[speaker001:] I uh spent four years as a university professor and yeah
[speaker002:] oh really I I've spent three years um teaching in public schools and elementary school
[speaker001:] oh do you really that's great
[speaker002:] uh-huh I taught in Utah and uh
[speaker001:] no kidding
[speaker002:] did you teach in California
[speaker001:] what I did I did um
[speaker002:] uh-huh you sound pretty young for a university professor
[speaker001:] well I was pretty young well I was uh I had never intended to do it and I was uh uh given the opportunity after I'd started a management consulting firm to teach in in uh uh one of the business schools in the California State University system
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] at any rate um the topic is fascinating because one of the things I've done for the past few years is um research the problem from the point of view of uh uh what appears to be working best and how you can explain it theoretically you may be familiar with cooperative learning
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] have you ever
[speaker002:] well you can you can tell me a little bit more about it because I don't think we did that in Utah
[speaker001:] well the cooperative learning is a technique that was tried initially to integrate the public schools and uh what what it involves basically is the use of peer groups and the uh teacher becomes a uh a sort of a consultant resource person
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] to the cooperative learning uh to the learning cooperatives I guess they're called and there are uh some fairly sophisticated approaches that are used in the high schools with point systems and things like that so that people uh gain a competence with respect to the material
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] um I think that the combination of uh technology and techniques like that together with marketplace forces will bring about a revolution in the way we learn uh I think there is a direct threat to vested interest in the public school system uh that will stand in the way of that progress being a little faster uh school systems are in too many states dominated by administrators
[speaker002:] uh-huh yeah
[speaker001:] and uh both teachers and parents uh complain about the uh uh the cost and ineffectiveness that results so my feeling is that um
[speaker002:] true
[speaker001:] the the problem is is uh significant there are plenty of good people uh available to um offer people educational experience but that we just have to reallocate reallocate and reorganize the resources to do it and uh I think certain techniques and technologies will influence all of that as well as research um uh of the sort that people like me do looking at theories of behavior and how they can be used to improve performance particularly uh accelerate the the pace of learning
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] and my feeling is that uh those kinds of things will solve the problem eventually I don't know what form it'll ultimately take um uh but I think that the future is pretty bright because people recognize that we're paying an enormous price for uh inferior quality when the people involved really aren't inferior so it must be the way we're managing the process that uh
[speaker002:] yeah I see what you're saying yeah I totally agree
[speaker001:] I I don't I don't think it's it's a matter of of uh talented people to do it as both as quote unquote students and as teachers but clearly what's happened in this country is the school system's been asked to assume a great many responsibilities
[speaker002:] oh yeah
[speaker001:] in the past thirty years that weren't existent uh you must see kids with real significant problems um in some cases
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] uh course Iowa City I don't know how hard how hard is it uh in the public school system in Iowa City is it is it uh deteriorated a lot do the people say or are they pretty happy with it or
[speaker002:] well I've I haven't taught in Iowa but I've taught in Utah and um people there were saying that the way that the schools were going a lot of people were going away and going to private schools or else going to home where they taught their kids at home
[speaker001:] right
[speaker002:] or you know anything but the public schools and the ones that did have you know the kids yeah well
[speaker001:] even in Utah well Utah's a place where you wouldn't think that problem would be very severe
[speaker002:] well uh maybe it was the area I was in but a lot of schools had lot of transient um families and a lot of families who were on the poorer side and
[speaker001:] yeah you see you saw a fair number of troubled kids
[speaker002:] yeah and I mean like you said how they were the schools were doing more things for the kids they thought than they were thirty years ago I mean they were the school I was teaching at the the year I left they're considering providing hot lunch for or hot breakfast for the kids
[speaker001:] yeah yeah
[speaker002:] as well as hot lunch and