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Life & Times Transcript
12/08/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- One teacher says when you're talking about the number of students in a classroom, size does matter. Jay Gussin>> Kids are going to fall between the cracks and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a terrible decision that you make every day when you look out at that sea of humanity looking back at you. Val Zavala>> And then, his images document our history. David Hume Kennerly's career took him inside the Oval Office and onto the battlefield. It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> It is the largest public construction project in the country and it's happening right here at LAUSD where more than a hundred fifty new schools will be built over the next six years. But those new classrooms can't come soon enough for many teachers who are struggling with overcrowded classrooms. Sam Louie met one science teacher in Granada Hills who has thirty-nine students and calls overcrowding Los Angeles's dirty little secret. >> "So this one is going to go 1, 2." Sam Louie>> Teaching is a challenge, but it can be even more challenging depending on where you teach, what you teach, the district you work for and how many students you have. Jay Gussin>> The real difference is that, when you have classes as large as forty, you almost have to -- and this is a terrible thing to say -- you have to practice something almost like educational triage. You can't save everybody, so what you do is you save who can be saved. Sam Louie>> Jay Gussin is an eighth grade science teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District. He's speaking out about what he considers an unacceptable number of students in his classrooms. Jay Gussin>> One of my administrators said, "Well, the classes look pretty good. They're all thirty-nine and forty." I admit at that point I just kind of snapped. "What do you mean the numbers look good? When did forty become a number that's looking good?" Sam Louie>> Gussin teaches at Robert Frost Middle School in Granada Hills. He says his science classes average thirty-nine students, a number that he feels is too readily accepted throughout the district. Jay Gussin>> I think that the class size is the district's dirty little secret. This whole idea that they talk about achievement and they talk about the achievement gap and they talk about assessments and test scores, and what they never say to the parents, "Oh, by the way, there's forty-two kids in your sixth grader's history class." Precious Gipson>> Sometimes like you won't get to understand the work and you won't be able to ask him, so I just wished that it would be like a little smaller so a little more people could be in there so we could really understand the work and do better in it. Sam Louie>> School officials say that not all classes are overcrowded. They would not allow us to videotape inside Robert Frost Middle School, but did let us take pictures. So what determines how big classes are? Roger Rasmussen>> "Most counselors are on the preparation salary schedules." Sam Louie>> Roger Rasmussen is the Budget Director for LAUSD. He says that the school board sets class size policy which is based on a very complicated formula. Roger Rasmussen>> Our class sizes would vary depending on the grade level of the students. It would vary depending on the type of class. For example, academic classes have a different policy than non-academic and some specific classes like English or Algebra have lower class sizes by board policy. Sam Louie>> The district policy shows quite a range at the various levels. For K through 3, the average is twenty students per class. For certain elementary schools, the average jumps to thirty-six students per class. And at the middle and high school level, the average can be as high as 40.5 students per class. Roger Rasmussen>> I don't think there's any disagreement that it would be better if we could run smaller classes. Sam Louie>> Right, but currently do you feel students are possibly suffering as a result of the current policies? Roger Rasmussen>> I would say that we're allocating the resources that we have as best we can. Sam Louie>> Rasmussen points out that the average class size is higher in non-academic classes like Physical Education and Art, but lower in academic courses where class size often impacts achievement. Roger Rasmussen>> The district sometimes on its own initiative will reduce class size in a particular subject. For example, eighth and ninth grade Math, the district by its own policy has reduced class size in those subjects. The reason was because they found a lot of children were not being successful in Algebra. Sam Louie>> So how does class size within LAUSD compare to other schools in the country? John Rogers is a Professor of Education at UCLA. John Rogers>> In Los Angeles Unified, we find many, many classrooms with more than thirty-three students. In fact, two-thirds of all of the LAUSD science classrooms have more than thirty-three students. You just don't find classrooms of that size anywhere else in the nation. Sam Louie>> So can anything be done to reduce class size? The answer is twofold: hire more teachers and build more classrooms. LAUSD has embarked on a massive nineteen billion dollar construction program that will add more than one hundred fifty new schools over the next six years. It's the largest school construction project in the country. Roger Rasmussen>> We're building enough schools so that, when the construction program is completed, every child will be able to have a seat in his own neighborhood on a traditional calendar, which means the September to June calendar, and that will be able to reduce class sizes back to the 2001-2002 levels. Sam Louie>> But with the completion date of 2012, some feel too many students will suffer over the next six years. Jay Gussin>> Because of the huge numbers, it's just an undeniable fact -- and teachers know this -- that kids are going to fall between the cracks and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a terrible decision that you make every day when you look out at that sea of humanity looking back at you. Sam Louie>> Teachers like Gussin believe the main problem with LAUSD is that the school district spends too much time and money focusing on teacher training and standardized testing and not enough on the core issue of class size. Jay Gussin>> I guess what I'm trying to say is that no amount of training is going to change how many kids are sitting in that classroom. No amount of training is going to change that number forty. Roger Rasmussen>> I don't think that the class size is the main issue that influences students' success or failure. I think there are other issues that are more important. At least, the district has taken the position that issues such as the professional preparation of teachers is actually their biggest priority. Sam Louie>> Los Angeles school officials defend teacher training and testing, saying they've been vital to the measurable success the district has seen in student achievement. Roger Rasmussen>> I think that the district's experience with professional development is that our student outcomes have dramatically improved over the last six years and this is measured by the state tests, the academic performance index. Sam Louie>> Others say that the improvement is less impressive in light of other sobering statistics. John Rogers>> There are about sixty thousand students that started ninth grade in LAUSD in the fall of 2000. By four years later, less than thirty thousand graduated. About twenty-nine thousand graduated. David Gomez>> My teachers think that a lot of people -- the majority of the class -- know it, that they we should move on, but I don't know it really, so I move on too. Sam Louie>> Even though you may still want more time to focus on that subject? David Gomez>> Yes. Sam Louie>> While the district was working to finish new campuses and hire new teachers, Gussin was tempted to leave his crowded classroom and take an early retirement. Jay Gussin>> But then what happens is, you start thinking, "Who am I leaving? I'm leaving those kids who need that kind of science education. They can get it from me better than anybody. I don't want to leave them." Sam Louie>> So Gussin will be staying and trying to teach science to thirty-nine students and hoping for the day when classes will shrink back to a manageable size. I'm Sam Louie for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> It was nearly cut out of the bible, but instead, the Book of Revelation survived and has gone on to influence western civilization and even present-day politics. But why this obsession with catastrophe and the Apocalypse? Saul Gonzalez talked with Jonathan Kirsch, author of the best-selling book, "A History of the End of the World". Saul Gonzalez>> Jonathan Kirsch, I'm talking to you here in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, perhaps an appropriate place for this conversation. You've written a book about the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament that deals with the fate of both the living and the dead. Set it up for us. For those who aren't familiar with their bible, what is the Book of Revelation? Jonathan Kirsch>> The Book of Revelation, which I call the single, spookiest book in scripture, tells the story of the end time, what's going to happen when the world comes to a final end. Among the things that will happen, we're told, is that Jesus will return to the earth. He'll fight a cataclysmic war against Satan at the Battle of Armageddon. He will reign over an earthly kingdom for a thousand years and, at the very end of time, there'll be a Judgment Day. At that moment, the graves will give up their dead. According to the imagination of its author, we're invited to see gravestones toppling over and souls rising up to be judged by King Jesus. According to that judgment, every person who ever lived will be judged either worthy of life in the new heaven and the new earth for eternity, or to be condemned to burn in the lake of fire for the rest of time. Saul Gonzalez>> Who wrote this book? What person or people are responsible for the text? Jonathan Kirsch>> It's intriguing that we can surmise a lot about the man who wrote the Book of Revelation, more than we know about many of the other biblical authors. He was born and raised a Jew, but he was one of the first Jewish Christians. He embraced the idea that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and he gave a sermon to a congregation, probably a tiny little house church congregation gathered in secret in some city or maybe several cities of Asia Minor. That sermon was reduced to writing and is now known to us as the Book of Revelation. Saul Gonzalez>> What kind of effect has this book had on shaping civilization as we know it, our society as we know it, over the centuries? Jonathan Kirsch: Revelation has imprinted itself on the way human beings, men and women, for twenty centuries have understood the world and the destiny of the world. Saul Gonzalez>> It's kind of in our cultural genetic code, right? Jonathan Kirsch>> It really is. I say that there's a kind of a cultural DNA that's been passed from Judaism to Christianity and has become part of western civilization. We are trained by our culture to think of history as having a beginning, a middle and an end. We're tantalized by the idea that how the world will end is encoded in the bible if only we have the insight to extract the hidden meanings of the bible. And we are told that it will end in cataclysm, in plagues, afflictions, persecutions and oppression, a final cataclysmic war, the Battle of Armageddon, and then the destruction of the earth. Saul Gonzalez>> Jonathan, why does a book that predicts so much pain, suffering and torment for humanity, along with the end of the world, why has that been so seductive to so many people over the centuries where they not only expect it, but they want it to happen? Jonathan Kirsch>> The function of the Book of Revelation is to console people who are suffering, confused and frightened. It performed that function in antiquity when it was first composed and it performs that function today in the twenty-first century. If a real flesh and blood man or woman is frightened of disease or pestilence or famine or war or revolution, if there's some figure in world history that casts a long shadow in our time such as Osama bin Laden, in ancient times, Saladin or Napoleon or Lenin or Hitler, the Book of Revelation offers us a very simple and convenient way to understand these forces and phenomena of history. We can console ourselves with the idea that it is all the playing out of God's will for the end of the world and, above all, the Book of Revelation, as spooky and scary as it is, it's quite a frightening text, it has a happy ending for some people because, at the end of time on Judgment Day, some people at least are promised that they'll go to the perfect celestial paradise for eternity. Saul Gonzalez>> One of the most interesting chapters in the book for me was toward the end when you talk about the idea of a revelation arriving on the shores of America with the European colonists. How does America change the idea of revelation and the Last Judgment and the ultimate battle between good and evil? What changes about us here on this soil? Jonathan Kirsch>> This is one of the great ironies of the Book of Revelation. It begins in the eastern edge of Christendom in Asia Minor, but it always moves west. It always finds its most ardent readers to the west. Finally, it makes the jump across the Atlantic with Christopher Columbus, who was himself an ardent reader of Revelation. So in America among the founding fathers and among Christian denominations of various kinds, the idea was embraced that we can make the new heaven and the new earth in America in our own lives. This is an idealistic -- Saul Gonzalez>> -- we Americanized Revelation. Jonathan Kirsch>> We Americanized it and we made it a positive text, a can-do text, and that's how it has been understood by the mainstream churches in America. But there are millions of Americans, many millions who vote, who believe that Revelation must be understood literally. Ronald Reagan was one of them. In his administration, he said, "We may be the generation that sees Armageddon." As I argue in my book, that's a pretty unnerving thought to fall from the lips of the man who is followed everywhere he goes by an officer with the launch code to the American nuclear deterrent. Saul Gonzalez>> One thing that strikes me when I read your book is how every generation expects the end time to come when they're inhabiting the earth and, of course, the end of the world doesn't happen. Jonathan Kirsch>> The Book of Revelation promises to reveal the things which must shortly come to pass, things which its author believed would happen in his lifetime. He would never have entertained the idea that he was uttering prophecy that wasn't going to come true for twenty centuries. He thought he would see the end of the world. He didn't. It's a book of failed prophecies. It's a history of the end of time, but time refuses to end. Saul Gonzalez>> So why do people keep the faith in it? Jonathan Kirsch>> Well, there's something deep in our nature, deep in our culture, that allows each generation to dismiss the previous failures of prophecy and embrace the idea that in their generation it will come true. This has never been more true than it is today. There are men and women in America today as we speak with each other who are absolutely convinced that, when they pick up the morning paper, when they turn on the news, they're seeing headlines that are signs of the end time. If it's an assassination, a natural disaster, a war, any phenomenon of politics or history, they can put into the context of biblical prophecy and it doesn't discourage them. This is the irony. It doesn't discourage them that these prophecies have so far failed again and again and again. Saul Gonzalez>> Jonathan Kirsch, author of "The History of the End of the World", I want to thank you for your time and your thoughts. Jonathan Kirsch>> Thank you. It's been my pleasure. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> How do you get a front row seat to history? Well, it helps if you're a world-class photographer like David Hume Kennerly who has given us some of the most memorable images we have of war, politics and American life, many of which we've seen on the cover of Time Magazine. Now a collection of his photographs can be seen at the Annenberg School for Communications at USC. Vicki Curry took a look. [Film Clip] David Hume Kennerly>> What makes a good photograph for me is a picture that reveals something that I didn't know and, if it comes through in the picture, that means that other people didn't know it either. So that would constitute a good picture. Vicki Curry>> David Hume Kennerly's photographs chronicle some of the most important people and events of our time. David Hume Kennerly>> It just seems like a terrific profession to me. I think one of the watershed moments in my career was in Portland, Oregon in 1966 when Robert Kennedy came to town. He was campaigning for a local congressman. It was a mid-term election. I'm sure he was thinking about running for president at that point. I photographed him and it was such an exciting arena to be in. It was all the press from out of town coming in with him and it was a traveling circus that I really wanted to join. Vicki Curry>> Kennerly signed on with United Press International to cover the political circus and he was awarded the prized White House beat, but he gave it up to follow a stronger calling. David Hume Kennerly>> I absolutely had to go cover the Vietnam War. It was the biggest story of my generation. I spent two and a half years in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos. Vicki Curry>> And in 1972, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his feature photography of the war. But the next year, he was drawn back to politics. David Hume Kennerly>> The whole Watergate thing had really kicked up. The story really had shifted back to the United States. It wasn't so much in Asia anymore, so I came back for Time Magazine. I immediately went into covering all that. Actually, it was exciting in many ways as Vietnam without getting shot at. Nixon was a fascinating guy to cover, really complex and interesting. I remember being shocked by his appearance one day when I went into the Oval Office. He just looked like he'd really been through a lot. Then another time, another sight of him, he's playing a piano at the opening of the Grand Old Opry with a sort of mischievous look on his face. This is the day that Richard Nixon resigned and these photographs is a contact sheet that I shot of him as he's waving goodbye on the south lawn of the White House. This is August 9, 1974, a dramatic moment in history. Vicki Curry>> And Kennerly drew the assignment to follow history when Gerald Ford became president. David Hume Kennerly>> One of the first pictures I took of Ford became a cover of Time Magazine, my first cover and his first cover. So I got to know then Vice President Ford and his family. The night he became president, August 9, 1974, he invited a bunch of his "friends" into their really modest house over in Alexandria, Virginia. He asked me to stick around after everybody left. He said, "Well, Dave, if you were to come to work for me, I mean, how would we do that?" I said, "Well, Mr. President, I'd just like two things. I would like total access and the use of Air Force One on the weekends." (laughter). He said, "Well, Dave, I don't know about Air Force One." I said, "It's a joke." (laughter) But it really set it off on the right foot. I mean, all I wanted was to go in there, be on the other side of the rope and take pictures and he let me do it. This is a picture you usually see of visiting heads of state. The president's chair, here's George Harrison and George Washington, the two Georges. It's an unexpected moment and it's the kind of picture I love taking. I love taking pictures, being in there documenting day in and day out. I would spend sixteen hours a day there because I knew it would end and I just wanted to get as much of it as I could. Vicki Curry>> After Ford left office, Kennerly went back to traveling the world for Time and Life Magazines. He's captured more than a million images, many of them landing on the cover, and he's photographed every American president from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. David Hume Kennerly>> I think one of the most astonishing aspects of my body of work, when I edit back through stuff, is that I did all that. It's hard for me to comprehend it. I look at the pictures from Vietnam, from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from a hundred twenty-odd countries around the world, all the people I've seen. Vicki Curry>> But recently, Kennerly started thinking about all the pictures he didn't take. Through four decades of covering politics and wars, he says he was often so focused on the assignment that he missed the landscape around it. David Hume Kennerly>> When the year 2000 was rolling around, I wanted to do something special. So I wanted to open up my eyes a little bit more and it was probably one of the strongest projects I've ever done. Vicki Curry>> He called the project "Photo De Jour" and, wherever he was, every day he fired off a couple rolls of film. David Hume Kennerly>> It's really just kind of rooting around for something that's already there and showing it in a different way. It challenged me photographically. I mean, I think it really raised the bar of my ability and that was good. This is what my project was about. I was out with John McCain's campaign, but this was a photo de jour, something away from the campaign, an old covered bridge, just a nice moment, a good piece of Americana. I think that really underscores what I was trying to do. Vicki Curry>> Since it was an election year, Kennerly was still on the campaign trail and many political images found their way into the project. David Hume Kennerly>> This is my "if Ansel Adams did politics pictures". It's John McCain and his wife with Sedona, Arizona in the background. This is the day he withdrew from the presidential campaign. I think it really encompasses the grandeur of it all. Election night, Austin, Texas, the Governor's Mansion in the year 2000. Then Governor Bush at this moment, as far as he knew he was President-Elect, and he's going over the speech he's going to give accepting the election from the people. But no more than a half hour later or forty-five minutes, we got into this situation which is after things had tightened up in Florida and then on the phone in the background is former President Bush. Somebody asked me, "Who was he talking to? What was he doing?" I said, "Oh, I think he's probably putting five thousand on Gore." That didn't amuse Barbara Bush when I told her that little story (laughter). But fifteen minutes later, Gore called Governor Bush back and basically withdrew his concession and the rest, we know, went to the Supreme Court. That's one of the most dramatic nights of my life right there and it's all in this one frame. Vicki Curry>> And each one of those frames becomes part of our collective memory captured by David Hume Kennerly. David Hume Kennerly>> What I've had is a ringside seat at history. That's been really a satisfying thing to me, getting to know the history makers personally, the ones who start the wars and end them, the people who, you know, make our world go around. Val Zavala>> Kennerly's photographs will be on display at USC through May 18. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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