I'd like to speak this morning on the broader issue of consumerism and I'm going to Define it a little differently. I think then the media tends to convey about that subject in order to include the ways and means by which citizens can individually and collectively affect the quality and shape of the economy and the proper place in our overall Society of what can be called commercial values in ancient China. The merchant was really restricted to the marketplace period there was a lot of opprobrium attached to merchants in those days, but it was considered something that was so prone to abuse that other areas of society were off limits and to some degree in our country's history back in the 19th century. That was true as well because when mercantil values are commercial values begin to intrude on health and safety values educational values political democracy values something happens to those values the propulsive force behind commercial values in a society, which is so Subject to the material incentive the propulsive force behind these values of the marketplace can severely impair the Integrity of Education of academic freedom of our health and safety standards and through political action committees from Fortune 500 can turn the representative nature of government into a special interest subsidiary of the Fortune 500. So I think it's very important to view the consumer approach if we want to use that word as one that deals comprehensively with the ordering and the priority of values in a political economy just to take one particular illustration. There's always a question. How do you finance education is a property tax revolt around the country and how is it to be financed? Well, you know, as you know, there are taxes in our country on food and our On closing and there are taxes on products that aren't considered Necessities, but we don't pay much attention to a huge new source of Revenue which can come from developing a health and education trust fund financed by a tax on tobacco alcohol and soon. Marijuana. Is he people can drink for it to health and safety you see The the the quantity here we're talking about is very significant. There has not been an increase in the federal alcohol taxes 1953 and a recent report by the Center for Science in the public interest showed that twenty five billion dollars along could be raised just in that area and you can imagine what can be raised in the area of tobacco and other products which should bear their responsibility for recycling some of the money into the health and education area and sometimes you know health and education is one of the same thing if young people can be properly educated to the full Penelope of facts about these matters, they may indeed tend to preserve their health for a longer period of time long after they've left school now the struggle in our country today over economic and political power involves the struggle over the most basic values. Systems in our society many times when you listen to economists analyze the gross national product whether our economy is progressing or not one tends to forget that they are viewing the economy overwhelmingly from the selling side. Whether more drugs are sold by drug company or whether more cars are sold by the Auto industry and they assume that if more cars are sold and more drugs are sold that that's good for the GMP. It's good for the economy, but they don't take it all away. They don't ask the question. Are we improving the economic health and safety well-being of people consumers by continuing to sell more drugs and more cars. For example, enormous numbers of drugs now are sold in this country that are useless demonstrably loose useless for the purpose of which they're advertised and or they're harmful or they're very addictive. Now the fact that more drugs are sold this year and last year simply does not mean that It's good for the economy, even though it increases sales and profits for the drug companies because it could well mean that increases the rip-off of consumers useless drugs the harm to Consumers drugs with hazardous byproducts or addiction levels go up. So we have to measure every sales increase on the selling Side by analyzing how it really affects consumers in the final analysis because that is what the major measure of an economic system has to be not how many cars General Motors cells but how improved is a transportation system the pollution control the balance with mass transit the safety of the system and and the efficiency of the system. All those are consumer values which may not be promoted simply by pouring more cars onto existing highways which are polluting hazardous and which Look up the money away from Modern mass transit systems. So I think given that framework it's important to emphasize that the issues of concern in the consumer Arena are very very Basics. They are not just going to a supermarket and saving a few pennies when we talk about pollution. We're talking about violence the silent cumulative violence whether into Lake Superior with asbestos or into the air with carbon monoxide or into the drinking water with lead and mercury and cadmium all of these are silent forms of violence. They don't pinch but that doesn't mean they don't hurt. It's a kind of violence which requires a much more educated mind because people don't have to be educated to know that a fire can burn and that they have to either run away from a fire or put it out or both about people who senses and we're all like this who senses are not Immediately provoked by higher levels of carbon monoxide or sulfur dioxide have to develop a psychological rejection of these silent forms of violence. If we're going to put into motion the scientific medical legal and perrantes to prevent them. And if you look at pollution as a compulsory form of violence, and then the ideological argument about we have too much regulation goes right out the window because if the EPA does not control these pollutants and reduce them and if local state epa's do not control them. Then we are being regulated by the corporation's who pollute the air and subject has to compulsory consumption of violence. The same is true with this ideological argument. You see against Auto Safety standards. They say that these standards should not be put into effect because it compromises our freedom on the highway what freedom freedom to go through a windshield. Or freedom from death and injury. How do you define Freedom when you see a child decapitated in an auto crash when you see elderly people who lose their lives in an order crash at 20 25 miles an hour. It's a pretty thin definition of freedom to say that people should not be subjected to higher levels of engineering safety in the products that they buy not to mention the enormous reduction in economic waste that comes from Curbing and action injury toll that now takes 50 billion dollars a year out of the economy. Now what I'm leading to is that in education, we should always ask ourselves who is developing the perception that the students use to look at the world around them. The average student in this country is said to watch television 25 to 30 hours a week and there's more time watching TV than in the classroom. Those those hours are having an effect. Obviously, they are shaping the way people look at products. If students are exposed from year 3 to Food ads on TV, which emphasized colorful Foods too wet highly chemical coloring additive Foods or the emphasize foods that are sweet high levels of saw or high levels of sugar food that's easy to chew melts in the mouth. What they're doing is shaping the food habits. I'm a generation and the And if the student has a food is largely a reflection of the food industry's advertisements about their product beamed over TV or in magazines, but a consumer perception of food would come at it from a different angle and consumer perception would say I want foods that is nutritious sanitary that doesn't have harmful chemical additives and that may not always be easy to chew. That's what teeth are for chewing isn't shouldn't go out of style. And if you if the student looks at food that way then as a student grows up and becomes a shopper going into a supermarket. They come at these products from an intelligent rational Discovery process rather than reverberating off the commercial slogans of the corporation's how many people today go into a supermarket shopping for bread and they finally spot the bread they want because they remember seeing two loaves of bread of the same kind on TV the night before chatting and grinning with one another and they pick up the loaf of bread. They know it's wonder bread without even looking at it because when they pick it up their fingers and thumb collide there On the other hand, there are other ways to shop for bread in terms of what's in the bread the weight of the bread the unit price for per pound and so forth and this is something which should not be viewed as of a lower intellectual Challenge and other courses taught in this class rooms when I was at law school, I was amazed to realize that there was there were courses at the law school on Securities regulation Property Trust antitrust, but there were no courses on food and the law their courses on Taxation and the law and so on nothing on food in the line went up to one of my professors said why not? And he never heard the question before and so he kind of said food, you know, I guess wanting a little more time to think about it. That's how alien the whole thing was to the law school and I sort of bounced back in the same awkward way. I said, yeah, you know food people eat it and and he said well, I'll tell you I think the reason why there's no course on food and in the law at the Harvard Law School is that the material has not developed to a level where it presents a adequate adequate intellectual challenge for our students. You know, it made me remember Einstein's famous statement when he said physics is simple its politics. It's really difficult. the and so one interesting facet of a corporate dominated culture and corporate values really Prevail very heavily over our contemporary culture in our country and some corporate Executives will admit this and have corporate values are reflected in the fact that while many people work 30 40 50 hours a week at their place of work in order to earn money to buy things as consumers for a decent standard of living that many many people never think of what they can earn by becoming more astute consumers and by spending a little time shopping. There's a group in Washington that can show the average family how to cut 30% off their food budget cost and improve their nutrition and diversity but there isn't a tradition in this country in our schools and outside our schools to develop skilled consumers who understand the overall economy the Dynamics of power between contending forces corporate labor consumer government and the process of selecting out that quality of standard of living that comes from being a more astute consumer. And I don't just mean getting a better by I don't mean just buying safer products. I mean looking at an aerosol aerosol love product which for shaving or for application of furniture part power furniture polish and saying I don't want to buy that because that simply contributes to the depletion of the ozone above the Earth and push for the Banning of these aerosol products fluorocarbon aerosol products with fluorocarbons and indeed they are now banned but it took 20 some years before they were banned because Dupont and others were profiting off them and we have to wait until a teacher in Southern California came up with a study that showed that these fluorocarbons connecting up with the ozone depleting the ozone level. And if ozone is depleted Beyond a certain point is going to be an increase in World cancer rates as well as climate changes food production altogether. Raishin and the light so perhaps if we had more a buyer shaped culture there would be more attention to this not only in our schools but else but outside the schools and I don't mean, you know, having a course called how to be a more astute consumer. I'm not pleading for special titled courses. I am pleading for the kind of empirical material in our courses which can train students in basic skills of Reading Writing arithmetic thinking analytic blending analytic thinking with normative values in the light but also expose students to a motivation level one of the big problems with students as many of you know, is that they get a lot of they get very restless to get very bored and oftentimes they get very unruly and the question is why and some people say well they don't get good a good breakfast and they're under nerds and other people say Well, they're under challenged and other people say the classes are too large and other people say, Well, it comes from Lighting systems and so on so forth. Well, certainly if students are exposed to process of Education where their experience out of school links with their experience in school and vice versa. They may tend to become much more interested and committed in their work. They're really I think the the verdict is in on the memorization School of pedagogy that the process of memorization often leads to regurgitation and to vegetation as an intellectual process and this holds true all the way through college and often graduate school. No. For instance students learning about mass communications that is a very essential part of Elementary and secondary education. They spend 25 hours watching the television to and this is just the beginning wait until you you get all the cable programs and the channels and now the video games and the video game addictions and did you know a new game called asteroids is sweeping the country would they spend as much time on mathematics? And the question is what is going to be done about this should students learn about the television media as part of the instruction this of course comes up against all many all the many archaic restrictions on the flexibility of teachers and supervisors in the school system in terms of how they can develop their curriculum. And that is the problem which will have to leave to you. But it's a problem. I think that in a fast-paced society has got to be dealt with the flexibility of local schools to develop. Up a curriculum that reflects the diversity and the Ingenuity at that level. The trend in Washington as far as the consumer values are concerned is unmistakable. There's nothing ambiguous ambiguous about the Reagan Administration. They are as clear in this in their purpose as Genghis Khan. the here they have inherited very modest programs in the area of health and safety the Environmental Protection Administration the occupational health and safety agency the Auto Safety agency Food and Drug Administration product safety agency. All of these wrapped up with all their budgets. Do not amount to 1% of the federal budget and yet they affect almost every person in this country and their mission is to advance the sanctity of human life and health and safety by requiring technology to be more Humane by requiring new technology to be applied to Motor Vehicles the smokestacks to workplaces and the like by requiring a stronger diligence to the problem of drinking water contamination, very widespread in our country particularly underground contamination. And these agencies are now under full-scale attack the new appointments of the Reagan Administration to run these agencies fulfill three criteria for acceptance for their job one. They were totally ignorant of the mission of the agency that they were expected to head to they they despised the mission of the agency that they were expected to head and three they in effect pledged not to enforce the law against corporate crime of fraud brood negligence and pollution. Those were the three admission criteria now, Now the from the White House on down or one of my safe in The White House on up these days. There is an explicit. There is an explicit determination. This is not left to subtlety or to inference an explicit determination to refuse to uphold the Mandate of these laws and to enforce these laws and administer these laws as Congress envisioned them to be when these laws were passed and they don't make any bones about it. The secretary Transportation on two occasions has stated that he does not want to issue any more Auto Safety standards in the next four years of his term. Now. I've been hearing a lot about mr. Reagan oath of office. Mr. Reagan has reminded us that he took an oath of office to uphold the law as a way of justifying the PATCO of firing situation and secretary Lewis keeps telling us He has taken an oath of office to uphold the law vis-à-vis the pat coat situation. What about their oath of office to uphold the Food and Drug Laws? The environmental laws the workers safety laws the toxic chemical was it seems abundantly clear that it is the Reagan Administration that is on strike against the American people and they're still being paid by the taxpayer. I loved one comment by mr. Reagan when he said that the the Eric the air flight controllers didn't they weren't fired they quit. On that basis as my father told me the other day Reagan should quit because he's not doing his job and he's open about it. This is extremely serious. There is no comparison between the Reagan Administration and the Ford Nixon administration's which now look benign by comparison. This is this Administration is a virulent extremist brand of republicanism that I don't even believe reflects republicanism. It may reflect Ed Meese and a me reflect Ronald Reagan, but above all the Reagan government is a government of General Motors for Exxon by Dupont. What can be said about an Administration Washington that cuts by one-third as starters a successful infant Health Nutrition and food nutrition program, which has helped reduce infant mortality in our country over the last 10 years. And save a few million dollars there as well as produce more infant mortality at the same time turning around and giving 13 billion dollars of new tax bonanzas to the oil industry. What do you say of an Administration which wants to destroy a 300 million dollar Legal Services Program providing legal assistance for over 30 million poor people in this country and showing that access to judge Justice in America does not depend on the depth of your pocketbook while at the same time moving to spend several billion dollars to prop up the mismanaged and technically and financially crumbling Atomic power industry. There's something a symmetrical about this to say the least. And the word that can be used most charitably to describe. The reaganites in Washington is that they are cruel cruel people who hide behind a presidential smile. Waist there always is in Washington and waste needs to be cut back. and if there is going to be waist cut back, it should be across the board because there's no justification for it waste cripples the Integrity of a program the Department of Education and the Office of Education before hand important functions, but there are a lot of people twiddling their thumbs and wasting money there and a lot of people were overstaffed there and because that wasn't handled by the educational constituency adequately in this country, the more important functions of this agency are now under attack and they're being undermined and so in the in the programs that we most treasured in our government we've got to deal with the issue of waste or in some areas the issue of corruption like the GSA procurement corruption or the Pentagon arms Contracting corruption these have to be dealt with because if they're not you'll get an Administration that comes in saying we're going to cut out waste and fraud in Washington and instead they don't Out waste and fraud and Washington, they cut out the programs that give a little help and a little voice to the average citizen in this country up against concentrated forces of power. And that's just tactically quite apart from ethically a very important priority to deal with government programs the issue of waste and fraud the extent of corporate planning of our society is clearly a major consumer concern corporations who say that government shouldn't plan do a lot of planning for us themselves. The telephone company is now planning for us. They want to turn all local telephone calls into measured service. So every time you pick a telephone pick up your telephone and call locally, you will pay for the call the frequency of the called the duration of the call with you call 10 blocks or a hundred blocks and what time of day you called that is corporate. Any of a form of a portion of our communication facilities the network TV stations and the networks and the broadcast stations. They also plan every day. They decide who says what on television and that's a form of planning to particular since they're using our public Airwaves for nothing to make a very substantial profit the license cost Nothing by the way zero. Corporate planning a genetically is occurring now corporations are running into into this whole area called DNA recombinant research gene splicing. So pretty soon together with some universities that they're working with. They will be affecting awesome as it might sound in the year 1981. They may be affecting the genetic inheritance not only of Flora and Fauna but also of human beings that's the form of planning as well. Perhaps the ultimate form of planning the impact on our tax system by corporations and whenever big corporations get in trouble through mismanagement, you know, they don't have to go bankrupt anymore. They just go to Washington instead. Where there's a nice big welfare program for corporations known as handouts subsidies tax expenditures or other technical. Jargon, but all amounts to the same thing small taxpayers money goes to Washington and is funneled out directly or indirectly to the Miss manage mega-corporations. Then there of course is the expansion of the influence on the family and on education proper who is really bringing up children these days let's take a child of five and the the process I something like 30 hours a week watching TV and he wants those Saturday and Sunday morning kiddie shows and then he watched the advertisements for all the worst junk food imaginable. There aren't any advertisements on TV. I've seen four carats for example, but there are advertisements for Kool-Aid for chocolate bars for sugared heavy sugar contains cereal and the light. Notice the thrust of these ads and we found out that this is not an accidental thrust but a Madison Avenue calculation is to so provoke the child so that the child nags the parents to buy the products and so food habits, which years ago were developed for children by three major factors the parents the ethnic background and the geographical area. They were grew up in is now increasingly being substituted for by mass corporate food advertising on TV. This affects their diet. It affects the teeth. It affects the likelihood of their getting high blood pressure later on in life when they're exposed to such a high salt content diet. So young an age to take just one example, the impact of corporate shaping on families and on children is something that needs a lot more study and I'm sure you've seen some of the results in your own classroom. When a child is considered hyperactive quick to the doctor quick to the hyper anti hyperactive drug. What effect is that drug have on the child a school of medical thought thinks that the drug is not necessary because certain food additives in the food produce this kind of hyperactivity. How much do we know about all this? Not much, but we know one thing there is a constant Drum Fire of corporate impact intruding in the area of family life electronically chemically environmentally instructionally, which requires and indeed demands and much more close analysis Who develops the peer group values the teenage peer group Culture in our society is a great market for corporations. They have a strong role in the kind of values that are reflected by the peer group. And as you know, is there anything more powerful and Son teenagers then their own peer group. The impact on education I would hope that teachers group such as yours would have more panels on the flood of corporate propaganda masquerading as instructional material that is going into the school systems. I think something like only 1% of the school budget in America goes for instructional materials, and there's a lot of pressure on schools as to where they're going to get the money with increasing costs of books and other instructional products. And so Along Comes these corporations. They say look we've got this video. We've got this slideshow and we've got this pamphlet. And this isn't just starting. I remember when I was in the fifth grade. I walked into class and the teacher said to me would you when I please pass out the following brochures. So I didn't even look at the brochures teacher says I do in those days at least and and I passed out the brochures and lo and behold they were brochures by the automobile manufacturers of America telling all the young children everything wonderful about automobiles. But nothing in terms of the negatives, nothing dealing with the issue of safety issue of waste issue pollution. Nothing only the good things about automobiles. That's the way I learned about the automobile industry at first later learned other things about the automobile industry, but the oil industry did the same thing in West Virginia and Pennsylvania the coal industry floods the school's trying to get it to 12 year old boy. Tell him how wonderful it is to go down in the mines. We made a study of these instructional materials the catalog as some of you know for these corporate materials can be over an inch thick just listing them in our study was called hucksters in the classroom. And it was an analysis of the diversity of materials that are coming in the content. For example, the meat industry wanted to sell me their use these materials have a commercial purpose. Of course, they want to soften up their next generation of consumers and I remember one paragraph which said the reason why the Indians lost out to the white man was because the Indians didn't eat enough red meat and therefore weren't powerful enough to take on the white man. Not very evidentially based on history, of course and GM sent a comic book written in depicted the way a nine-year-old would depict the characters and then the characters were called. It was on air pollution. The characters were called Harry hydrocarbon Nancy nitrogen oxide and Charlie carbon monoxide and he's pixie little characters were shown not to be very harmful and that if air pollution was a problem pre-1970 when the pamphlets came out, it was no longer a problem and the little kitties need not worry about it anymore. This is something which I think is going to grow in sophistication. It's going to develop very Advanced electronic materials available for the school's. I noticed where more and more corporations are now adopting high schools. They adopt a high school in their area give a little money to the athletic team. Perhaps give away a few of their products and the next step Maybe. whew visiting lectures to the auditorium by the local corporate Executives and on and on now, I don't want to say that this is connected with the overall attack on public education, but I want to say that there is a strong pressure by Corporate America to turn the educational arena in our country into a Vocational Technical Training school for their employment needs and And if this happens the pressure against the humanities against the social sciences against learning about citizen rights and consumer rights and how things can be improved through the Democratic process which is somewhat a little different than the corporate authoritarian process. The pressure will be unabated. There is a clear attack on public education. You see it in the tax credit movements the voucher movement, once more and more people end up sending their children into private schools. Of course, whatever barrier there is to improper and Commercial influences becomes de minimis indeed the philosophy behind the public school system is much like the philosophy behind a proper consumer program it is that if it is supported by the broadest source of financing a broad-based tax If it is supported that way it will reflect or at least have a higher likelihood of reflecting broader-based values then other schools which gradually become captives of private economic interest groups. And this is something I think which Bears elaboration because like anything else that's been accepted for years that suddenly comes under attack the argument for it needs to be given higher visibility and higher extrapolation because what people took for granted years ago tends to be forgotten in terms of its actual rationale today when the attack on the system increases and of course, there are many other Arguments for a public educational system that can be adduced as well. The example of measurement here. The measurement of student performance is one which the Nea in Washington has been very interested in. I'd like to comment briefly on that. We have a system in our country called multiple choice test Which are really The Gatekeepers that tend to screen students and provide information for admission officials to colleges and universities and then into licensing and professional Arenas like being firefighters lawyers State Department Foreign Service people. There are tests multiple choice test for over 75 professions and occupations for years. We've been getting complaints from people typically students saying they're very very chagrined but they they want it to be lawyers or biologist and they can't be lawyers and biologists and we'd say why and they say well we didn't get do well on the test. I said what tests and they said the SAT or the L sat and for a while absorbed as we were with issues of automobile safety and Drug hazards. We didn't pay much attention, but we began to notice. That the scope and impact of these tests on the students own self esteem was absolutely incredible. That the students would take these tests get the scores and automatically internalize their scores as a measure of their self-worth and self-esteem. So the question is how valid are the tests. I mean when something is enforced by the very victims of the process it behooves us to start asking how valid are these tests and we started back in 1973. And we spent six years studying the educational testing service and the college boards and we had people do it at Princeton New Jersey as well as Washington. We managed to get dozens and dozens of internal memos of the educational testing service and together with many interviews and other research. We put out a report called the reign of ETS the corporation that makes some mines and the principal conclusions of that study where the following one that these multiple choice tests are very poor predictors of future educational performance by students High School grades. High School grades High School grades are actually better predictors of how student is going to do in the first year of school and second third and fourth. Then he sat by a considerable. Margin the sat in over 85 percent of the cases. We found predicts future educational performance. No better than the roll of the dice the at the end the ls 80s and The Graduate exams have even poor rates of prediction. Now, this should be nope. No surprise how valid is indeed a test which type sets a student in 3 hours 1 April or October morning under artificial time pressure using multiple choice questions, which often are ambiguous and which often discriminate against the reflective student who takes precious seconds to try to figure out the ambiguity Professor banished Hoffman theoretical physicists now retired at Queens College who is an associate of Einstein wrote a book called The Tyranny of testing and in writing that he took some of the questions from the physics area and gave them two Nobel prize-winning physicist and they got the wrong answer the questions were too ambiguous and they were now that was a stunning assertion at the time in the early 60s, but now with the passage of the truth and testing law New York, which was pushed through by the student funded and student controlled New York public interest research group against very powerful lobbying by the testing industry and now in New York and increasingly across the country, California just signed a little weaker law, but one also it can be called truths and testing now students 30 days after they get their sat can get the questions the right answers and their answers and here we Of 17 and 18 year olds suddenly saying hey, this is not the right answer or my answer could have been the right answer to this question. And here you have these veteran specialist in testing at Princeton having to concede error and change all the scores of thousands of students based on the Discovery by a 17 year old now. And we're going to the multiple choice format is simply a act of violence against the intellectual process. For example, imagine trying to find out how well a student can write the English Language by offering the student multiple choice questions in English composition. Why not have the student write the English language an essay. The reason is that it sa question is tougher to test it suffered it to grade. It's more subjective. It is said but we contend that the basis for these multiple choice questions are extraordinarily subjective extraordinarily insupportable, even though the question answer format has a superficiality of machine scorable objectivity. And if there's anything we should spend more time on in education Nation it's giving the student an opportunity to be tested against the full diversity in background of that students experience and training and knowledge notice. If you will the most important features of a human personality which spells success in life are not tested nor do they purport to be tested by these multiple choice test even though these tests are given an extraordinarily wildly exaggerated significance for the admission process by admission officials in licensing officials these tests in short do not purport to test the students experience judgment wisdom, idealism creativity stamina determination. Otherwise, they judge everything that's important about the student. We recommend the abolition in many sectors of these tests of the multiple choice format. We recommend downgrading the significance attached to them upgrading the significance attached to experience extracurricular activity interviewing grades Etc. And to have more time spent on human evaluation of the student and what the particular student brings to the educational mix at a school. It's also time to end the super neurotic fear and concern and anxiety that students bring to the PSAT and the SAT which tends to switch their impact and their emphasis teachers have told me for example in the English courses that these multiple choice questions have seriously undermined their mission and teaching their courses. I mean students are people with antenna they A what is going to pay off in terms of the SAT and they move to spending spend more time in that area. If there were questions on the SAT dealing with Community organizing and that takes a lot of psychology and know-how in stem and and their termination. I'm sure more students would try to do community organizing and that is not the case and instead the spectrum is very very narrow in terms of what is tested by these tests and they're very poor predictors to boot. These are two areas the hucksters in the classroom. And the whole change of the way students are to be evaluated in a broader more humane way certainly more accurate way, which we think could form part of a future consumer movement. Now, what would be the remedies for all less? I mean, it really doesn't take a Houdini to see that there are many dark clouds on the horizon from Washington that there is a very strong. Right wing corporatist drive across the country to get their way the reaction to this is to know a little history, you know, when the major corporate trust went haywire with the railroads and the banks at the turn of the century. There was a counter-reaction it started in this part of the country the populace Progressive revolt and we're still benefiting by a lot of the things that were put into practice and put into laws by the populace Progressive presidents and Congress and State legislatures. Well, I suggest that we need to look at at Broad reforms in the following area one is we need to ask in education. What is it that's being taught when it comes to educating students about the great questions of power and wealth in our society the great questions of the political economy. and this is not a suggestion for any ideology. It's a suggestion which I think is based on the recognition that the window of empirical fact needs to be opened to the area of corporate wealth and corporate power in our country and that many students who think they are not getting ideologically brainwashed in school today are getting empirically starved. There are certain no, no areas that are not part of the instruction and I'm not just referring to the way history books and textbooks are written. Although when I studied history and grammar school. There was very little written about the populace Progressive area era a lot written about the Civil War and other Wars not much about the populace Progressive. I'm speaking about the self-censorship that the school board engages in companies and local businesses and National firms do not have to phone up schools and say you are not going Study corporate crime you are not going to study the connection between industry and pollution. They don't have to do that. Look who's on school boards to begin with number two, the process of self censorship is rampant. In fact censorship becomes even more powerful when it doesn't have to exercise his hegemony. When all he has to do is induce self-censorship and the stories of a few courageous teachers here in are who stood up against a local community power structure are now Legion and indeed. They should be exemplary rather than Legion this There's an inscription on this building here which reads as follows participation in the rights of citizenship presumes participation in the duties of citizenship millions of students in our country. Do not learn about either the rights of citizenship or the duties of citizenship and yet they're expected to go out there and push for a more just and more Equitable Society. It cannot be done. They cannot live in Two Worlds a narrow-minded empirically skewed world where they go to school and they world where they are expected to advance the values of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Secondly, I think there is a very good sign on the horizon for the expansion of consumer cooperatives. This is an area where consumer coops developed years ago and they need to develop in a much more comprehensive theoretical way not just in terms of knocking a few cents off a product important is that is in the aggregate but also as becoming an organized economic force in the political economy communication coops cable TV coops here at st. Paul first one in the country. There is an effort to try to get a cable Co-op it didn't succeed. But I think it pushed the city officials to consider Municipal ownership of the cops. That is a very important mode of controlling property consumers owning their own businesses energy coops food co-ops repair coops. Thirdly there needs to be what we call the consumer check off. How would you like to open your electric telephone or gas utility bill and have a little envelope Fallout which says do not pay your bill until you read this and you open up the flap and it says are you fed up with Rising utility rates you want to do something about it. If so, join your own consumer group in Minnesota and Forge a banding together of hundreds of thousands of consumers, so they can represent themselves before the Utility Commission legislature in the courts. That is exactly what is now happening in your nearby state of Wisconsin a law was passed a little over a year ago, which set up a private consumer group called The Citizen Utility Board open to anyone who wants to join for three dollars a year members elect the Council of directors and they hire full-time staff of consumer advocates. In less than ten months with the a few notices this little envelope in your electric bill, Wisconsin Electric telephone company bill over 60,000 people have joined. They'll be a hundred and fifty thousand by the end of next year this in a state of only three-and-a-half million people. There is no energy consumer group in the United States that has 50,000 members. And the reason is that there is no cheap form of communication that permits like-minded consumers who want to start moving to band together and this little envelope in the utility bill is that cheap form of communication utilities don't like it of course, but it's too bad the law requires it and that principle can be applied to insurance when you get your premium bill can be applied to installment loan contracts. It can be applied across the board imposing on the seller who is either a license Monopoly or someone who gives you contract take-it-or-leave-it pre-printed imposing. On the seller the obligation to piggyback a community communication inviting consumers to band together. Finally. There's the overall issue of controlling what we own this comes right down to the educational gap, which I spoke of earlier the American people own enormous amount of money and assets yet. They don't control it the workers in this country owns six hundred fifty billion dollars of Pension funds and for the most part large Banks and insurance companies control the investment pattern of those funds the people on the money the corporations control his disposition. people in this country on 1.2 trillion dollars in Mutual Savings and Loan deposits and Mutual Insurance assets and who decides where they're invested corporate management, there are spectacles where people go and put their money in a bank and the bank turns around Red Lines the area Their spectacles we're Mutual insurance companies like Prudential Metropolitan and a few small companies like that are putting money into anti-labor corporations. They're investing their own workers money the own depositors money. People in this country own most of the oil and gas found on the federal lands 1/4 of our nation plus a lot of Timber and minerals who controls it of Corporations multinationals under pittance lease lease has a pincer pain and if secretary white has his way he'll give away the rest of the United States before he's out of office. So ask your students next time you get a chance who they think owns the public Airwaves over which television and radio or transmitted do they know that the public owns the public Airways and that are indentured government has licensed these Airways 24 hours a day to broadcast monopolies who pay nothing in return for a license to print money and to decide what is said over TV and radio in Holland, for example, if fifteen thousand people signed a petition, they become a broadcast company and they have a slice of TV time for the entire year on a particular station. In other countries license holders only control a few hours a day of the TV time. Why shouldn't we have reverted back to us the Audience Network? So to speak at least an hour Prime Time on TV and radio controlled by the viewers and listeners who have full-time professional reporters and programmers to program the kind of information and programs that reflects all groups in a society uninhibited by the commercial imperative of advertisers. This is a theme which I think could be the political agenda of the 80s controlling what we own the Commonwealth already belongs to the people. There's no nationalization here. It already is ours the public lands the public Airways the pension monies the Mutual Insurance assets and the mutual savings and loans with that kind of Commonwealth accountability. The entire direction of the economy can be changed in direction of respect for future Generations full employment and a respect for the intangibles of Life the health and safety of the American people the large corporations have controlled this country. They control the politics very heavily. They control the communications very heavily. Not entirely but very substantially. And so they ought to be held for what kind of economy they have delivered and they have not delivered their increasingly exporting their jobs overseas. They are increasingly threatening to close down plants. If they don't get their way and have pollution controls lifted or workers Safety Systems lifted or collective bargaining results lifted. They now want to roll back in many Industries actual economic gains of workers such as the United Auto Workers and yet what are they delivering the most stunning statistic in the economy? My judgment is that since 1968 over 85 percent of the new jobs have been created by small business and the greatest job loss has been in the area of giant corporations and yet they are the ones who come to Washington and say to the Federal Reserve and to the White House and to the Congress do what we say. Otherwise the economy is going to get even worse. I think it's time for historic populist Progressive Resurgence where the rights of citizenship are also correlated with the duties of citizenship and where we all pledge to ourselves that we are going to dedicate 1020. Whatever hours a month of our time on the Civic problems of our choice and there are so many problems that we can work on the problems of our choice in our community region Nation or world and toward that end. We have started a proposal which You may wish to get involved in to bring together the progressive teachers of America at all levels Elementary secondary college graduate school so they can become a source of knowledge of expertise of participation in the great questions that are now being deliberated in Washington and state capitals deliberated heavily influenced. I academics who have been hired by corporations to prove that the world is flat. The pollution doesn't cause any injury and that there's nothing wrong with what corporations are doing in our society. And those of you are interested in getting more information about this new group. There is a table outside next to the information booth with a sign-up sheet as well as some in materials which reflect some of the activities that we've been engaged in in the health and safety area. Thank you very very much for your interest. Thank you very much.