So the debate is obamacare or the way its always been. I reject that. I want Free Health Care for all. And i wanted to break the kind of, you know, duality that we sometimes get trapped in and the kind of framing of issues that i think is wrong. Schools is something, as you know, that im passionate about. So the framing of the debate is those who want to privatize and crush the unions and measure education by a single metric and those who like the status quo. I reject that. Be i hate the status quo in public education. But my answer is not to go in the direction of Corporate School reform. So thats why the book was written, and its a short book, its a punchy book, so its kind of a manifesto. You can kind of tack it up on the door of the executioner. Host well, thats kind of where i wanted to go which is whats the Historical Context of the word manifesto. Guest yeah. Well, for me, its something that you put a nail in the door of the king whos been running roughshod over the people, and you post the manifesto on the door. And its both a signal to those want a more humane and liberated future, and its also a signal to the 1 or the king, the royalty that the people are not satisfied. That things, you know, the town crier goes around the village saying all is well, and the manifesto says all is not well. Things are out of balance, and we are on a mission of repair. And so i try to reframe the issues, i try to call for action, and its kind of a summary of lots of things ive been involved in for 50 years. Host bill ayers, how can health care be free . Be. Guest well, health care could be free very, very easily. And the thing you have to do though is you have to take capitalism out of health care. As long as health care is a product and not a human right, then we see not only the abuses of people jacking up drug prices and so on, but it becomes a, it becomes a market, a kind of medieval market. And what theyre trading in is peoples lives. And we cant have it. You know, a sillier kind of example of h crazy capitalist medicine is, is turn on tv any night and watch the ads for madeup diseases, and, you know, were the only advanced industrial country that advertises drugs on tv. Why would you allow that . Why is it not why is health not something you are concerned with a medical professional and with your family . Its not something to be sold by looking at Beautiful People doing beautiful, fun things while you take pills. And then, you know, on these tv ads you always hear at the end they read off a list of side effects, possible side effects, suicidal tendencies, kidney failure, tuberculosis, you know . You know, anal bleeding, i mean be, it just goes on and on, its ridiculous. So thats the first thing you have to understand, that capitalism and medicine dont go well together, just like education and capitalism dont go well together. But the second thing is we are the richest country in the world, and we have enormous wealth. And the only question that we should be debating is how do we want to spend that wealth, how do we want to what are we signing up for . I look at this country signing up for a trillion dollars of military pending a year, i look spending a year, i look at it signing up for mass incarceration, for a surveillance state thats run amok, and i think, no. None of those are things i want to vote for. I want to vote for health care, education, guaranteed standards of living for elderly people. Those are the kinds of things we ought to be informing in investing in, and we could easily do it. You can look to canada, you can look to, you know, the scandinavian countries or any european country and see that our health care is less satisfying, more bureaucratized, more expensive and more inaccessible than any of those other countries. We should change that, and we could easily do it. Whats been your personal experience with medicare now that youre of age . Guest yeah, im on medicare. Medicare is, is a great idea, and its not only not fully realized, its kind of a its almost a joke of itself. I mean, the v. A. And medicare are mildly socialist medicine programs, and people who are in them are pretty satisfied compared to what they had before. But because im in medicare last year, two years ago, i was at home, and a friend of mine from canada was visiting, a professor of education up in ottawa. And he was sitting at the table when the mail arrived, and i got a book this thick which was all the choices i had to headache in my medicare to make in my medicare program. All the different options. All the Different Things i could sign up for. What would cost extra and so on. So he pulled out of his wallet a single, what looked like a credit card and said to me a little meanly, i thought, this is my whole medical program. This is it, this one card. Dental, you know, eye doctor, mental health, everything is on this card because its simple. And this book is an example of whats wrong with our health care system. Yes, im on medicare. Yes, its, its a ten forward from what a step forward from what i was on for years and years. But at the same time, its not streamlined, its not, its not userfriendly. It makes you jump through hoops that you shouldnt have to jump through. Another way i could say this, incidentally, as long as were talking about health care is, you know, i dont want to demand the impossible even though thats the name of the upcoming book. I just want exactly the Health Care Program that the u. S. Congress has. Everyone should have that Health Care Program, and then we would be free citizens in a free country having the people the political ruling class should not be better than the rest of us, so we should have what they have. If they vote that in for themselves, they should vote that in for the rest of us. Its a good standard. Host so you say you reject the current argument that were having about the direction of public education. What is that new argument we should have . Guest the argument we ought to have is what are schools, what are schools in a democracy required to do . Schools in a free society . We all know that schools are, you know, mirror and window into any society. So if youre in an authoritarian or totalitarian society, the schools will reflect that. The schools in apartheid south africa reflected apartheid, you know . There were wonderful, state of the art schools for the white students and horrible, overcrowded, brokendown schools for the african population. That reflects apartheid. So if you look backward a little bit and you say in romania 30 years ago, in germany 60 years ago, those schools while they produced some good scientists and smart people and good athletes they also produced the conformity. And that was because they reflected a society that demanded obedience and conformity. In a democracy you would want Something Else. And that Something Else is based on a very fundamental belief, and that belief is that every human being is of incalculable value, and that means that the fullest development of all of us is a condition for the full development of any of us. And conversely, the full development of each of us depends on the full development of all of us. And that means that has lots of implications for both policy and curriculum. It means that we do not want some schools for the el wealthy for the wealthy. Like here in chicago, i could take you here, you know . The schools that the president s children have attended when they went, when they lived in chicago. The schools that arne duncan, the secretary of education, the schools that his children attended. The schools that the mayors children attend. Thats a school where they have the class size capped at 15. They have a curriculum based in part a on pursuing the interests of the children themselves. They have a wellrespected and unionized teacher corps. They have five libraries. They have a full arts program. They have sports. If thats good enough for arne duncans children and for the mayors children, we in a democracy have to demand that thats good enough for all of our children. If anything less than that in democracy destroys the foundations of society. So what i am arguing in a book that i just did with Teachers College is that we can be more utopian than weve been. We can look toward schools not just for the 1 and the wealthy and what they demand for their kids, but we can actually go beyond that and say we want, we want schools where kids emerge from them not having to recover from the experience, but having learned how to think for themselves, how to imagine a new world, how to we should base our schools on the democratic values, the values of liberty, of life, curiosity, imagination, entrepreneurship, initiative, courage. That should be the underpinnings of our schools, not obedience and conformity which is more relevant to an authoritarian society. Host in your book, demand the impossible, you list the cost or the amount spent on a student in d. C. Public schools, 11,000. You list the cost of sidwell friends, a private school where sasha and malia obama attend, 37,000. How do we, how do we bridge that difference . Guest well host do you find the money . Guest well, the first thing we have to do, and you and i can do it right now. The first thing we have to do is agree that its worth doing. And since there is no agreement with the powerful that its worth doing, they continue to churn out models of schools for other peoples children that they would never allow for their own. I mean, i have no problem with the obamas going to sidwell friends. I have no problem with arne duncan going to the university of Chicago Laboratory schools. My problem is when they say that other peoples children dont deserve that. Now, you can say but its not realistic. Thats fine. You know, Hillary Clintons campaigning for womens equality. You could argue thats not realistic. We could say racial equality isnt realistic, but its an aspirational goal. And as long as we set it as an aspirational goal, then we know what were working toward. So when i talk to arne duncan, which i have many times, or when i talk to john king, the current secretary of education, or when i talk to forest claypool, the superintendent, ceo, sorry, its a business now, in chicago and i say but what do we want, they say everybody should have choices. Im choosing this school. Other people are choosing other schools. Thats a flatout hypocritical lie. When they say choice, they dont mean on the south side of chicago standing next to one high school well build the university of Chicago Laboratory school and parents can choose. They mean you can go to Dusable High School which is in real trouble, or well build a school right next to it thats just like it except its a newer building. Thats no choice at all. We want schools for all children where initiative encourage, where Critical Thinking and creativity are honored and where every kid has an adequate not just chance at a decent life, but every kid is living a decent life right now in this school, finding things to connect to that heart to them. And that matter to them. And i know its possible, because ive seen it. Not just with the kids of the elite, but with kids in new york city where there have been initiatives taken, where really profoundly Great Schools are happening for ordinary kids. The problem is if we dont invest in that, if we dont care about it, if we say the way things are is just the way things are, then we can never get to equity, and we can never get to schools we deserve. Host could you have written this book in 1968 . Guest the book demand the impossible . You know, thats an interesting way to think about it. No, i couldnt have because in 1968 i was 24 years old, and im now 72 years old. So in that sense host i mean when you talk about the issues that youre talking about. Military spending guest sure. The issues that ive cared a about, i mean, youre absolutely right to draw the connection. The issues that i care about, war and piece be, White Supremacy and racism and institutional racism, education for all, Decent Health care, environmental justice, these issues i cared about in 1968. I cared about them in 1965. I think that whats changed is the world keeps changing, and we keep changing. Were all works in progress, and were all diving through a vortex of swirling history in the making. So i dont think, i dont feel i could have written it in 68 only because not that i wasnt passionate about the issues. I didnt know the things i know now, i didnt have the experiences i have now. And one of the things that i feel very strongly about is that i sometimes am trotted out by, i dont know, in universities and other places as kind of a relic of the 60s. I think the 60s is mostly myth and symbol. Its mostly created by the media. I dont remember looking at my watch on december 31st, 1969, and saying, oh, damn, its almost over. Nobody lives by decades. You dont, nobody watching this does. We live in the here and now. And if were smart, we dont allow yourselves to become calcified and set in stone and dogmatic and stupid and say the way i was then is the way i will always be. I whatever the 60s was as myth and symbol, it was prelude to whats on the agenda now. So im very happy that i was able to experience that moment and, certainly, 1968, the year youre pointing to, was a magical year for me. I was, you know, 24 years old. It was magnificent. Im thinking now of tommy smith and john carlos raising their fists at the mexico city olympics and being expelled from society, and here we have these young women at west point raising their fists in the exact same gesture. Same things change, but also things dont just change for the better. It kind of depends on us whether they change for the better or the worse. Things are always changing. Another world is not only possible, another world is coming. Will it be a better world . Only if we, and i mean me and people watching and you and other citizens fight for more democracy, more transparency, more peace, more fairness. People are always they put old people on trial every year. We should be put on trial. We are more aware and conscious and clearheaded about race and gender. One thing better than when we were kids is gayrights have broken through in ways that are breathtaking and unimaginable even twee 10 years ago but go back 50 years, when i was a kid forget it. The idea that we would be sitting here saluting gay marriage, seeing Marriage Equality as reasonable, now the debate is ridiculous things about toilets and so on. That is huge. We elected an africanamerican president. To elect the person who comes out of that history in the position of a cast and a class that was despised, an incredible step forward. It was a blow against White Supremacy. When i was young and when you were young there was a big debate in the newspapers about whether a black man should be the quarterback of the Football Team. That was a debate. How could a black man lead a Football Team . A black man just led the united states. We should be pleased with ourselves because of that. Was he flawless . Did he do the right thing . Could he have done more . Absolutely. I dont look at the president as somebody who is a king and can do whatever he wants. I look at elected officials as people who respond to the power people like you and i have and rarely used properly, the power of the neighborhood, workplace, school, synagogue, mosque, church, we have power there and if we mobilize that power we can accomplish amazing things. Lyndon johnson didnt give us the civil rights act, the black Freedom Movement did that. Franklin roosevelt didnt give us social legislation, the Labor Movement did that. Abraham lincoln never belonged to an abolitionist party. Fire from below is what this book is about. Host you have been called dissident, radical, terrorist, how do you label yourself . Speak guest i am not a terrorist, never was. A couple weeks ago a good friend and dear man was called a terrorist. If you want to put me in that category, i am pleased to be in that category and dont measure up. The Freedom Fighters we admire, Martin Luther king, malcolm x, you can go through history, the great people who moved history forward were dissidents and radicals. That is where we look for inspiration. The terrorist label is convenient to lay on us when what we did in the Weather Underground at a moment when 6000 people a week were being murdered by our government we committed extreme acts of vandalism, we destroyed property and that is not terrorism. We were not using violence as a weapon trying to crush people or persuade people, we were issuing a noisy scream against genocide. The terrorists at that time were the people dropping bombs on vietnam and that was our government. That is a very sad chapter. The come from. The debate was between that line, you dont need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows and the line further down that says the band mistook the handle. We might have been called vandals but history calls us the Weather Underground. Host do students know who you are . Guest rarely. One of the funniest moments in the spring of 2008 i had my Doctoral Students at my house, we had a seminar and some political junkie turned on the end of the debate between Hillary Clinton and barack obama that George Stephanopoulos was moderating and just as they turn it on he was asking obama about his relationship with Jeremiah Wright and i wasnt paying much attention. I was walking in and out of the room and then he pivoted and said what about your relationship with bill ayres. My students fell on the floor. He went through this whole thing that bill ayres did this or that and obama answered it cleverly but one of my students said that guy has the same name as you and one of my other students said he is the same guy. It wasnt front and center for my students ever. I have become more notorious since 2008. I have always been a public person but i became more notorious and assume students tell each other but at a Catholic University in town i was an adjunct. Half the class had no idea until after the third or fourth class when probably somebody told them during break. It is not what my teacher was about and is not as prominent a flag on my own just as it probably is for folks like you who are looking at my life and the outside and see one glowing moment. I like the word radical which i take to mean going to the root. I like the word dissident because dissidents are on the right side but if i were to name myself i am the proud parent of 3 unbelievably beautiful men and grandfather four incredible grandchildren who i spend as much time with as i can, who i love dearly and that is a defining aspect of my life. When i sat down to write my second memoir, public enemy, i was going back to the end of the Weather Underground and coming up to 2008 and i didnt anticipate this but the book is mostly about teaching and parenting. I wanted to tell my story of those 20, 25 years the story is the story of raising kids, something i was committed to and cared about and still care about. How many books have you written . Close to 30 if you include edited books, two books come out this year and another one coming out in the spring. And edited book came out in january called every person is a philosopher, about the radical teaching life of a colleague of mine who passed away too young and i wrote a book called teaching with conscience in an imperfect world and that is not a manifesto. This cover includes artwork from my grandfather, very proud of that. They were surprised because they worked on it and one morning they came home from school and had a letter in the mail that was a check from the publisher, when they have this they were illustrators on this book. Host were you at a conservative university . Guest universities almost by definition are conservative. They also allow dissidents and a lot of points of the you. Universities are conservative in that they conserve the knowledge of society and pass it on. That is part of their mission but they are also places, maybe the last places or some of the last places in the us where there is public debate and dialogue about the issues and we assume in the university that every opinion is welcome, subject to scrutiny, every opinion is to be argued about. I look at catholic universities and i see the jesuit universities can be very progressive, forwardlooking. Pope francis, what are we talking about, this is not the church i remember, this is a church that has some things going for it. When francis was first making noise Stephen Colbert called him americas most prominent catholic. I believe pope francis the pope is infallible but not this guy because pope francis has been a real breath of fresh air so Jesuit University tends to encourage progressive thinking and humane values. They are not all like that but the Catholic School played a good role in recent years. Host you also demanded demand the impossible a radical manifesto Political Correctness. We see incidents this past year at university. How do you define Political Correctness . Dont fall into the trap of saying we love this particular candidate because he says what he thinks. Lets examine what he thinks, not enough to say what you think. The ku klux klan says what it thinks was that is not valuable in itself. And the bludgeon people use of Political Correctness. They use it often to say i am a dissident, a free thinker. I think black people are inferior. It is not politically correct, that is ridiculous. You can examine those things on the content but there have been instances that are ugly and ridiculous on College Campuses and throughout society. Lets take a balanced view. A professor at Wheaton College was fired for saying we worship the same god. He was fired. Professors at Dominican University have come under attack for expressing solidarity with muslim citizens who are being oppressed. It doesnt work one way. Sometimes people say you cant say this, you cant say that. The best way to defeat what you can or cant say is an open debate. Shouting people down, throwing things that people is incorrect and should not be done, should not be encouraged. It happens, people get passionate but we can correct that. What we shouldnt do is have nor should we exclude people from speaking. There was a big above about donald trump having a rally at the university of illinois in chicago. I was in that demonstration against that but no one was trying to prevent him from speaking, no one could prevent donald trump from speaking. What we did at that rally that i think was admirable and students did it, students got together and said we dont want hate on our campus. The muslim students, gay students, black lives matter students build a coalition and had a huge rally and i got a call from one of them saying get a ticket to go into the rally so i got a ticket, i stood with those trump people, i was wearing my black lives matter tshirt, most of those folks were young people, some of the folks had just read i and rand and were on fire with libertarianism. I had great conversations. When we got into the auditorium instead of having 10,000 Trump Supporters they had 5000 Trump Supporters and 5000 who did not approve of his message. He canceled, didnt even come. A rally he is used to requires an adoring crowd. We denied him the adoring crowd. It is nice when two dissidents can be called out and carried out of the room but to have 5000 of us in the room was a little disconcerting, he didnt want to give that speech. Do we deny him the right to speak . We did not. Did we create conditions for interesting dialogue. I had great dialogues all night and it didnt turn ugly until he canceled and then people who stood in line were unhappy and pushed people around but it wasnt a big deal. What was great was people were expressing themselves. On a College Campus like the university of illinois the greatest part of that rally was our lines were 10 feet apart so i was with the organizers of the dissident and after a time i crossed over and joined the line for the trump people because i had a ticket. That was great. We were talking back and forth. To me that is life in a free society that out to be encouraged. Should not be shunned or condemned. Where they friendly . There were two or three guys who were hostile but they also figured out pretty quickly who i was. Somebody recognized me. They knew who i was and in the hour and a half i was in line i probably talked to 25 or 30 people and only two or three of them were at all hostile. Most were having fun debating the issues so one of them called me a tax and spend liberal. I objected to being called a liberal because i am a radical and then we talked about whether we should close the pentagon. I want to close the pentagon. I am more small government than them. They didnt want to close the pentagon. We had a spirited discussion about issues. We were kidding each other, it was fun, there was no hostility. It is not that we were completely accommodating each others views that i talk to conservatives all the time, and i believe in it. How can we possibly move forward if we dont listen with the possibility of being changed and speak with the possibility of being heard. In my mind the essence of democracy is talking to strangers. You cant live in a democracy if you are living in a barricaded living room. You can only be part of a democracy if you enter the Public Square with some goodwill and try to be debate the issues. Host when did you write demand the impossible a radical manifesto . Guest it is an old phrase from shea guevara. He said at the end of a talk be realistic. Demand the impossible. I loved that. The impossible is what we are to be arcing toward. Our imaginations are stunted unless we think outside of what is given to us as acceptable opinion. Think about hardened milk to give one example of a Great American citizen, harvey milk was thinking outside the world he was given 2. Not just standing up for his own humanity but saying the way we define homosexuality is ugly and disgusting and i dont buy it. I am a human being and this is my humanity. Take anyone else, jane adams, all of these folks, the world given to me is unacceptable and i will fight for my humanity. And who was part of humanity. The great leader everyone acknowledges as great, one thing we forget is he is only an activist for 13 years, he became deeper, more complicated, more in touch with what he wanted, the dream kept expanding. By the end of his life, the last three years of his life, connect Racial Justice with Economic Justice with global justice or peace, that combination was brilliant. He was not accepting in the midtolate 60s, hearing about civil rights, you know nothing about me. I am about humanity. When i see an illegal inhumane war i must stand up. This important moral compass. Someone like harvey mills or gloria steinem, we can do that too, that means expanding our imagination. It sounds like a contradiction but if we only demand the possible, this is why Hillary Clintons campaign is so porous, no free higher education. Free medical care, 50 qualify for medicare, why 50 . Why not 30 . Why not 10 . The idea somehow you trim your sales and say lets talk about what is possible. I want to demand the impossible, peace, justice, joy. Those are things we all deserve, human rights. Host you held up the book a minute ago, teaching the conscience, you talk about your grandchildren. I noticed your hand. What is this . Guest i got this a few years ago. I have a lot of tattoos but after i got this one my brother said to me you will never get a job if you have a tattoo like that. I said i am 72, i dont want a job. It was given to me by an artist in latin america. It was her design. She had lived with us for a while. Didnt ask her stayed on the third floor of the house and she was wanting to give us something so she came to breakfast one morning and designed a tattoo for my hand and a tattoo for my wifes hand. We decided what the heck. We are in our mid70s. We are still evolving. You never know what is next. Host you mentioned your first tattoo. My first one when i was 18 years old. I was in the merchant marines and got a red star on my shoulder. It was early 1960s. I had just become enamored of the Liberation Movement around the world and said i want a red star with the communist revolution and independence struggle around the world. I got a bright red star and like everything you think a tattoo is permanent but as you get wrinkled and things sag nothing is permanent. My red star is a faded pink. Host do you consider yourself a communist . Guest in some ways. Labels are limiting. I reject all the labels you see in school. They are wrong, morally wrong and incorrect. If you make me label myself, when it comes to economic matters i am a communist, each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. When it comes to government im a bit of an anarchist. We can rule ourselves. We dont mayors and chief of police, the mayor of chicago lies, cheats and steals. The first amendment, i am a fundamentalist. When it comes to sexuality i am a libertarian. I can be many things and refuse to be bought as one thing. One of the things as a teacher for my whole adult life, as soon as you put a label on somebody limited their capacity to move and act and be in the world. I dont want to say this persons behavior is disordered. I want to say he has lots of things going for him including being an incredible street poet. Lets look at the fullness of humanity, not get stuck in hysteria. We are all human beings, we are all moving for short period of time through a worldly diverse world, lets love each other. Host teaching with conscience is a book that came out this year. Demand the impossible a radical manifesto comes out in september. You mentioned a spring of 2017 title. A book coming out called you cant fire the bad ones and 20 other myths about teachers. They have a series of books that are myths. That is another attempt to change the frame of the discussion. The idea of all these things, they are lazy and incompetent, you cant fire the bad ones, they are aimlessly sucking on the teeth of society. I encounter all those arguments and try to make a little handbook for fighting back. Host longtime education professor and author bill ayres has been our guest on booktv. Guest appreciate it. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer. I hope to finish a couple books. First of all i am reading freedoms which was given to me by senator roy blunt. This is a book about the dome being put on the Capital Building precivil war. What i found interesting as i get into the book is the focus on the House Chamber and Senate Chamber and how those were added to the original Capital Building. One of the main proponents of that is jefferson davis. Why we are approaching the civil war, and helping the country, would serve our entire company and the president of the confederacy. Need to start it and finish it. We need to read about destiny and power, a book by George Meacham on george hw bush. And every summer i tried to read a book that i read before. Last summer i read to kill a mockingbird. The summer before that i read all the kings men which is one of my favorite books and this summer i will reread dickenss tale of two cities. Booktv wants to know what you like to read this summer. Or posted on our Facebook Page facebook. Com booktv. You are watching booktv on cspan2 with nonfiction books and authors every weekend. Television for serious readers. This weekend on booktv, the harlem book fair with panels, diversity and publishing. On our weekly Author Interview program afterwards eric fehr recalls his experiences as an interrogator at abu ghraib prison in iraq. Nigel hamilton looks at the strained relationship between fdr and weston churchill. John hicken looper discusses his path to public office. And the nsa intelligence war against the soviet union. Just a few programs you will see on booktv. For a complete Television Schedule booktv. Org. Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. Oo