lots of injustice and inequality and that was true for the few black kids in town and women in that era faced discrimination once out of high school. So there was gender and racial inequality. But in class terms it was a remarkable egalitarian time and place and that is not just seeing the past through gold colored lenses. We went back and talked to basically all of my surviving classmates from the class of 1969. It was a modest town growing up. No body very rich no body very poor almost half of the parents in my graduate class had not finished high school. 80 percent of us did better than our parents in education and income and so on. We had a remarkable upward climb as many of my classmates said when we talked to them we didnt know it but actually in fact we were rich and didnt know it. We were rich in social support from our parents and community and so on. There were two black kids in my graduating class. They faced serious racism described in the book. And everything from homes which no one was passed third grade and they graduated from high school. Big deal going from third grade to high School Generation in one generation. They both went to college because they had mentors in the community. You are exactly right. And actually white mentors in the community. In the case of the black guy i guess in the book we call him jesse. Jesse white coach, he said gently in the book the white coach may have been racist but held jesse to high standards and expected him to do well. No low expectations on the football field and helps jesse get a College Football scholarship. Cheryl is even more striking. She had a terrific life and was one of the smartest kids in the class. She is deeply aware of the price she made for the color of her skin but the turning point was one of the wife of one of the ceos in town for she was recognized. Cheryl was hard working and smart and this woman recognized and asked cheryl are you going to college and she said no no body in my family imageinemagines we going to college. And the matron said surely the school is going to help you. And now i am more or less quoting them she marched into the high school and said this girl is smart you better get her to college and that is why she went to college. When we were back port clinton a couple years ago in and the graphic team mostly poor white kids there, and i didnt believe it. I wondered where did she find these kids. Like mary sue they were essentially a throw away child. The mother was married and then changing partnerships going through the family and very soon was left alone for long periods of time locked in her room dropped out of high school, got involved in selling jails, got involved in juvenile detention doesnt have serious skills goes from man to man hoping she will find somebody who will provide her help and protection. Just a couple weeks ago she told us the guy she is with now found a job for her as a model in toledo and then two weeks ago she said on facebook she said her problem is no one in her life loves and cares for her so she is having a baby. And i thought this cant be port clinton. How can this be . But it is. I dont want to tell sob stories only because all of the data in the chapters say this isnt making up sob stories. But if you honestly see the stories i could almost not write some of them because they were so painful. And port clinton what happened after i left there, was the rust belt and the economy went down and that is why she never held a job. But it is a wonderful area and in the last 20 years that sight there is one gated community that is 20 miles along and 150 yards deep with Million Dollar mansions. Lets talk about the other end of the social economic spectrum. And the rich kid in your lass was a guy named frank and the rich girl today is a young girl named chelsea. I just saw frank a couple weeks ago. He is a wonderful guy. He was by far the richest kid in the class but none of us knew that. His grandfather said when you go off to new york or cleveland you can take whatever you want. In other word dont flaunt your wealth. And now chelsea this is 50 years later she is flaunting her wealth because they built a 1950s style place in their basement. They have a birthday and hire a limo so the kids can be picked up for the Birthday Party and come to their home. Do the parents have the our kids mentality . And care about other peoples kids . No they dont. Chelseas is quoted saying why should her kids have to pay for anybody elses kids. They are someone elses kids let them worry about them. And that is what this change is about. Half of the book is these stories that give real flesh and blood and almost gutwrenching meaning. The other half is Socio Economic progress including silver grass. I could point it out what tell us what this grass is and what the shockers are. This is times over here we have 19601970 and we have now over here. This is something for kids like spending time or money with kids or whatever. And it is what we say over time the graph of the kids coming from educated homes are Getting Better and better. But kids coming from the lower third of america are getting worse and worse. If you see what i mean by the opportunity gap is the growing gap. So you can see that gap. Why dont you give one example. I was just about to. You can see it in the amount of time parents spend reading to their kids. There wasnt any gap at all between the social classes in the amount of time parents spend time reading to their kids. Now there is 45 minutes a day gap. My grandchildren get 45 minutes more a day reading time than mary sue did. I am talking about the mary sues verses my own grandchildren. If you know about modern Brain Science you know that is unbelievablely important. That is the way the brain develops; through verbal interaction with adults. Similar amount of social support from the community, similar graphs in terms of family stability, and now more than 90 of kids raised in College Educated homes with twoparent families compared to now a third of high school educated parent homes are being raised in two parent homes. I am not talking about the moral but just saying it is harder to raise kids with one parent at hope. Big gaps in the other support systems from schools to churches to you know scouts and all of those things you can see them. Extra curriculum activities i hyperventilate by them. High School Football wasnt invented by god but by educational reformers to give kids a chance to learn soft skills of grip and delayed gratification. But because of pay to play nationwide over the last 20 years if you want to play football in high school the good good taxpayers of port clinton paid for my gear. Now if you want to pay you have to play 400 per average per kid per sport. If your annual income is high 16 1600 is nothing. But if you make 16,000 which is what a lot of americans live on that is 10 for sports. I am trying to show how a wide range of indicators kids increasingly having their chances in lives influenced not by theirm but they their parents. There is a graph in the back that is advertise heartening when trying to prevent who is going to graduate from High School Based on test scores and parents income. Rich kids with high scores 80 percent graduate. And poor, dumb kids less kids are less likely to graduate. And that just isnt exactly the opposite of what the American Dream was. Your childs future shouldnt depend on upon the parents but should depend upon you. When i first read this book it began to cause me to see two or three times on hour examples of it. You talk about being on a bus and watching a mother and things like that. This is a problem i think, that is worse in part because of one of the big changes i mentioned at the outset of the growing segregation in america. It is just true we are meeting folks coming from higher up in the social harmony by which i mean up and folks are not less likely to know or contact or interact with poorer kids than we people us were a couple generations ago. We used to be aware of what is happening and i dont think we have a sense of how bad things have gotten for people at the lower part of the economic chain. There are important racial differences in america. But this gap is not about this race. This is about social class. You can see the growing gap among white folks and black folks. There are important racial discrepancy still in america. But the poor black kids this part is getting worse. You talked about how there is a divergeance of whether or not you will graduate from college and you said 90 if you come from a rich and well off family. But i think that the different has grown over the past 30 years about 50 Percentage Points almost. That is the problem. The scissors. Exactly. It is not enough if you say rich kids have a better chance than poor kids. But this is the change. It didnt used to be this way. The living memory of many is we had a much more egalitarian society. I am not trying to say america was perfect. In this respect we have gotten a lot worse. And you know i hate to say this but if we do nothing about it it is going to get worse. We aint seen nothing yet unless we address this problem. Think about mary sues baby. Right . Thing about that. The great equalizer that kept the divergeance from happening and allowed equal opportunity used to be k12 education. Why is that no longer the case . I have to say first of all things under the control of the schools like tracking for example has contributed almost nothing to the global gap. This is not a problem the schools caused in america. And i say that because we have a tendency to blame everything in america on the schools. If only the schools were doing a better job we would not have this problem. The schools didnt cause this problem. That is not to say schools couldnt have fixed the problem. But the reason the problem in schools is getting worse is be primarily because the most important thing about the school you go to is who else is going there. If there are other kids from affluent backgrounds you are going to be better off. If you go to a school that draws low income students you will be worse off. If you put that fact with the fact we are segregated by class so more and more likely rich kids are going to school with other rich kids and poor kids are going to school with other poor kids there are things we need to do fix that but it wasnt the school causing the problem. We caused that problem. I would was spending time in california at Conner Academy where they are using the internet and Digital Learning to get a world class education for every kid. He started something i saw called the lab school. The Conrad School where he is testing out these things. In the lab school it was all rich or very privileged kids. It stays open until 6 p. M. And it is 11 months a year six days a week and they have a lot of technology. Do you think that the internet is going and has been helping to close this economic deivergedivergeant or helping it grow . It is making it worse. And not to say i dont like the internet and excuse me while i check my watch. But because it turns out 1015 years we talked about the digital rise which the fear was the rich kids may have more access to the internet than poor kids. But that access gap is closed. All of the kids we talk to have smart phones and such. When you watch how kids use technology which kids use it and kids that are well educated use it in ways that are more populated to help them make progress in their lives like with the academy you are talking about. And poor kids because they lack the surrounding support of other adults then they use it just for entertainment. But i guess the basic point there i really want to empicizehasis is that poor kids are increasingly isolated from everyone. They are isolated from their parents because their families are unstable they are isolated from schools, churches because there is a gap there, isolated from community organizations, from their neighbors. Mary sue ruecently posted on her website love hurts, trust kills. Think about living in a world in which you could not trust anybody. And the fact that these kids are increasingly isolated from everyone, not only their own families, but other people that might have helped once upon a time means that lots of bad things happen to them. They dont get help trying to figure out how to get help with technology. Another strikeouting thing we call airbag airbags. All kids get in trouble; rich poor black and white. But kids from educated backgrounds get in trouble airbag airbags inflate to protect the child. We have a friend of ours and this is a true story. All of our stories are true just try not to use real names. A woman called a couple weeks ago to say it was terrible. She was devastated. One of her grand sons had been picked out in colorado allegedly the claim was he was selling drugs and that may have been true but you can imagine the grandmother of why white friend was devastated and then she said they went out and got the best lawyer in town and found the right rehab in connecticut so it will probably work out. Airbags. See that . If the same thing happened to a black kid on the lower south side of chicago no airbags. If or if the same thing happened to mary sue now airbags. So these kids dont have anybody coaching them. They dont have their parents coaching them. They dont have the parents coaching them because they are dropping out of extra curriculum. When you get down to the kid, when you think poor kid, think isolated kid. And think it is tough to grow up isolated. That goes back to the social capital where there is not quite as many mentors, pastors preachers or Community Leaders saving these kids. Right. I dont want to swim across things but if only we could get these kids help and that would solve the problem. But i am trying to use practical examples in ways of which we used to take care of peoples kids. There used to be after Tipping Point<\/a> the more events happen that will make it more dramatic. You can watch this and other programs online. Robert putnam reports on the lack of opportunities for children growing up in the United States<\/a> today and questions whether the American Dream<\/a> is dead. His book is our kids. All right. Everybody. Welcome. Can where ask everybody to take their seats, please. I thank you all for being here. This is a particular important book talk. I know to thank alvin and others who helped sponsor this. Your daughter, all of the people thank you for doing this. This is an important book talk because this is most important book you can read this year. In fact it may be the most important book you read this decade because the growing Economic Opportunity<\/a> gap is the biggest political and moral and economic issue of our time. I want to make sure everybody afterwards gets a books from politics and pros. And then i want you to buy another book and give to the most political person you know test them on it make sure they read it and tell five others to buy copies of the book. It could help transform a political debate in an exceeding way. Robert putnam is a professor at Harvard University<\/a> and a lot more than that. He is a a writer of civic discourse and society and he is a rock star when it comes to harvard professors which is saying a lot since all harvard professors inspire to be a rock star. I will never be allowed to go back now. I want to begin by just asking you, Everybody Knows<\/a> you wrote bowling alone tell us about this book and why you wrote it. Well, thanks very much walter, for inviting me here to have a chance to talk and thanks very much for coming. I feel passionatenatallypassionately about this book. We have become economically polarized and less well known as socially segregated society but that is likely you go to school with people or marry people from a different class than we were several generations ago. It is more socially and economically polarized. And it is an honor to work for those changes for our kids; for children in america. And the more we look the more horrified frankly we were by what we found. What we found was growing gaps between in this book we call rich kids and poor kids and many many measures of child wellbeing. By rich kids and poor kids i dont mean bill gates kids and warren buffets kids and some homeless family. The upper part of the social economic chain are just people who are College Graduates<\/a> and their children. Can i see the hands of College Graduates<\/a> in the room . So when i say rich i mean you. By having a College Degree<\/a> you are in the upper third of American Society<\/a> and the lower third of people who have not gotten past high school. And you can see the gap between college backgrounds and high school backgrounds and many measures of how much time parents spend on them with Good Night Moon<\/a> time is what we call it the quality of school they go to the stability of their family, big difference between stability of family and in the support they get from neighbors and churches and communities and institutions and that is the connection with my earlier work. Now i can see more clearly than i did when i wrote bully on that the ultimate victims of this increasing individualism of American Society<\/a> are our kids. Or rather amounts to the facts of what i described previously meant that to use the word our kids we have have more shrishrivle tense. When my parents used to say we need to pay higher taxes for kids to get a Swimming Pool<\/a> in town they didnt mean their kids. Now but now they mean their biological kids. That is the way in which the trends focus on more individuals than shared responsibility that is the way those trends come to bear on kids. Your other book is a combination of stories and facts and Economic Analysis<\/a> but real people real kids. It starts in port clinton ohio 1959 when you graduate. I dont want to give away your age. I am 74. What were the stories of people from your class in port clinton verses the storeies that happen now . America in the 1950s wasnt an ideal place. There was lots of injustice and inequality and that was true for the few black kids in town and women in that era faced discrimination once out of high school. So there was gender and racial inequality. But in class terms it was a remarkable egalitarian time and place and that is not just seeing the past through gold colored lenses. We went back and talked to basically all of my surviving classmates from the class of 1969. It was a modest town growing up. No body very rich no body very poor almost half of the parents in my graduate class had not finished high school. 80 percent of us did better than our parents in education and income and so on. We had a remarkable upward climb as many of my classmates said when we talked to them we didnt know it but actually in fact we were rich and didnt know it. We were rich in social support from our parents and community and so on. There were two black kids in my graduating class. They faced serious racism described in the book. And everything from homes which no one was passed third grade and they graduated from high school. Big deal going from third grade to high School Generation<\/a> in one generation. They both went to college because they had mentors in the community. You are exactly right. And actually white mentors in the community. In the case of the black guy i guess in the book we call him jesse. Jesse white coach, he said gently in the book the white coach may have been racist but held jesse to high standards and expected him to do well. No low expectations on the football field and helps jesse get a College Football<\/a> scholarship. Cheryl is even more striking. She had a terrific life and was one of the smartest kids in the class. She is deeply aware of the price she made for the color of her skin but the turning point was one of the wife of one of the ceos in town for she was recognized. Cheryl was hard working and smart and this woman recognized and asked cheryl are you going to college and she said no no body in my family imageinemagines we going to college. And the matron said surely the school is going to help you. And now i am more or less quoting them she marched into the high school and said this girl is smart you better get her to college and that is why she went to college. When we were back port clinton a couple years ago in and the graphic team mostly poor white kids there, and i didnt believe it. I wondered where did she find these kids. Like mary sue they were essentially a throw away child. The mother was married and then changing partnerships going through the family and very soon was left alone for long periods of time locked in her room dropped out of high school, got involved in selling jails, got involved in juvenile detention doesnt have serious skills goes from man to man hoping she will find somebody who will provide her help and protection. Just a couple weeks ago she told us the guy she is with now found a job for her as a model in toledo and then two weeks ago she said on facebook she said her problem is no one in her life loves and cares for her so she is having a baby. And i thought this cant be port clinton. How can this be . But it is. I dont want to tell sob stories only because all of the data in the chapters say this isnt making up sob stories. But if you honestly see the stories i could almost not write some of them because they were so painful. And port clinton what happened after i left there, was the rust belt and the economy went down and that is why she never held a job. But it is a wonderful area and in the last 20 years that sight there is one gated community that is 20 miles along and 150 yards deep with Million Dollar<\/a> mansions. Lets talk about the other end of the social economic spectrum. And the rich kid in your lass was a guy named frank and the rich girl today is a young girl named chelsea. I just saw frank a couple weeks ago. He is a wonderful guy. He was by far the richest kid in the class but none of us knew that. His grandfather said when you go off to new york or cleveland you can take whatever you want. In other word dont flaunt your wealth. And now chelsea this is 50 years later she is flaunting her wealth because they built a 1950s style place in their basement. They have a birthday and hire a limo so the kids can be picked up for the Birthday Party<\/a> and come to their home. Do the parents have the our kids mentality . And care about other peoples kids . No they dont. Chelseas is quoted saying why should her kids have to pay for anybody elses kids. They are someone elses kids let them worry about them. And that is what this change is about. Half of the book is these stories that give real flesh and blood and almost gutwrenching meaning. The other half is Socio Economic<\/a> progress including silver grass. I could point it out what tell us what this grass is and what the shockers are. This is times over here we have 19601970 and we have now over here. This is something for kids like spending time or money with kids or whatever. And it is what we say over time the graph of the kids coming from educated homes are Getting Better<\/a> and better. But kids coming from the lower third of america are getting worse and worse. If you see what i mean by the opportunity gap is the growing gap. So you can see that gap. Why dont you give one example. I was just about to. You can see it in the amount of time parents spend reading to their kids. There wasnt any gap at all between the social classes in the amount of time parents spend time reading to their kids. Now there is 45 minutes a day gap. My grandchildren get 45 minutes more a day reading time than mary sue did. I am talking about the mary sues verses my own grandchildren. If you know about modern Brain Science<\/a> you know that is unbelievablely important. That is the way the brain develops; through verbal interaction with adults. Similar amount of social support from the community, similar graphs in terms of family stability, and now more than 90 of kids raised in College Educated<\/a> homes with twoparent families compared to now a third of high school educated parent homes are being raised in two parent homes. I am not talking about the moral but just saying it is harder to raise kids with one parent at hope. Big gaps in the other support systems from schools to churches to you know scouts and all of those things you can see them. Extra curriculum activities i hyperventilate by them. High School Football<\/a> wasnt invented by god but by educational reformers to give kids a chance to learn soft skills of grip and delayed gratification. But because of pay to play nationwide over the last 20 years if you want to play football in high school the good good taxpayers of port clinton paid for my gear. Now if you want to pay you have to play 400 per average per kid per sport. If your annual income is high 16 1600 is nothing. But if you make 16,000 which is what a lot of americans live on that is 10 for sports. I am trying to show how a wide range of indicators kids increasingly having their chances in lives influenced not by theirm but they their parents. There is a graph in the back that is advertise heartening when trying to prevent who is going to graduate from High School Based<\/a> on test scores and parents income. Rich kids with high scores 80 percent graduate. And poor, dumb kids less kids are less likely to graduate. And that just isnt exactly the opposite of what the American Dream<\/a> was. Your childs future shouldnt depend on upon the parents but should depend upon you. When i first read this book it began to cause me to see two or three times on hour examples of it. You talk about being on a bus and watching a mother and things like that. This is a problem i think, that is worse in part because of one of the big changes i mentioned at the outset of the growing segregation in america. It is just true we are meeting folks coming from higher up in the social harmony by which i mean up and folks are not less likely to know or contact or interact with poorer kids than we people us were a couple generations ago. We used to be aware of what is happening and i dont think we have a sense of how bad things have gotten for people at the lower part of the economic chain. There are important racial differences in america. But this gap is not about this race. This is about social class. You can see the growing gap among white folks and black folks. There are important racial discrepancy still in america. But the poor black kids this part is getting worse. You talked about how there is a divergeance of whether or not you will graduate from college and you said 90 if you come from a rich and well off family. But i think that the different has grown over the past 30 years about 50 Percentage Points<\/a> almost. That is the problem. The scissors. Exactly. It is not enough if you say rich kids have a better chance than poor kids. But this is the change. It didnt used to be this way. The living memory of many is we had a much more egalitarian society. I am not trying to say america was perfect. In this respect we have gotten a lot worse. And you know i hate to say this but if we do nothing about it it is going to get worse. We aint seen nothing yet unless we address this problem. Think about mary sues baby. Right . Thing about that. The great equalizer that kept the divergeance from happening and allowed equal opportunity used to be k12 education. Why is that no longer the case . I have to say first of all things under the control of the schools like tracking for example has contributed almost nothing to the global gap. This is not a problem the schools caused in america. And i say that because we have a tendency to blame everything in america on the schools. If only the schools were doing a better job we would not have this problem. The schools didnt cause this problem. That is not to say schools couldnt have fixed the problem. But the reason the problem in schools is getting worse is be primarily because the most important thing about the school you go to is who else is going there. If there are other kids from affluent backgrounds you are going to be better off. If you go to a school that draws low income students you will be worse off. If you put that fact with the fact we are segregated by class so more and more likely rich kids are going to school with other rich kids and poor kids are going to school with other poor kids there are things we need to do fix that but it wasnt the school causing the problem. We caused that problem. I would was spending time in california at Conner Academy<\/a> where they are using the internet and Digital Learning<\/a> to get a world class education for every kid. He started something i saw called the lab school. The Conrad School<\/a> where he is testing out these things. In the lab school it was all rich or very privileged kids. It stays open until 6 p. M. And it is 11 months a year six days a week and they have a lot of technology. Do you think that the internet is going and has been helping to close this economic deivergedivergeant or helping it grow . It is making it worse. And not to say i dont like the internet and excuse me while i check my watch. But because it turns out 1015 years we talked about the digital rise which the fear was the rich kids may have more access to the internet than poor kids. But that access gap is closed. All of the kids we talk to have smart phones and such. When you watch how kids use technology which kids use it and kids that are well educated use it in ways that are more populated to help them make progress in their lives like with the academy you are talking about. And poor kids because they lack the surrounding support of other adults then they use it just for entertainment. But i guess the basic point there i really want to empicizehasis is that poor kids are increasingly isolated from everyone. They are isolated from their parents because their families are unstable they are isolated from schools, churches because there is a gap there, isolated from community organizations, from their neighbors. Mary sue ruecently posted on her website love hurts, trust kills. Think about living in a world in which you could not trust anybody. And the fact that these kids are increasingly isolated from everyone, not only their own families, but other people that might have helped once upon a time means that lots of bad things happen to them. They dont get help trying to figure out how to get help with technology. Another strikeouting thing we call airbag airbags. All kids get in trouble; rich poor black and white. But kids from educated backgrounds get in trouble airbag airbags inflate to protect the child. We have a friend of ours and this is a true story. All of our stories are true just try not to use real names. A woman called a couple weeks ago to say it was terrible. She was devastated. One of her grand sons had been picked out in colorado allegedly the claim was he was selling drugs and that may have been true but you can imagine the grandmother of why white friend was devastated and then she said they went out and got the best lawyer in town and found the right rehab in connecticut so it will probably work out. Airbags. See that . If the same thing happened to a black kid on the lower south side of chicago no airbags. If or if the same thing happened to mary sue now airbags. So these kids dont have anybody coaching them. They dont have their parents coaching them. They dont have the parents coaching them because they are dropping out of extra curriculum. When you get down to the kid, when you think poor kid, think isolated kid. And think it is tough to grow up isolated. That goes back to the social capital where there is not quite as many mentors, pastors preachers or Community Leaders<\/a> saving these kids. Right. I dont want to swim across things but if only we could get these kids help and that would solve the problem. But i am trying to use practical examples in ways of which we used to take care of peoples kids. There used to be after School Program<\/a> and shop in the afternoon and one of things where you sort of see this even not just in airbag but Little Things<\/a> i have noticed with the kids in new orleans after the hurricane is if you dont have a credit card you cannot get a cellphone that easily. If you dont have a cellphone you cannot be connected to people easily. You also cant have plan that allows you data so you can pick up the phone and find out how to commute. How does that play . You can see it. Another poor kid from poor clinton that we talked to in the book is called david and david is another kid who had a horrible life. We recently were trying to get in touch with david again and his iphone has been shut off because hebing cannot afford it. I dont want to come to the conclusion here that you know, america is going to hell in a hand basket and we cant do anything about it. There have been previous periods when america faced this problem. The end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century we faced a problem very much like this. And i dont want to give a lecture on the progressive era but there are parallels. You read the bully pulpit and see what Teddy Roosevelt<\/a> does with almost the same situation is he said we will have a square deal which is basically every kid has a decent opportunity. That is right. And the other interesting thing about that period, it is dorris and i talked about it on the road, she has the solution to my problem, her period have the solution to my period. The thing we notice about the progressive era is that there was a lot of National Discussion<\/a> at the time about these challenges. That is what Teddy Roosevelt<\/a> was especially doing and others at the national level. Most of the actual policy innovations that came to fix that problem didnt come from washington. That National Conversation<\/a> gave oxygen to local reformers in places all around america. So that innovations in that time came from galveston and toledo and other territory and kansas. American high schools were invented by small towns in iowa and kansas and the midwest in this period so that these are all our kids and we will be better off if they all get a free secondary education. That turned out to be the best Public Policy<\/a> decision america has every taken. Because that free he School Education<\/a> in america to everyone raised what economics and accounts for almost all of growth in the 20th century and leveled the playing field. It might have been a hard sell for the banker to say you should say so the other kids in town get a free secondary education. That is effectively what happened and it happened in places which people didnt think of everybodys kid as being better off. That is true today. This is not alturism. The whole county would be better off economically politically socially morally if we could begin to invest more in these kids. Lets start with economically. What would it do to the economy . The cost estimates are not investing in poor kids cost us about 4 percent of gdp a year. A big chunk of that you might think is the criminal justice system. If we dont help the poor kids we will have to pay prison but that is not the biggest thing. Welfare payment saids is not a major cost. Bigger is the health of the kids because they are much less healthy and poor kids are much more obese than rich kids and we are getting that way faster so more diabetes sicker longer and someone has to pay for that. And that probably turns out to be a percent of the gdp every year and the other really important part of it is the lost opportunity that the workforce side of this sees. We are writing off 23 million potential workers every year. Mary sue is not in the position to be a productive worker and that means through no fault of her own she is not contributing to society. If you have the simple minded view of make or take you say she is a taker. But mary sue is not responsible for that. Maybe her parents screwed up but mary didnt. Helping mary sue will help my grand daughter. My grand daughter will be better off not just morally but economically and materially if we investing others kids. You say 4 percent but that is 500 billion a year . Over the lifetime of the kids the best estimate is 5 trillion. You gave a comparison i would love you to try to spin out because i am not sure i can remember it exactly. That if atlanta had the same sort of equality opportunity that Salt Lake City<\/a> had the economy in atlanta would be what . 11 percent bigger and that is just an economic fact in fact . This was the Federal Reserve<\/a> board that calculated, you know, the growth rate of different parts of america, and other things affect the growth rate of these areas but one thing that is constant you can ask why is atlanta so low and Salt Lake City<\/a> high . That is another discussion. But that makes a big difference. Everybody in atlanta would be better off if they paid more attention to the poor kids. Economically politically and morally. We did economically. Politically. Disinfrantuous disenfranchise disenfranchisement . They have views about politics think of the poor kids have been been unplugged from all of the networks of information and discussion we know about and they think of the political spear as benevolent and it is sort of from their point of view. But in a way the first worry you have about that is presence of pitch forks on the native communities. That is not likely to happen because these kids are not likely to they dont have the Organizational Skills<\/a> to get the pitch forks and march. It is tempting for me to say the rich folks better be careful because if you dont help the poor kids they will march on your estate. But and i dont want to if you go back to the people that reflected on where frenchism came in the 1930s what the academic reflections on that period say is that the people who were faltering for extreme economic distress were the people that were disconnected. I am talking about the people in germany and italy and elsewhere. So it isnt even though normally the political situation of these poor kids, if you care about the economy, it isnt so great for equality this is lower third of america not taking part in our political system, but it is a little risky to have that many people in society that actually dont even think of themselves as a member of society. But the more compelling argument than economic or political is the moral one and the moral creed of what america stands for. I am a jew. I was converted from methodist a while ago. But i get accused of being labelled evangelical. And in some respects i appreciate the attack but i think it just wrong. It just isnt right. Mary was my grand daughter. She is working hard. She made one really good decision in her life. She chose wonderful parent and great grandparents. And mary sue made only one mistake. She chose the wrong parents. And that is fundalmentallymentalfundamentalally wrong. That is what not america stands for. No it isnt. Someone noted you have description of issues but dont offer solutions. This is someone who didnt get to the last two chapters of your book. One is called what can be done. Tell us what can be done. There are big things that can be done. Big hard things can be done that would have a big effect but it will be a heavy list. The best thing we can do is end this 30 years stagnation of real wages for less educated men. That would have a big impact on the lives of the kids. And how to get had American Economy<\/a> working for working class americans is a matter of a lot of political debate. I dont know what i have to add except it is a big deal. Other things like universal Early Childhood<\/a> education. We know that Early Childhood<\/a> education high quality, expensive education, has a high payback rate. There is a debate about that. Most of the debate is ill informed. If you look at the data that is true. What is the return on investment . What percent . 711 percent. It is better than what i am giving for my retirement. So and that works especially there is debate about whether head start works and i am trying to summarize and it turns out cheap head start doesnt work but expensive head start does work and it works so well you can get your money back. But dont think you can buy it on the cheap. It has to be high quality. High pollutant daycare or baby sitting doesnt have the affect. That is not yet entirely politicized. We are in a polarized world. Someone said polarized world and that is a shock to people in the city but the most comprehensive Early Childhood<\/a> Education Program<\/a> is in oklahoma which is a deep red state. There is smaller things that we could do like mentoring for kids. And i dont mean drop by mentoring. The crucial thing about mentoring is not having lunch with a child once a year. You have to go in their lives supporting them, providing them with these airbags and so on. And that will make a big difference. And that is something any one of us could do. As i say in the book, the fact that School Boards<\/a> without thinking about the consequences have instituted pay to play for what was once a everybody in america thought it was a part of what you got in secondary education and soft skills in football and band. Go to your school asking if you have pay to play and they say they have waviers and tell them the stigma of getting wavers makes it not work. Ask what else you can do help the kids in the school. Big things require mobilization of the country and there are small things you talk about high school becoming universal and school going from the agriculture and Industrial Age<\/a> and the progressive era with scissors. Now making Community College<\/a> and universal college free. That is right. I talk about that part of the education system. It is great that the president is calling attention to that and other local governments in other countries by saying lets make Community College<\/a> free. That is great. But actually the evidence shows it is not so much the cost of the Community College<\/a>. It is i talked about these kids not having airbags, they also dont have any adults who can help them guide them through the complicated process of what school they should go to. They lack savvy. And most important in cutting back funding for Community College<\/a>s those cuts have come on the advising counseling and support of the kids. And that is the worst thing to cut. That is what makes the drop out of Community College<\/a>s high. It is very high not because of financial reasons, but someone saying have you thought about taking this course that term and that course next term. We had people in st. Louis doing a dialogue with students in ferguson and st. Louis on race and among the things that came out of it was both the students in the high school and the former superintendent said it is not only making Community College<\/a> free but it should be seemless. You dont think about getting from 8th to 9th grade but it should be a seamless process of going from senior year into the proper Community College<\/a> trade school whatever it may be. That is right. There are other things saying it would be simple enough to have vision if not the execution, of every kid having a mentor, every kid having an after School Program<\/a>, every kid having a good summer opportunity, every kid having Early Childhood<\/a> every kid having postsecondary education. Those are not complicated things. They are questions of political wellness. My last question before opening it up. You made a joke that wasnt funny or a joke that we are a partisan city. You have been nonpartisan. With george w. Bush you worked with us on the franklin project and you advised paul ryan when he came out with his Economic Opportunity<\/a> plan, i think jeb bush as well as president clinton brought you to camp david and obama gave you the National Medal<\/a> of something or other. It was the national med leaal and if we are dropping names i spent two hours talking to the president in the cabinet about this issue. And other members pulled together as well. So how do we make this the moral and economic issue of 2016 and not make it part of a partisan divide. That is the 64,000 question from my point of view. I do think there are some tough questions about how you doesign the right program to fix the problem. This isnt a case without good policy ideas. This is a case where we dont have the political will because we dont think of these as our kids. We think of them as someone elses kid. In the poor kids parking lot you can see bmws parked next to the poor kids and then junkers, in which the kids lived. And the parents of the one dont think of the other as one of our kids. That is why i called the book our kids. I think that is the crucial step we have to get over. It is true that political figures on both sides of the aisle i think, correctly see this as a major issue. It has been part of my goal to make this problem of the opportunity gap be the central domestic issue in the 2016 elections. If you a serious candidate for president of the United States<\/a> what is your solution to the problem of the opportunity gap . That is why aspiration. I think we are making progress as you say a number of candidates on both sides are talking about the opportunity gap and they will not agree. That is the way democracy works. If we all agree we have a problem we can talk about how to fix the problem. I do worry, though, that this will turn into a search for villains and the political Magnetic Field<\/a> will be so strong that the whole issue is pulled into all about the economy or fixing the families or is it cultural or structural and we will lose sight of the kids. I want the focus on the kids. Best way to make that happen in 2016 is to make sure everyone reads your book. Let me open it up. I have read some research that says the most central person is not education but motivation. So i have seen poor kids that have been highly motivated to succeed worked hard and succeeded. And i have seen rich kids not motivated despite education and did well. Can you speak to that . Sure. Motivation makes a difference. But we should not assume motivation is coming from genes or god or outside of the kid or maybe the kid woke up that morning deciding not to. Motivation comes from having success sequences early in life and mary sue is now verless motivated from my grand daughter who is parents are College Educated<\/a> and she is going off to france and she is motivated to become a good french cultural historian. Mary sue is just trying to find somebody who will love her. And you could say, well mary sue doesnt have high motivation. But that comes out of here experience. So i dont want to let either her parents or the rest of us off the hook saying i want to be careful in focusing on motivation we say well pull yourself up by your boot straps you would be fine. I had a little bit of that feeling myself before doing this research. I came from a modest background did okay in life and i thought if i did it why cant others. But i see that is a place between nuts and evil. And it has become harder to pull yourself up by your boot straps in the past 60 years is that right . It has. It has become harder. And it has become harder in the following way we have, in a way, privatized most we used to Pay Attention<\/a> to all of our kids. Therefore, you know, we had playgrounds but that has all gradually been privatized and if you are my grandchildren that is great because you have wonderful soccer teams. But mary sue isnt learning anything. We interviewed hundreds of kids all across america from orange county, atlanta, bend, oregon to the boston area and none of them had extra curriculum activities minus watching tv. And you said somewhere between nuts and evil. That is a strong statement. We have to show that just saying this as chelseas mother does in your book has consequences. Yeah. Our kids our own biological kids are doing well. That is great and we are doing all we can to help them. That is great. And i am not saying there is anything evil about them. If there is lack of motivation we try to help with that. I am not saying that is evil. If you then think about i am not talking personal to you i am not talking to everybody, but if we thought of mary sue as one of my kids, i could not sleep at night before figuring out a way to help her. And we are trying to get viewers to see this. We should let someone speak. We have so many hands. Yes . Very nice to see you. We have data that shows life in america and that data shows a very strong correlation between education and Civic Engagement<\/a>. I wonder and i know we dont have the same data sets from the 50s, but i wonder if that was different back then if so why and what it means for the future. You know thank you very much for the question. The underlying observation is people who have more education are generally more likely to take part in civic activity. It wasnt quite as true in the early period because there were other institutions that mobilized people to take part in politics. Political parties mobilized people to take part. And unions and churches mobilized and organizations. One of my earliest Research Papers<\/a> this was in the 60s when i was an infant was on the importance of the political support. That is where i would leave it i guess. And we dont have that now. It is usually if Political Parties<\/a> are trying to do this but they spend as much time trying to figure out how to depress opponents than increase participation among their own advocates. Yes, maam . Thank you very much for being here today. It has been wonderful. Between mary sue and mariuem there is a whole vast group of people of young people who are not college material. What happened to the trade schools . Today i had the telephone man, the washing machine man, the refrigerator man. I cannot tell you all of the trade people that come to my house. So these are perfectly capable people. What happened to the trade schools . First of all, can i get the name of your plumber . Sure. No i am agreeing with you, of course. Well you are right. That is a big gap in our array of opportunities to provide kids. There was a mantra called college for all for years. And now all kids in america believed they needed to get college even poor kids believe they need to get college. That has had the unfortunate side effect of people focused on a primarily post second education and not on serious education but education named not at liberal arts but at a real job fixing things or making things. And so right. There is good models in the book. I talk about a number of programs around the country aimed at what you are suggesting at that group of kids. Let me try to get others in. There are a lot of other people who want to say something. When i was growing up there were no out reach programs. Today every organization that i belong to has an outreach program. I think there is specific engagement. You name a university the aspen institute, the portrait gallery, everyone has an outreach program. So why do you say there is no Civic Engagement<\/a> . Well i dont want to be bad mouthing outreach programs but we used to do it without calling it that. That is all of us did outreach and none of us are. The little old lady with her fur hat took my black classmate to the high school and said this woman deserves an education. She would have never said im doing outreach. She was helping one of the kids in town. So i am not dismissive of out reach but that is a more formal way of making up for the fact we used to do this a ton more and dont anymore. One of the distinctions between theres this debate, sort of slightly wonkish debate in this city about does head start work or not work and an important part of the answer is it works much better if its combined with outreach to the parents and coaching of the parents through programs of the sort youre describing. Thank you for reminding me that i omitted that in my list of fixes earlier. I was wondering in your research if you found anything thats unique to the immigrant community or the immigrant experience and their sense of how they help each other out . Yeah. And why dont you pass the microphone to the gentleman right there in front of you. Thanks. Yes. First generation immigrants controlling for where they are economically, have a much more stable structured family relationship, and thats part of the stereotype that we all have and its basically sort of true. Thats the good news. And the bad and various ethnic groups, im not going to go into all the great detail, but in general immigrant groups like a little more like traditional American Families<\/a> you know . Ozzy and harriet and theyre both worrying about the kids. Thats the good news. The bad news is that vanishes after one generation. So assimilation occurs in many good ways. Im all in a different life im a big advocate of immigration and i talked a lot about that publicly and i still am. And i like the idea of assimilation people are becoming a richer mixture, our country but this is one area which probably assimilation is not such a great thing, that the immigrant families then become in the Second Generation<\/a> more like the rest of us. [inaudible] yeah. In the way back. I can yell. So i, im curious about the role of technology. You sort of talked about the khan academy of being a platform and the access gaps shortening where younger less educated people are using shorter platforms than maybe some of these education, how many Capital Building<\/a> human Capital Building<\/a> platforms. Can you talk about the bright spots or trend lines the what . Bright spots or trend lines where Something Like<\/a> facebook, like, i know theyve tried to increase the number of people going out to vote. Can you talk about some of the social Technology Companies<\/a> bringing in ways to close some of these scissor issues . Well, maybe youre more aware of those than i am, actually. I am aware i know, of course about a lot of the ways in which social media are changing our lives because, you know just before the explosion of social web sites and social media and so on occurred just after i wrote the book, so by far the single most often question im asked is, yeah, but what about the internet . So ive thought a lot about how the internet doesnt make up for the disappearance of bowling leagues. But now im focused not on is the internet good or bad for building productive social relations, but is it narrowing the gap . And, frankly, i do not know. Youll tell me, but i do not know of any web site or any major app that is specifically devoted to narrowing the gap. And the reason i think thats important is often tacitly in the background, even a facebook is another, a web of relationships. So very you know ive got friends on facebook, a few of whom i actually have never met but most of whom i know in real life. And so my relationship via facebook is a kind of an an alloy combined of the real facetoface connections and the internetbased connections. These poor kids are so isolated from any real world facetoface connections that thats, i think the challenge. I dont think that a purely virtual purely virtual app is going to solve the real problems that these kids have. But the more creative question, which i do not know anybodys asked, is are there ways in which we can create a new kind of alloy thats directed specifically to mary sue. Does that make any sense . And mary sue is on facebook. Yeah, she is. Therefore, you could try to figure out okay, how do we build on that to make a alloy that includes real life support . Yeah. Yeah. This gentleman here, then ill come back. Oh yeah, you have it. Sorry. Let me get this gentleman, then yourself. Hi. You talk about the scissor graphs that show the versions of the bottom third and the top third which i think were all aware of. More recently theres been a lot of attention from thomas pickty and others about a scissor thats developing between the 80 and the 20 that there are people who go to Community College<\/a> to even get fouryear degrees, and theyre still not improving their Economic Standing<\/a> and theyre seeing a bigger gap, you know, separating them from the well off. And i wonder, you know, if youve looked at this, and also one of the reasons that this is happening is that as robotics and Computer Technology<\/a> advance, more of these relatively highly skilled jobs are being done by machine and that trend is likely to accelerate in the future. So when you look at that, what prospects does that offer for people who are trying to make it and really improve their relative standing . Right. From my point of view and youll correct me if im misunderstanding your question youre talking about the demand side of the labor market. That is, what how is command shifting demand shifting at various levels in the educational or income hierarchy . And youd probably know about the famous hourglass economy hypothesis, that is that the demand is going way up at the top and down among manual, Pretty Simple<\/a> manual jobs that cant be easily outsourced, and demand is narrowing in the middle. Thats what economists describe. My book is actually not focused so much on the demand side for labor its much more focused on the supply side. What skills do various kids coming at various points from the hierarchy have, and there i have to say the major cleavage is the one that ive described. Its between kids who are coming from relatively well educated homes, collegeeducated homes, and those who are coming from high schooleducated homes within the middle of those two are people who are coming from you know, some college. Of course weve got to worry about the economics of the demand side of the problem too, but each if we solve that even if we solve that problem, we still would have the supply side and thats what im focused on here what skills or resources or deficits are we endowing our, all of our kids with . Thats what identify been focused on. Unfortunately, im going to make in the last question but we will have time for everybody to cluster around, get books signed and ask more questions. Thank you, 2kr6789 putnam dr. Putnam, for opening up what i think is a critical topic here. We talk about a culture of life during the bush administration, and it seems to me in these political times that life seems to end at birth for a lot of people. You know, we dont want to give them Birth Control<\/a> we dont wont to have them we dont want to have them get abortions, but when they come into the world, we dont want to feed them. My sons a fifth grade teacher and he says, dad its hard to teach these kids when they come to school hungry. So theres such a great disadvantage to them. I am absolutely grateful that youve opened this up, because i think at your level maybe we will get some intellectual capital going here. But thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you may use that as your closing platform. Im very grateful to all of you who are here. I hope that we, if we can get some agreement this is a big problem facing america, i think its a terrifically big problem, but its also a terrifically big opportunity. If we can begin to fix this, we can actually make america more productive, more democratic better place to live. So and ideas about how to fix it are really important. But weve got to convince your neighbors and your elected officials and so on, this is a unique opportunity or problem. Professor Robert Putnam<\/a> thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] and its memorial day weekend on booktv. Three full days of nonfiction authors and books. Some of the topics that were featuring this weekend include the iraq war, americas infrastructure, terrorism washington d. C. And the civil war and first ladies. Some of the authors youll hear from include former senator george mitchell, cornel west, dana perino and walter isaacson. Now, for a complete schedule of our entire weekend, you can go to booktv. Org. Youll see the schedule over on the righthand side of the page. You can also follow us on facebook, facebook. Com booktv, or booktv is our twitter handle where we send out a lot of schedule updates and publishing news throughout the weekend. Booktv on memorial day weekend, three days of nonfiction books and authors. I think this is sort of a hidden story, but a fundamental issue that had cropped up in the 1970s and early 1980s. It was fundamental in terms of how you viewed our chances to prevail at what president kennedy called, you know, the long twilight struggle. And the genesis is in the early 70s the cia was estimating that the soviets were spending about 6 of their gdp on defense. And you get the situation where schlesinger moves to the cia and, you know, marshall is his is the nsc staff at the time. And schlesingers calling him over and he says the folks here at the cia say the soviets are spending only 6 of their gdp on defense. How could this be . Were producing a couple hundred tanks a year, theyre producing a couple thousand, were producing a couple hundred planes a year, theyre producing a couple thousand planes a year, artillery pieces. He says, what are, you know are these guys supermen . And marshall and schlesinger work on saturdays come to the conclusion this is bullshit, okay . [laughter] this cant be right. So they start to work whats called the numerator problem and the denominator problem. The numerator problem is just how much are they spending on defense. And marshall by the mid 70s, comes to the conclusion theyre spending a lot more on defense than the cia thinks they are. You know, their economy isnt that efficient, you know, they cant produce things as cheaply or efficiently as we can and so on and so forth, and then he starts going after the denominator problem. How big is their economy . Is it really half the size of our economy . And he starts talking to economic emigres and so on. No, you know, youve got all these issues in terms of productivity and production. And so by the middle 70s, marshall has the cia mystically says, well, no, its not 6 , its 12 . By the time i was working for secretary weinberger in the middle 80s, the cia was up to 16 , and marshall just keeps pounding away. I said no, its not 6 , its not 12 , its not 16 its more like 25 or 30 . And so theyre spending a lot more, and their economy he was looking at demographic trends, health trends, productivity trends, talking to emigres coming out. There was this guy who was at georgetown who would go over to the soviet union, somehow got in and got out but the fundamental point was from a strategic per perspective if the cia was right and they were only spending 6 and they were outproducing us way they were, then time was on their side. Over the long term, they would just keep widening the gap between themselves and ourselves. If schlesinger and marshall were right then time was on our side, and we didnt have to take risks. If we played smart, we could win the longterm competition. And marshall got it right, and the cia got it wrong. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. And now","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia800201.us.archive.org\/34\/items\/CSPAN2_20150524_180000_Robert_Putnam_on_Our_Kids\/CSPAN2_20150524_180000_Robert_Putnam_on_Our_Kids.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20150524_180000_Robert_Putnam_on_Our_Kids_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240621T12:35:10+00:00"}