Live Show: November 2008 "2008 Presidential Campaign Issues: Growing the Economic Viability of Women" Part 2: Where do we go from here Mr President?"

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Women's Enterprise Network November 11, 2008

Judson Living, Cleveland, Ohio

"2008 Presidential Campaign Issues: Growing the Economic Viability of Women" Part 2: Where do we go from here Mr President?"

If you were in a room with Senator Obama and Senator Mc Cain, what issues would you want to discuss and why?

Restoration of Global Respect for America
Healthcare
Women's Rights
Education
Workforce Development

[Audio]

Gloria Ferris: Hi, this is the Women’s Enterprise Network live TV show, brought to you here at beautiful Judson Park in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, we're here with a few of the Judson Park residents and our topic today is going to be "Part 2: of 2008 Campaign Issues: Growing the Economic Viability of Women" and our question today is, “What now, Mr. President?” So welcome everybody, and out there I know you already know we’re on the womensenterprisenetwork.net please tell your friends and neighbors about us and join us on our chat. We do have live chat today and you can enter into our conversation. So, okay, let’s just start right in, and don’t we usually introduce ourselves? I’m just a little foggy today…I’ll introduce myself first and I’ll just let everyone start talking about “What now Mr. President?” as they go around and we’ll just do it very quickly at first. My name is Gloria Ferris and I’m a member of the Women’s Enterprise Network and we get together once a month to talk about issues that are not only important to women but to all Americans, I believe. But we are giving a voice to people who might not necessarily get on video, might not necessarily get out there and do this kind of thing and get their voices heard and hopefully start a conversation. A thinking conversation where we all can think, so I think I would give the President some advice, I think that he needs to remember to take time to think. And there will be a lot of noise and there will be a lot of people telling him, “Well, you know, this is what we’ve got to do…we’ve got to change this…we’ve got to do that” but I think he needs to remember to slow down, to be deliberate and to think. So, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Jay, how about if we start with you?

Jay Calabretta: Jay Calabretta, and I live here at Judson Park, and one of the criticisms that I heard about Obama was that he thinks too much.

Gloria Ferris: That’s interesting, I think thinking, I think part of that is Jay, what do you think about this? I don’t think that people think now we react a lot. Well, you said you were a psychiatric nurse; you thought didn’t you? I mean you had to do a lot of on the fly stuff but part of that of being able to do that was because you thought and you knew…

MaryBeth Matthews: Gloria, how about letting her say what she means by that? What do you mean that he thinks too much?

Gloria Ferris: She didn’t say that she said that…

Jay Calabretta: That’s what I heard a criticism of him.

MaryBeth Mathews: So, what do you think they meant by that criticism?

Jay Calabretta: I think he’s a very thoughtful man, from what I’ve heard, from what I’ve seen and any time he opens his mouth its not a lot of garbage coming out its usually well thought out, well planned, you know…

Gloria Ferris: I agree.

MaryBeth Matthews: By the way, since I was just jumping into that conversation, and I’m not sure if I’m on camera…

Gloria Ferris: Well, I don't know if you are either but I am sure we are either, but anyway…

MaryBeth Matthews: Eventually it will come around to me…my name is MaryBeth Matthews and I have been a core member of the Women’s Enterprise Network as well as a teacher for the Cleveland Municipal School District, and a partner is the manufacturing company called “Work Holding Tools.” Perhaps we should continue around the circle…

Susan Altshuler: Would you like to introduce yourself?

Claire Marsh: I’m Claire and I live at Judson. Let’s see…what do I want him to know about me? I want him to know what I think right now, I think that it is not Obama, but all the time we’re talking about cleaning up the government, how many people are going out in their garages and looking? You know we’re talking about what the government does, but how many of us are wasting money by buying the first thing we see in the store? Filling the house up, let’s start in our own places first so we can say, “Hey, we’re following what you tell us to do. Now, let’s do it to the government.

Gloria Ferris: That’s a really good point. Susan, would you like to introduce yourself and maybe respond to what Claire said.

Susan Altshuler: I’m Susan Altshuler and I’m a member of the Women’s Enterprise Network and Director of I-Open. Claire, you have a very good point, I think that we always expect other people to do things for us and say if somebody from the government, say the President says, “Well, we need to do this…” and a lot of people think well, that’s not our responsibility, and I think it’s every American’s responsibility to try to help turn this country around so that we have a legacy to leave to our children and grandchildren; that they’ll have a better world than some of us have right now. Unfortunately, my parents did much better than I did and really what you want to do is have your children always have that possibility of doing much better than you and being able to live a really wonderful and fulfilled life. So, I think it’s our responsibility to see that we help this President and not just look at the small things, look at the big picture about creating job growth and getting health care for everyone and keeping yourself healthy and living a healthy life because if you live a healthy life then you're probably not going to get sick as much as if you don’t.

Gloria Ferris: Alice?

Alice Merkel: Hi, I’m Alice and I’m a junior at Chagrin Falls High School. I think that going on Susan’s and Claire’s comment that America needs to turn itself around and we as citizens, act, we are part of America, we are the foundation of America and when you think something you start from the foundation and you work up. So it doesn’t make sense not to have the government fix everything for you, you have to fix yourself first, so that you can build up and fix everything above.

MaryBeth Matthews: One of John F Kennedy’s more famous statement was “Ask not what the country can do for me, but what I can do for my country” and we can apply that to today. When we say, well, okay, what is Barak Obama, what are the democrats going to do for me? When we should be saying, “What can I do to change the world? And, how can I – if we’re going to have an energy crisis, we’re worried about global warming, how do I shrink my carbon footprint? How do I consume less? How do I consume less energy? Am I in any way contributing to the credit crisis? What is my part in the economic problems that are facing the United States? If we can first look to ourselves and fix the small things we can, then we’re doing our part instead of just sitting back and saying, “Help me…fix the country”, and then wait for somebody else to do something first.

Gloria Ferris: We’ve been joined by a lady behind MaryBeth there, that is nodding her head “yes, yes, yes” … so if you would introduce yourself…

Linda Horter: My name is Linda Horter and I live in Breuning here and I’ve been here for a year and I’m delighted to be in this conversation and excited to be here.

Gloria Ferris: Well, thank you. I noticed you were nodding your head when MaryBeth was talking, so did you have maybe…

Linda Horter: I agree with everything she says.

MaryBeth Matthews: Thank you.

Gloria Ferris: Well, you now have a new friend, MaryBeth…. Do you think that what we’re talking about here, and let me just throw this out: I think part of the “Yes, we can” slogan that they took I think that a lot of Americans took that on and that they were going to be a part of this and that President Obama expects Americans to do exactly the things we’re all talking about. What do you think, or what…do you think that that might be it? That he’s looking for some self-reliance?

Linda Horter: Everybody should do their part.

Gloria Ferris: Everybody should do their part.

Claire Marsh: I think he’s hoping.

Gloria Ferris: You think he’s hoping too?

Claire Marsh: Yes.

Gloria Ferris: That’s an interesting thought. That’s an interesting thought.

MaryBeth Matthews: Well, I recall that, and actually I wish I could recall better – you know the mind’s the first thing to go – but at some point in is campaign one of the solutions he had to the energy crisis and our dependence on foreign oil, he said that was that people could be more aware of their driving habits. If we could drive to conserve energy, it we could inflate our tires properly, that with everybody working together we could all, that all those little savings could add up to a lot of oil that we don’t need in our country…he said that…where it made sense to me, where a number of people in the opposition that kind of blacked that off and poo-poo’d it, but I thought wait a minute that makes sense to me so many little things that add up to really quite

Gloria Ferris: I think you bring up a good point, MaryBeth. I was on a web cast a few days ago that was with Investment News puts out a weekly broadcast and they actually were saying, “What now?” for the financial markets with Obama as President. And one of the things they said, and I’m sorry because I don’t remember the man’s name he currently is in the House of Representatives, but he’s on the short list to become his Transportation Secretary, he rides a bicycle to work everyday. So, I think you will see a change in how people think about driving habits, maybe do the errands in a circular instead of the back and forth and that wastes a lot.

Susan Altshuler: Those little trips that waste so much gas.

Jay Calabretta: Well, that's a no brainer.

Gloria Ferris: For you Jay, for you...

Susan Altshuler: And walking if you can instead of driving, but I think that people are starting to think about that because I always think that they, I think that people didn’t look to themselves to try to help, to do it themselves, that they always think others should do it for them, number one; number two, I think that the way Obama had his campaign I think people really were looking at those new kinds of ways that American’s can help in their own small way, because you don’t look at a problem and say, “Oh, my gosh, it’s so big I can’t do it.” You go right down to the very bottom and say, “What little step can I take?” If all Americans did that little step imagine how much we would save and how much energy we might save or not spend as much money on gas so we’re not so dependent on the foreign oil until we can figure out what we’re going to do.

Alice Merkel: I think that…um…Oh; I had a point…I forgot.

Gloria Ferris: How about if we go to Jay, she had a point too and then we’ll come back to you, Alice?

Jay Calabretta: Okay, all right. I keep reading about our transportation system here in Cleveland, how they want to cut out the buses and stuff, and I think, what a wonderful opportunity is going down the drain. You know, people do things by habit. Get them in the habit now of using the buses. Okay? Increase service; don’t decrease it. Once you get people in the habit of doing something they’re going to continue, especially if it works for them.

Alice Merkel: I think that the mass majority of Americans know about global warming, the energy crisis, all that good stuff and yet they just don’t even think, pay attention or think or act on it. They acknowledge it, but then they just kind of, “Oh, well, you know, that doesn’t really involve me.” They need to accept the responsibility as citizens and act on it.

Gloria Ferris: That’s very good. We have been joined by another lady, that lives here at Judson Park, and if you would please just introduce yourself and our topic today, just so we get you up to speed is, 2008 Campaign Issues: The Economic Viability of Women and What Now Mr. President? So today, we’re kind of like, what issue is important to us that we want to kind of put out there for the new President Obama to talk about?

Dorothy Schade: Hard to begin with, I’d like to be over there so I can have a piece of paper and sit at the table. My name is Dorothy Schade and I’ve lived here since 03’. Cleveland Heights was my husband’s home so when he retired from the military we came here to live. I’m very happy to be here and I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana and that’s it.

Gloria Ferris: Okay, all right.

Dorothy Schade: Is that what you wanted?

Gloria Ferris: That is what I wanted. Thank you very much, Dorothy, and we’ll take care of moving you around…I want to ask MaryBeth to maybe, I don’t mean to put you on the spot but maybe you have some thoughts about education, so let’s get the education topic into this conversation. What would you like from the Federal government, because that’s where the President is, with education, do you see it as a local issue or do you think Federal?

MaryBeth Matthews: You know what? Right now we have some very serious educational problems but they’re at the state level in Ohio for funding. Our funding process of course has long been known to be unconstitutional, but now that we have a new State Legislature, hopefully we can get some of those funding issues resolved. So that’s where my focus has been through this last election cycle has been to get the changes in our state government. As far as the Federal government is concerned…now, there are some problems with the No Child Left Behind Act. Just mostly because there are lots of mandates, but there was no funding to back up the mandates. When you say that you have to bring all these children up to a standard and yet you’re not giving them money especially in impoverished districts. The impoverished districts are not helped financially, and how do they compete with the well off districts? We have children that come to you, damaged. I teach in the City of Cleveland in the urban school district and so many of our kids they come to us poisoned from impoverished situations and when the kindergarten teacher has children in her class that don’t even know their name as opposed to in the suburban schools where they’re coming into a kindergarten class and they’re reading. You can’t expect the playing field to be leveled when you’ve got kids coming in, they’re broken, they’re damaged, they’re coming in so far behind that they may never catch up. And to do that with out funding, it’s inane. The people who are making these mandates just don’t seem to understand what the situation is…”Well, all children can learn.”…Well, yeah, all children can learn but they’re not all starting out at the same point.

Gloria Ferris: Well, you know, I think you bring up a good point. I think the Federal government can do something about lead poisoning. That’s an issue that we all know is an issue. They can do something about maybe some early childhood care development for kids that are, that don’t have the parents who know the importance of that, for their kids to get a good start. I think that is where the problem lies, for the Federal government up to this point has done the mandates for education and said, “These are the standards.” Well, basically, every school system knows the standards for a kid to succeed; they didn’t need that, what they needed was…

Ginny Becker: Money…

Gloria Ferris: Well, they needed, and maybe not so much money, but what they needed where the things behind that that cause some kids not to be able to live up to it. Exactly what MaryBeth was saying, we need to look behind the slogan and the mandate.

Ginny Becker: What about Head Start?

Gloria Ferris: Head Start, actually I believe does a very good…

Ginney Becker: Yes, they do…

Gloria Ferris: Very good, it’s a very good program that is something you need to be sure its still there.

Ginny Becker: Well, I’m a retired teacher and I know that all the children I had in the middle grades, the best ones were Head Start students.

Gloria Ferris: They keep that through their life, usually they do, so…

Ginny Becker: The ones that succeeding, I know of two, one’s a lawyer and the second one is becoming a doctor. But, they all had Head Start.

Marybeth Matthews: I’m so glad you brought that up because that is just fabulous antidotal story to back up what most of us already know but that although there are people that want to disregard the importance of early childhood education.

Gloria Ferris: Well there, that’s one of our issues, early childhood education.

Ginny Becker: Head Start. Head Start.

Jay Calabretta: I find it really hard to believe that children come to school and don’t know their names.

MaryBeth Matthews: Well, here, I’ll give you an antidotal story…a friend of mine was a kindergarten teacher and she was reading her class roster, all the names of her nineteen, twenty students, and she had the same number of students in front of her and each child would raise their hand and one name was called and no child raised their hand for that name. Finally, she comes to the end and she says, “Well, is there anyone here whose name I didn’t call?” And the little boy says, “You didn’t call my name.” “What is your name, honey?” “Well, my name’s Big Daddy.”

Jay Calabretta: Spaghetti?

MaryBeth Matthews and Residents: Big Daddy. Big Daddy.

Jay Calabretta: “Big Daddy?”

MaryBeth Matthews: “Big Daddy.” He knew his nickname; he didn’t know his real name; because no one is his real family ever called him his real name, so he came to kindergarten not knowing his own name.

Ginny Becker: Most of them know how to print their name.

Jay Calabretta: Well, okay, that’s kind of a cultural thing.

MaryBeth Matthews: Well, no I wouldn’t call it a cultural thing; I would call it well ignorance on the part of the parents. You have parents who…

Ginny Becker: Neglect.

MaryBeth Matthews: Yes, neglect. Precisely.

Ginny Becker: When they sign their kids up for kindergarten, they should give them a handout telling them these are the things your child should be knowing. His name, his address, when he was born, was she born and how put their coats on, you know…

Gloria Ferris: And their phone number.

MaryBeth Matthews: And the thing is the school districts do those things, they have parenting classes and they do give that information out and yet there are parents who don’t pay any regard to it. But you can’t not educate the child because the parents aren’t ready to become parents. The child needs to come in, and you need to step in where the parents…

Gloria Ferris: Pre-school for parents.

Susan Altshuler: The parents have to be partially responsible for their children. My daughter works for an elementary school in Shaker and a lot of these parents think school is a babysitter for their children and they don’t have any responsibility to work with them at home if they’re having problems reading, I mean, I think we have to look, they have to look themselves and say, “If you want you child to succeed you have to be a part of their life and encourage them.” If a kid comes to school hungry, how can he do anything? How can he work if a child is hungry? My sister-in-law used to work in the city schools and she said the kids would come to school no breakfast, starving, and you can’t function unless you have good nutrition.

MaryBeth Matthews: Let me kind of jump in on this. Because we all know what the parents responsibilities are supposed to be, and as educators, and I’m a teacher I can say, I can shift the blame we can say, “We can’t do our job because the parents aren’t doing their job.” But do you know what? We can’t shift the blame what we have to do is accept the fact that there will be parents that don’t do their jobs and those kids will be coming to us, so, we just have to say, okay, we’ve got kids here who aren’t getting breakfast so what do we do? We’ve got kids here who don’t have the basics, who don’t have the parental support, who might not know their name, who might not know their address, who might not know their phone number because they are coming to us damaged, this is where we have to start. This is how…what are we going to do? How can we fix this as educators? Not just throw up our hands and say, well, it’s the parent’s job. I guess we can’t do ours because the parents aren’t doing theirs.

Gloria Ferris: That goes back to before, Dorothy and Mary I think came, when we talked about being responsible. About being self-reliant. I think MaryBeth brings up a good point, A friend of mine who was a very avid community activist in our neighborhood would always say that too many people are really comfortable with the phrase, “Let George do it.” Let somebody else do it. I don’t have time, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. And I think that as Americans and citizens even though we wanted to talk about the President and what he could do, we’ve talked a lot about what we can do as everyday people which I think is a good trend. Let’s ask Alice what the climate is at her high school with this new President. What did the other students say?

Alice Merkel: I live in Chagrin Falls, it’s kind of a well-to-do community, kind of exclusive, slightly, and they usually are heavily Republican, but this year we had a lot of Obama supporters. Some say, he’s going to ruin the country, others say that you know McCann is going to do the same thing. Everyone was respectful, we didn’t yell at each other but we had very high opinions. They might have been different from our parents, our friends but we had very high expectations for the candidates and whoever is going to win, which is Obama. So, I feel that the students think that, we recognized that our nation is in a bit of trouble right now, we’re all feeling it in one way or another. I think that our main concern is how we’re going to get to college, our jobs, house market, debts, like we’re going to like basically, we have a great education and we all appreciate it every day, but when we get out of school we’re not sure how we’re going to function. And all the families – they come from families that are well to do – and they don’t really know, any kind of hit in their financial status, everyone’s feeling it and so they’re wondering, what’s going to happen when I get out of college, if I can go to college, what’s going to happen when I start searching for a job, if I can get a house; so we are concerned because we have to look forward to the future and we all recognize that.

Gloria Ferris: I think that is a good point to stop. We’re going to take our break and we’re going to come back to that. This is the Women’s Enterprise Network live Internet TV show brought to you at Judson Park and we have five very intelligent, aware women with us who are talking about some of the campaign issues and problems that face our new President Obama and we’ll be back with you in five minutes. We’ll take a little break.

BREAK

Gloria Ferris: Okay, while we were off with the little blurb about our group Women’s Enterprise dot Net, we were joined by Sarah Hollister? Your name, M’ame? Is Livingston? Yes, Sarah Livingston who was the Assistant Superintendent of Cleveland Schools?

Sarah Livingston: Support Services.

Gloria Ferris: Support Services of Cleveland Schools. And we’re talking about networks, the question is, “Do we have anybody who represents us at the State Legislature?” Our core group of women know a lot of people and we have different kinds of networks of our own, and the way a network works is that, Claire was talking about that maybe our next topic should be, “What are we going to do in this group?” What would we like to take forward? So, what we would do with that is we would decide what we wanted to do and then we would say, “Okay, how do we get that out and how do we get something done?” And then we start thinking, well, so and so knows this person and we need to talk to that person and we need to get that person involved. So, that’s how we work that, Mary. But, before we took the break, and I want to thank Judson Park again for being our gracious host here for…this is the fourth conversation that we’ve had here and our group kind of grows and changes, we have new voices, we have a few of the same faces, but we’re getting new faces and that’s how this all works. We are talking today about Part Two 2008 Campaign Issues: Growing the Economic Viability of Women” But before we took our break, Alice was talking about the younger people and the students she’s going to school with and they say that things are okay now, they realize they are getting a good base education and a good foundation, quite a few of the kids she goes to school with don’t have financial difficulty at this point, but they wonder about what will happen when they’re on their own. First of all, I might ask you ladies to talk about your experiences when you were younger, starting nursing school, going to college teaching, and how you survived those years, that might be a good point. The other thing is, she’s talking about financial problems, financial difficulties, we have foreclosures…the other day I read on the Internet, and I think it was Ed Morrison, one of our Directors at I-Open, the Institute for Open Economic Networks, referred to an article that said that this generation of young people will be less educated than their parents. That that is the way we are going. That we are now going back, that we will not be as educated and that is a huge problem.

MaryBeth Matthews: I can speak from personal experience. I teach at Max Hayes High School, in the Cleveland District. One of the things my students are very concerned about is that they look at the cost of a college education and they say, my parents can’t afford it, I can’t afford it and the financial aide packages that are offered to them don’t cover it. So they say, hey, I guess I’m not going to college. Quite a few of my students see the military as their only option to further their education. If they go into the military that perhaps they can get their college education from the military. Other than that, they all have very high hopes but in some ways they all, at least they say to their friends, “Well, yeah, I’m going to go to College” but then when you talk to them privately, they say, “I don’t really think I’ll be able to.”

Dorothy Schade: I happen to be the wife of a retired career officer. The education that the kids get in the Army isn’t bad they are qualified for anything really; so, don’t feel sorry for the ones that get into the service.

MaryBeth Matthews: Oh, I don’t feel sorry for them at all. It’s just that it’s interesting to see how things are changing. I’ve been teaching now for close to thirty years and I didn’t have as many students who saw the military as their only option before. In fact, when I went to college I paid nothing, I went to college in the 1970’s and that was really an era of, everybody got a grant. I paid nothing for my college education at Ohio University. I don’t even remember what kind of grant I got, I just filled out the paper work and my tuition was paid for, my housing was paid for, my books were paid for, everything was paid for.

Ginny Becker: That was the times.

MaryBeth Matthews: Oh, yeah, a college education at that point in history was for everyone. The only people who didn’t go to college were those who didn’t want to. If you wanted to go to college, everyone could afford it. Now, the smartest students at my school may not go to college because they might get a scholarship, say they get a $15,000 scholarship, well, they need $20,000 for a year of college and that’s not counting the books. So, they can’t go to college without incurring a serious, serious debt.

Ginny Becker: Well, luckily, we have a Governor who is for education. Ed Strickland. And I think that if you go to his office, they could channel you to some sources, some grant sources.

MaryBeth Matthews: I’d like to see more grants made available for…

Jay Calabretta: You know MaryBeth, I think we have been brainwashed that you need to go to college. Okay? And I don’t think that a college education is the end all be all. I have worked with lots of educated fools. [Laughter] I worked with a nurse who had a masters degree. I couldn’t trust her. I was a supervisor. When she was on duty, I couldn’t trust her to do…no common sense.

MaryBeth Matthews: Ah, but she had a degree.

Ginny Becker: Just get that paper.

Gloria Ferris: Well you know, I think we need to speak to that. I’m wondering if that’s one of the ways education is shifting, is that for a while, it was a college degree. Now, maybe, we’re shifting into…I agree with you, I’ve worked with those educated fools too, and you wonder why, God, they can really take a test but they couldn’t do much with life. I’m wondering now if maybe life experience…IT, I think is a huge place. It was very funny when I was visiting my daughter and son-in-law, they stop everything at 7:30 and they watch Jepardy, and they brought back these people that had been the high school kids that had won twenty years ago. What was really interesting was the young man who won it back then was the only one when asked that no he wasn’t going to college because he was into computers and he wouldn’t learn that in college and he was the only one who won again. He was the only one who did not have a college education. But, he owned his own company, he had sold two, he had made all this money and he was the only one of the nine that…Bill Gates is another one and I have a friend who is an inventor who says that education is a good foundation, but it’s not everything.

MaryBeth Matthews: It isn’t the end all be all. It is a good foundation. Of course for most of you who know me, but for those of you don’t, I’m also involved in promoting manufacturing. I am a partner in a small manufacturing company, component manufacturing, metal parts, pieces and parts for various machines and things. One of the issues in manufacturing is we can’t find the workers. I see the faces here…manufacturing jobs all going out overseas, well, a lot of the companies have gone overseas, but the thing is people aren’t being trained in those skills anymore, there are very few young people are machinists who know how to run a machine. The current machinists are all retiring. So, for those of us who have companies, we’re stealing each other’s employees to keep our companies going.

Ginny Becker: You need know-how.

MaryBeth Matthews: We need that know-how and young people are not going into manufacturing because all they hear on the news is that companies are shutting their doors, they’re going overseas, they’re being off-shored, they’re being out-sourced and nobody’s going into it. So, it’s kind of a real cunundrum.

Dorothy Schade: Overseas they have the workers.

Sarah Livingston: Somewhere along the line, we have put a XX on educating, but certain types of education. You know, if you go to college, you do this, you do this, and the thing we need to be doing is developing students who have a feel for their own work and the work of the things that they are doing. One of the things that has happened as I have worked with students along the way, some of the children who are bright and do well, sometimes get passed by their parents, because they didn’t get this education a certain way and they didn’t do certain things a certain way. That’s one of the things that’s happening to small manufacturing. Now, if you look around you, the people who are getting pushed around are the ones who are going into jobs where they’re going to be a doctor or a special person or a special something but one of the things that is happening is with the students coming along now that are getting sent to China, Japan, and places like that which haven’t always had these things and we have to put on what it is we value, I think, that’s one of the things. So I think that what you’re saying is just the thing. So, if we stop worrying about whether or not this child is as bright as the next child and put on the worth of, is this child a good person? Does he understand, right here, that he occupies a space that he is supposed to contribute something?

MaryBeth Matthews: Yes, exactly. And what is that individual’s gift? They may not be the lawyer because he doesn’t want to be and he doesn’t need to be. We’ve got enough lawyers. We’ve got enough kids going into law school, we need more kids using computers and technology and the trades we need trades today, not just manual labor, we have to have skills in order to be a tradesman nowadays. You need specific technical skills.

Gloria Ferris: You know, I think Sarah brings up a really good point. We have said that, what if a young man wanted to be the best welder in the world? I use that because my three cousins were welders and I know that welding is really going…one of them was, and the two older brothers would always laugh because my youngest cousin was the one that they always called for the joints when they knew they were going to be inspected because he did them perfectly. He didn’t work as fast as his two brothers but he was the one, they used to say he was the artist of the welders. He always said, “You know, if you are going to do something, you need to do your best.” And he always said that, he was the youngest of the three, but he said that and my feeling is that, yeah, you should be able to be whatever you want to be in America, but just strive to be the best you can be, taking a military thing, it shouldn’t matter to us, if you want to do something, all we ask of you is that you know who you are in the scheme of things as a citizen, that you do whatever you do well…and you do it.

Sarah Livingston: And that what you are doing on this earth is important.

Gloria Ferris: Yes.

Sarah Livingston: That is what is sometimes hard to tell. I’m working with the children all the time. One of the children who was working with me, was going to, he was wanting to be, it wasn’t a welder, but he was doing something in the manufacturing but these people were pushing his being this doctor. And of course, he’s going now to, I can’t think of the school, one of the school’s in Cleveland…

Gloria Ferris: It’s probably Max Hayes.

Sarah Livingston: It might be Max Hayes.

Gloria Ferris: They’re the only vocational school we have in the Cleveland School system.

Sarah Livingston: Max Hayes is the only vocation school but there is another school where they also do some of those things…

Gloria Ferris: Sarah, that’s not important. You know he’s going there and that’s what’s important. So, go on with your story. He’s important.

Sarah Livingston: One kid kept saying to me, “Ms. Livingston, my Dad wants me to go here because this is where he went. He loves his family, he wanted to be in this manufacturing situation. And I’m just saying we sometimes put too much stress on when you are a doctor this or a doctor that…

Ginny Becker: They need to be happy in their skin, they call it.

Sarah Livingston: Right.

Gloria Ferris: Being happy in your skin, Mary, did you say? That’s good.

Sarah Livingston: You have to be a good person, then.

MaryBeth Matthews: The thing that I tell my students, they’re teenagers, they say “People always ask me what do I want to be when I grow up? But, I don’t know. I don’t know.” They could be a doctor or a lawyer. They always say, “A doctor or a lawyer. Or, I could be a football player, a basketball player…they name maybe about five jobs where they can make a lot of money… and I say, but what do you like to do? What’s fun for you? What do you do when you are not being pushed? What do you do for enjoyment?
Mary/ginny: Sarah, do you think we need more counselors in the school?

Sarah Livingston: Actually, not so much more counselors as just get in the families. Trust your children for what they are and teach them how to be a good person, how to get along with people. Let them know that what they do is contributing.

MaryBeth Matthews: And support, support what they want to do.

Sarah Livingston: And support what they want to do, because they don’t know…twelve or fourteen…they don’t know what they want to do. Right then, whatever is popular and as they get a little older they begin to understand. And as you say, if they want to be a plumber and you don’t think a plumber is quite important enough, you want them to be a doctor, but maybe a plumber is all they can do, but they can make money plumbing.

??: And they are respected.

Gloria Ferris: The thing is we need plumbers. We need plumbers, but I think that…

Jay Calabretta: They make good money.

Gloria Ferris: I think that’s part of the re-framing of the conversation about education. I also think the other thing our daughter went with a liberal arts education and all of our friends said, “How can you let her do that? She won’t be able to get a job.” And my husband said, “If you can write effectively and you can communicate effectively, how will you not be employable?” She’s never had a day of unemployment since she graduated from college. So the whole thing of going to college for a specific purpose is not necessarily why someone should go to college. Our other daughter on the other hand, is an artist. She had a scholarship to CIA but like MaryBeth said, she realized that with that scholarship that was quite substantial she would still have a forty thousand dollar debt when she got out after five years. She told us, “No way, I’m not going to go to college and be in debt.” So, she’s waiting she’s doing it a different way, she’s doing it her way. Maybe not the way her Dad and I would want her to do it, but she’s doing it. And I agree Sarah, part of being a parent is allowing your kids to fly. And maybe as a nation, we need to think about, how do we ready these kids to fly? And maybe we’re not…we’re still doing things the way we did forty years ago. That’s not the world today and that’s not the world tomorrow. I think Sarah brings up a good point as to…maybe we need to rethink this a bit, of how we fit in and what we should expect of young people today.

MaryBeth Matthews: We put an awful lot of emphasis on college preparatory training in high school where we said every student should be given the chance in the classes so that they can go to college. And what we left behind were the career, tech and vocational classes, and they cut back those programs drastically. Now, what are we lacking in this country? We are lacking machinists, we’re lacking people to build our infrastructure, to rebuild our infrastructure. The roads and the bridges and all the things that make our country what it is.

Sarah Livingston: But it’s honorable to build bridges.

MaryBeth Matthews: And those are good paying jobs. But we don’t have enough people to do them now, because everyone was put on this college track and not all of them were successful…we’re lacking…

Gloria Ferris: Our hour is almost up, ladies. I can’t believe that, I’m so interested in…and I’m looking at the clock…before we stop I’d like to thank Judson Park and I thank all of you Judson Park residents for coming and to let you know we are going to be here again, December 13th at 10 AM and we’ll do this again and we’ll do it all over and our topic is going to be, ‘What are we going to do?” So, in the next month, think about our conversation today, I have a few ideas; I like Jay’s transportation issue…

Ginny Becker: Could we get a book of the Ohio Assembly in Columbus? A book of the different committee chairmen…

Gloria Ferris: Yeah, we have that and you know what? I’ll bring some of those names with us for next time around transportation, education and health care, I think is basically what our three topics were today. So, we’ll do that. And does anybody have anything they would like to say in closing? Or, anything else? Well…Claire?

Claire Marsh: I have something about a part of what we’re saying. What I’m thinking is, there is a bunch of us here from Judson, how many of us really care about who is the upper thing, and how many of us really care and couldn’t get along without the attendants who have no college, probably. We have to have those people who help us physically and know how to be cheerful and care. I don’t care whose up there in the big office.

Gloria Ferris: That brings us back to what we were talking about earlier, with small steps…and what do we do as individuals and that comes back to Sarah’s point of we all have worth, we all have value. We all are important to the foundation that Alice talked about with the bricks and the mortar, we’re the bricks and the mortar of America. We kind of keep it moving and it doesn’t matter whose at the top. You know what my husband kept saying about people were so worrying who was going to be President. And he goes, “You know what? Basically, our lives aren’t going to change much day by day, we still have to keep on going and keep on pushing for what we believe is right.” Yes, it makes a difference a little bit, it makes it easier for what you might think is important, but basically day by day its up to us. It’s up to us to change. It’s up to us to find cash instead of going into debt. You know I heard another thing that when I said that this group of people, this group of young people not having the education that their parents had…

Betsey Merkel: We have a comment, when you are finished.

Gloria Ferris: Oh, all right. Okay, good. But, this is the first time a college debt is more than one year’s salary for someone leaving college. They’re debt is more than their starting entry pay. So, we do need to think of value in different ways. So, Betsey says we have a comment…from one of our online people.

Betsey Merkel: Yes, Jill at NPR says, “Good morning, Ladies. Two items I want to add regarding economic impact on women. First, a story on how parents are pulling kids from childcare because they can’t afford it. What will be the ripple affect of that?” and second, women suffer from job loss twice as much as men. That was in the Women’s E-News this morning, she said and she said she’ll Twitter links to me. So we’ll include more information in our follow up to you and after the show closes we can talk about how we can stay connected.

Gloria Ferris: Oh, great.

MaryBeth Matthews: Thanks, Jill.

Gloria Ferris: Thanks Jill, good job. Jill is a Blogger, she writes online, she’s actually by education, she worked as a social worker at Bellfaire and then she went to law school and she’s an attorney, but she is now a journalist, she started blogging…she is blogging at Newsweek, I can’t think of what her…Newsweek Ruckus, I think it’s called. She is in a group of women Bloggers, they call themselves “Bloggher” – they are all women Bloggers from all over the United States and they have gotten together as a collective and have all of their blogs up so you can read the different things that they’re…she is sometimes on the “Sound of Ideas,’ NPR, if you ever listen to that. Recently, she was asked by NPR to go to Washington, DC on Election night and do their blogging for them so, but I guess that kind of tells you education is different, you went for one thing and you’re doing a whole different thing. Thank you.