Monday, 06/08/2009 Print Version |
Governor Holds Press Conference with Education Officials Regarding Digital Textbooks Initiative
PRINCIPAL FOSS: Are we ready to go? Well, welcome to Calabasas High School in the Las Virgenes Unified School District. We are so thrilled and delighted to have all of you here. This is an amazing school. It has been my privilege to be the principal here for the past year. My name is C.J. Foss and I am very proud to have all of you here.
Calabasas High School is a California Distinguished School; we've just received our banner and we have it proudly behind us. We are a National Blue Ribbon School. We have been named by U.S. News and World Report as a Silver Medalist and Los Angeles Magazine has named us one of the top 50 public or private schools. (Applause) Thank you. Thank you.
The reason that we have that honor is because of an amazing staff. The reason that we are a Distinguished School and have all those honors is because of our staff, because of the support we have from our school board and local district office and because of the students that are sitting here in front of you. This is an AP U.S. history class and they have this kind of thing happen on a regular basis. (Laughter)
So I am so honored to welcome our distinguished guests: Mr. Dave Moorman, president of the Board of Education, Las Virgenes Unified School District, welcome; (Applause) Vice President Gordon Whitehead, board member. (Applause) To my right -- to my left. Thank you, welcome; and Board Member Cindy Iser; (Applause) and Board Member Jill Gaines. (Applause) And our distinguished Dr. Donald Zimring, superintendent of L.A. Unified -- or Las Virgenes Unified School District. I can't believe I did that. (Applause) Can we do that again? Dr. Donald Zimring, superintendent of the Las Virgenes Unified School District. (Applause) And the distinguished mayor, Jonathan Wolfson, of the city of Calabasas (Applause) And Mayor Steve Freedland, mayor of the city of Hidden Hills. (Applause) I'm a little nervous.
We also have with us, from the Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, Ken Philips; (Applause) Carol Washburn, CEO of Calabasas Chamber of Commerce; (Applause) and the undersecretary of education, Kathy Radtkey. Thank you so much for being here. (Applause)
And I have asked our very distinguished Student Body President Brian Chaskes, who will also be going to Cal Berkeley in the fall and I've asked him to introduce our very special guest. Brian? (Applause)
BRIAN CHASKES: Hello. It is my pleasure to introduce the Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of the state of California. (Applause)
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, I never thought the day would come where I get introduced by a student that is taller than me. (Laughter) What has happened here? But anyway, thank you very much, Brian, for the great job you're doing here. I know this is tough, when all of a sudden you're in front of all these cameras here and not to freeze, which I've seen happen several times. So you did a great job. Let's give him a big hand for the great job that he has done. (Applause)
But I want to say thank you very much to our Principal Foss for having me out here. She is a terrific leader and has done an extraordinary job here. And I'm very happy also that she announced all of the various different guests here so I don’t have to do it. (Laughter) Thank you very much; you did a great job with that.
But also just one person I want to point out and this is, of course, Dave Moorman, who is the president of the Board of Education, who is also a terrific leader. And we are very happy with him and so we are looking forward to working with him on a lot of different things.
But it's nice to be here at a school that is doing such an extraordinary job with education. And I, of course, am a big believer in education and I'm a big believer in doing everything we can for our kids. And this is only because when I grew up in Austria I had the kind of attention that I needed in order to be where I am today. I think what happens in those first 18 years is absolutely crucial. And I had the technology -- which was, of course, the technology of those days -- and I had the love and the care of the teachers. We had someone around 24 hours a day that helped us, if it was coaches, mentors, teachers, principals, the parents, everyone was always there for us. So I'm a big believer in doing everything we can for our students.
But today is a very special day because we wanted to talk a little bit about California's Digital Textbook Initiative. And it's a whole new thing and, of course, the state of California is always known for new and daring things and to go out and experiment with new ideas. I want to highlight an exciting new tool that can save schools money and that can help our students with their achievement.
Kids, as you all know, today are very familiar with listening to their music digitally and online
and to watch TV online, to watch movies online, to be on Twitter and participate in that and on
Facebook and all of those kinds of things. So basically kids are feeling so comfortable today, as a
matter of fact, as comfortable with their cell phones and with their keyboards as I did when I was
your age, when I was a kid, with my pencils and crayons.
So this is why I think it is so important that we move on from the textbooks. The textbooks are
outdated, as far as I'm concerned and there's no reason why our schools should have our students
lug around these antiquated and heavy and expensive textbooks. California is the home of
Silicon Valley. We are the world leader in technology and innovation, so we can do better than
that.
That's why I'm so excited about California's Digital Textbook Initiative. Starting this fall with
high school math and science, we will be the first state in the nation -- the first state in the nation
-- to provide schools with a state-approved list of digital textbooks. Think about this. Traditional
hardbound textbooks are adopted in six-year cycles, so as soon as they are printed, then the next
six years you don't get the latest information.
So just think about the last six years, all the things that happened. For instance, the Iraq war, the
country's first African-American president, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression
or the decoding of the human genome and the list goes on and on. So all of this you wouldn't
have in those textbooks. Discoveries, science and progress are happening so quickly.
So the bottom line is, I feel how can kids compete in the global economy when the information
the schools feed them is stale and is outdated and is old? So digital textbooks will change, of
course, all of that; they can be frequently updated to better prepare our student. And there will also be more opportunities for interactive learning and you know how exciting interactive action is. Students could read about a science experiment and then click onto a video and then see immediately a kind of demonstration of this science project.
This is what kids love and it will make them much more excited about learning. I know my kids
have -- I have four kids, so I know how much time they spend on the computer when they do their homework and the exciting stuff that they see when they study.
So I think that's what we want to do here, just really upgrade all of this. The digital textbooks are
good not only for the students' achievement but they're also good for the schools' bottom line.
And this is the important thing here. The average textbook costs up to $100. So think about it, if
each of California's 2 million high school students use digital math and science books, that
would mean that you could save the schools $300 to $400 million and that's money that could be
used for hiring more teachers or to make class sizes smaller. And if you expand this to additional
textbooks, then you can save an additional few hundred million dollars.
So that's a lot of money. And I think that I want to stress here that you can take advantage of this
program -- schools don’t really need to have computers and laptops. It is better when you have it,
but if you don't have it, you can print out this information and it still costs only a fraction of what
textbooks cost.
I know this is, of course, a dramatic shift from the status quo and there is some resistance in
some cases. Not in this school district here. This school district is doing an extraordinary job,
because they have already done some of this work with digital textbooks. So I want to
congratulate the school district and this school for doing an outstanding job. So it's no surprise to
me that your education is so far along and that you have such a small dropout rate and such a
huge graduation rate here in this school district, which I'm very proud of, let me tell you and
that's why I wanted to come here today.
But there are people that hold onto the status quo and they hold onto it because they maybe
financially benefit from keeping the textbooks alive. And also, some people have a tough time
changing from the status quo and trying something new. But I feel that this is the wrong time
now to hold onto the status quo, because this is one of the worst economic and financial crises
that the state has been in since the Great Depression. The state has a tremendous lack of money;
therefore we had to make severe cuts to schools, billions of dollars of cuts, so we have to find
every possible way to think outside the box, to think innovatively and to really come up with
ways how we can save money and provide those same services in education but for less money.
And this is what this does. This is not at all kind of compensating for, or overcoming our budget
crisis or the money that has been taken from the schools, not by any means. But it does help and
this is what we want to do. So this is where the bottom line is, that digital textbooks will help.
Number one, you don't have to carry around this heavy load in your bag, in your school bag,
which my kids always complain about. You know, these 50 lbs. of school bags that they're
schlepping around. And then, number two, I think it will help because you don't have to cut
down as many trees. Think about that, how much paper is being used in those textbooks. And it
makes education and learning much more fun, because it's interactive and it helps the bottom line
in our schools and helps them with their finances.
So I think this is a really great way to move forward and this is why I wanted to come here today
to all of you and talk to you about that and just say again to this school, congratulations for the
great work you are doing.
And now our next speaker is Donald Zimring and he wants to say a few words. Please.
SUPERINTENDENT ZIMRING:
My name is Donald Zimring, I'm the superintendent of schools in the Las Virgenes Unified
School District and it is indeed an honor to be here. But Governor, it's more than that, because
it's an affirmation. It's an affirmation of what our Board of Education, what our community, what
our teachers have believed for some time.
So I'm going to really kind of mix things up. Can I see the chemistry textbook? Can I see the pre
calculus textbook? I don't want your yearbook, we don’t want to get into that. Give me another
textbook. What do you have right behind you? Yes, please. OK. This is, Governor, as you so
noted, half the load -- half the load.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
We can do curls. (Laughter)
SUPERINTENDENT ZIMRING:
There you are. Governor, that's a flash drive.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
Exactly.
SUPERINTENDENT ZIMRING:
All of that can be on that, plus more.
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
That's right.
SUPERINTENDENT ZIMRING:
The options and the opportunities that we create with technology are incredible. I like to say that
I'm superintendent, which has been a life's dream and I've given my career to this district and I
can think of nothing else I would have rather done.
But at the end of the day, I still want to believe that I'm a teacher. I always feel that; that's how I
began, that's what I think I do best. And if you want, again, affirmation for what we are and what
we believe, I apologize -- we didn't get to introduce the president of our teachers union, this year,
Sandy Pope. Sandy, could you raise your hand? (Applause) Sandy is not here because as a union
they have concerns or that this is an issue. Sandy is here because she shares those same core
values, the value of how do we best reach kids.
Governor, everyone here, the adults up here, we are the technology immigrants. And certainly
for you immigration was an even greater challenge but for those of us who were born here and
sort of spoke English to begin with, technology is still a great challenge.
To all these young people here it's what they live, it's what they do. And until we, as teachers,
cross the line and understand that this is how they're going to live their lives, we will be failing.
Until we understand that's how we need to teach and reach them, we will be failing them.
So your initiative, sir, which is an affirmation of something this district has held for some time, is
a huge step in that direction. You stole a lot of what I was going to say, in terms of how great it
is. But let me give you a couple of others. Understand, aside from the fact that the digital – really
we like to call them 'flex books', not textbooks, because they are so flexible. If you go to a digital
medium, you now have the ability to scale what you do. Textbooks are always going to be
designed for a center core of kids -- those above it, those below it, good luck. That's the teachers'
job to figure something out. When you come up with a scalable, flexible textbook that's media
driven, the teachers can design and differentiate, which is the key to what we now know is going
to help kids learn.
And we may be faced with bigger class sizes. And we can sit here and pound and woe about it,
but our job and our commitment to the youngsters of next year is how do we deliver the same
quality of education to them as everyone else had had in our system, regardless of what our
resources are.
Our board of education gave me a simple challenge just last year. They say, how do you keep a
vision in the face of adversity? And this is one of the ways. We don't take our eye off of the ball.
The ball is how we deliver world-class education to every one of our students. And one of the
fundamental elements of doing that is having digital resources necessary to allow teachers to be
able to compete and make sure these kids have every, every advantage they have in their learning
and their instruction. And I believe that your initiative today, Governor, will help us do that.
Thank you. (Applause)
It's my distinct honor to introduce the president of our board of education, Mr. David Moorman.
(Applause)
DAVID MOORMAN:
Well, there's no question about it; kids today get their information electronically. As the
Governor was walking in, every student out there had a cell phone out, and they were taking
pictures, they were taking videos. Those devices are part of what life is like for a student in
today's world. A textbook right now is simply one part, its one element in a vast array of
technologies and media sources that kids can use for anytime, anywhere learning.
Digital alternatives to traditional textbooks can enable more depth, more richness, more variety
and more relevance for students. It can bring all kinds of things into the classroom that not every
school has the access to be able to get. So this is something that's very exciting; it's wide open.
Digital alternatives can bring instant feedback, it can bring assessment options, it can bring
individualization of instruction.
And it can also bring all kinds of tools to the teachers. It can bring professional development
opportunities and collaboration resources like they've never had before. So our professional
educators can be given a whole new set of tools to work with.
When Pluto loses its status as one of our planets, this is not about going back and rethinking the
textbooks, doing a new adoption, having billions of dollars wasted and resources used in order to
create new textbooks. This is about making one change electronically and having that instantly
available in all of our classrooms everywhere.
So this is something that we're hoping is going to enable us to free up dollars that we can use to
target other educational needs and that is something that we're finding very exciting here in the
Las Virgenes School District. And I can say, on behalf of our Board of Education, we are very
excited about pursuing this opportunity to help our students, so thank you very much. (Applause)
Now I'd like to introduce Mr. Ken Phillips, who is the director of Workforce in Educational
Investment for the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. (Applause)
KEN PHILLIPS:
I’m going to come from a different perspective; I'm going to come back from business and
industry instead of education and try to tie those two pieces together. Our organization, the
Valley Economic Alliance, is an economic and community development organization dedicated
to retaining the local businesses and expanding businesses and providing quality jobs in the five
cities in the San Fernando Valley, so for the Westlake Village Border all the way to Glendale.
In short, we're about better businesses, better jobs and better communities and it really all starts
with education. Education is the pipeline to well-paying jobs and to California competitive,
global economy, growth. In fact, more than a half a million residents in the San Fernando Valley
have a college degree. They have already made that important investment.
And so for California to be a global competitive leader we must invest in these types of relevant
digital technologies and show the immediate return on investment. And that's what you get with
this particular type of tool; you get immediate return on investment. In fact, the investment that
we specifically see when this is global, when you have in K-12, when you have in all subjects, it
could be as much as a $300 million return of investment. That's very significant. In these times
when we have underfunding of schools and resources, I think we have a pretty good idea of
where we could use this money.
So the Governor's free digital textbook initiative is an important first step for schools. Through
the Governor's Digital Textbook Initiative everyone can gain access online anytime, 24/7.
Colleges and businesses are already doing this; they have been doing this for some time. You can
get online classes, online learning, be able to take extension classes and it's very, very affordable
as well, too. So this commitment affords all students, regardless of the ages, to be better prepared
for college while gaining industry-relevant skills.
This is how I see this particular initiative when you're breaking it down into just some key words
here:
• The Governor, he already said it; it's definitely greener. It's reducing printing, it's going ahead and reducing the amount of paper we use.
• It's healthier, it eliminates the heavy backpacks.
• Additionally, it's much more effective and efficient. It updates textbooks that are immediate and makes it much more relevant, based on what's happening today.
• And in some schools it eliminates the need for duplicate textbooks. In some school districts you have one at school, a textbook at school and also one at home. That just duplicates the particular effort and also doubles the cost.
• And convenience -- and this one is for anybody that is a parent that had to do this before. I was thinking about this one last night -- is that for some schools that only have one textbook, or if your son or daughter leaves a textbook in their locker and then late at night they say, "You know, I need to do my homework, could you take me back to school and go ahead and get to my locker?" If you've ever had to have gone through that, you know what I'm talking about. It's not the most pleasant thing to do.
•
So Governor, the Valley Economic Alliance is delighted to support this important digital
Initiative and this opportunity for learning and growing and we salute you for your courageous
effort to move this initiative. Thank you, sir. (Applause)
GOVERNOR SCHWARZENEGGER:
All right. You heard a lot of different spins on the whole thing. But I think, as you could see, the
whole thing comes out to being one thing and that is, if we have a choice between textbooks or
having more teachers in the school, I pick more teachers in the school and provide the textbooks
digitally through this means, which is more exciting. So that's what the bottom line is, to cut to
the chase. So this is what this all about.
So if you have any questions out there in the media, or if the students have any questions, please
feel free to ask.
QUESTION/ANSWER:
QUESTION: (Inaudible) especially districts that may already be struggling with access to the option of such educational technologies?
GOVERNOR: Well, I think that each district has that choice to make. And I think that you can directly hear from our education leaders, they can tell you how they make those decisions.
But I would say that, because of the amount of money it frees up -- you know, when you talk about in the whole state of California, $300 million to $400 million -- and that's just if you do the math and science books. Now if you add all the other books, you can have an additional gain of a few hundred million dollars and that is important money that we can use for hiring teachers and keeping teachers in place so that we can reduce class size and get more effective learning done.
And like I said, the rest of it you can provide digitally and that is the big advantage, interactive, fun learning. Kids will get more out of it because it's more fun. And I think we should not forget, we in California have a tremendous dropout rate in our schools, if you look at the percentage and a lot of times it's because it is boring for kids, the way we study, the same as we did 100 years ago. I think that we can move it up. I think, like I said, we are the technology capital of the world, so I think we should use technology.
QUESTION: But aren't there districts that are not willing or not able to adopt these textbooks, do you fear that this will further widen the gap, achievement gap between schools who do adopt this and schools who lack this technology?
GOVERNOR: No, I don’t think so. But you maybe want to answer that just briefly, please?
SUPERINTENDENT ZIMRING: It's a great question. And I think one of the disconnects in part of the education part that we have in this and the Governor alluded to it -- this isn't a matter of saying you have to have lots of money to do this. Quite the opposite. Aside from the fact that, even if we don't realize immediate savings as we make this trend, it's a matter of if you have a teacher having access.
Our school district, with the support of our four cities and the support of our communities, passed a bond measure and part of that bond measure was to buy technology. And it comes to your question of well, what happens if people don’t have that? But let me explain. We use that not so much to get every child a computer -- that wasn't our goal. We wanted to equip our teachers, who in turn are able to bring it into the classroom. We actually have one of the systems in the back of the Governor. It's called a CMPS. We love acronyms. It's a Classroom Media Presentation System. So with one computer, with one computer and one projector, a teacher in this classroom can reach 170 children a day. They can print out the necessary material, the kids can take notes of the necessary material, they can see it visually. That's how you can close that gap.
And I'm sorry, I'm hard-pressed to believe that any school leader is going to be able to challenge and say well, we can't do that. We've got that. This isn't a one-to-one initiative. We've not talking about trying to find resources to get every single child a laptop computer. That would be a great goal, another goal we may have in this district in the short term. But for what we're talking here, we're talking about getting content in a far more meaningful manner, a far more current manner and a far more exciting manner.
GOVERNOR: Any other questions? Yes.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) technology will require additional teacher training? And if so, how do you plan on helping schools find this training?
GOVERNOR: Well, I think that it doesn't need that much training to go and provide these kinds of services. But if training is needed, I'm sure that a school can do that. Every school district, I think there's money set aside for those kinds of things. And I think teachers always have to be kept up to date anyway and retrain as new textbooks come out and so on. OK? But I think that all of those things that you are talking about shouldn't really be an obstacle. I mean, all of those things can be overcome.
The key thing is that a school district has to make a commitment and say we want to provide, from now on, our education through digital means and not get stuck with the old textbooks, because it's more fun, you save money, you can hire teachers with that money, all of those kinds of things.
So I think it's about the will and it's the same with physical education, it's the same with after school programs. You know, from school to school there are different beliefs. Some schools say well, we're not going to have after school programs. There are other schools that believe they need after school programs because they need to keep their students in school after school because the parents are not around to help them with their homework, with homework assistance and with tutoring and with sports programs and so on. So every school always is different on this.
You can't force schools to do those things. But I think that it is inviting when you see the evidence and how much money you can save and what you can do with that money.
Yes?
QUESTION: What type of flexibility will be given to the school district to spend the money that is saved from books?
GOVERNOR: I think that it is always we don’t try to dictate down to the schools. As a matter of fact, one of the things that we have seen these last two years, since we are in such a financial crunch and have such a limited amount of resources, is to free up the categoricals and to free up telling the locals what to do. And I think that we have talked about that. As a matter of fact, they came up to Sacramento and lobbied me heavily -- what was it, a year ago or something like that?
SUPERINTENDENT ZIMRING: It was Santa Monica. It was in your office in Santa Monica.
GOVERNOR: Oh, that's right, it was in Santa Monica, in my office in Santa Monica. And we talked about it extensively, about how they can make ends meet but not if we keep cutting our budget and keep sticking to our categoricals. And so we freed up, in the last budget negotiations, more than $6 billion in categoricals and now there is much more freedom so they can make the decision, each school district can make a decision on how to spend that money.
And the same is with the textbooks. You know, it doesn't mean that -- I think it is commonsense that if you go and take this money and all of a sudden save this money, that first of all you will provide this information digitally and in a more entertaining way. But also, from then on it's up to you. You maybe have all the teachers that you need. You maybe want to then get some art and music equipment and stuff like that, that you maybe need, or have physical education equipment that you need and so on. So every school will make their own decisions on that.
QUESTION: (Inaudible)
GOVERNOR: Well, as you know, the Legislature is going through their various different debates on the budget. We have handed in our proposal on how to fill the $24 billion deficit. And I think it's important to know that we have had the largest decline in revenues since the Great Depression.
So I think it's important for the kids to also know that this state is really struggling, even though we are the number one state in the union and even though our economy has gone up by 0.4 percent. But, because of our flawed tax system that we have and because of a state that has refused, the Legislature has refused, to put a rainy day fund aside so when we have a declining economy we can draw down from those rainy day funds. You know, we have not done that for the last 60 years and so therefore every time we have an economic decline we, this state, has the biggest drop I revenues of any state in the United States.
And so it's a flawed system and I urge the Legislature again to look at this seriously and to fix the problem. Because it's one thing when you get hit with those kinds of problems once or twice but let's not do it over and over and over, that every single time there's an economic decline we have to go and make those severe cuts in education, severe cuts in social programs that are so important and make people suffer. And also having to raise taxes, go back to people to raise taxes when they have very little money themselves.
So I think all of this is wrong. I think we can do much better by improving our tax system and by having a rainy day fund and then I think we will never, ever, have this kind of a problem of having drops of 27 percent in revenues within one year.
Yes?
QUESTION: Is there a precedent for the digital textbook program anywhere else?
GOVERNOR: No, there is no such program. This is, like I said earlier, this is the first state that is venturing out in that direction, which is not, as I said, unusual for California, because we are number one in so many things. And then, you know, when California does something, the rest of the country does it and the rest of the world follows us.
We have seen now with our environmental laws that we have passed, with AB 32. when we made a commitment to rollback our greenhouse gases to the 1990 level, we saw immediately other states follow and now Washington is following. And Washington has already followed us with the Tailpipe Emission Standards and with getting better mileage with the cars and making new goals, setting new goals. So I think that Washington is following us and other states are following us. We are the leaders in those things.
And I think that digital textbooks is one of those great examples. To me it's amazing, when you think about it, that for so many years and decades we are trying to teach the kids exactly the same way. I mean, we've got to update this, because I have four kids and anyone that has kids knows that they love being on the computer and they love getting their information there.
I had my son look at geography and learn geography and all of a sudden he showed me that on that video there was like you take a trip on the Thames River in England, right up the river. And he was excited about seeing that and therefore he could study where that river is and how long is it and how many cities it goes through and all of this information. He was fascinated because he saw it right there, rather than opening up this thick textbook and trying to retrieve this information from the textbook.
So I think it's a no-brainer, this one. I think that a lot of school districts will follow this school district here. But this school district, you should know, is really a leader in this thing and a leader in trying always to figure out what makes students stay here, what makes them excited studying and doing physical education and doing their homework and wanting to go on and educate themselves after they get out of here and graduate from this school. So that is really terrific.
So anyway, thank you very much. There's one more question here.
QUESTION: What's the timeline for a full rollout of all subjects being digital?
GOVERNOR: Well, we are first working on this and then we will look into doing other subjects as well. So it's one step at a time. We don’t want to just invade this whole thing. We just do it one step at a time with the help, again, of the school districts. And you see, a lot of this information and a lot of those ideas, may I remind you, does not come out of Sacramento, OK? It comes out of the people that stand right here. It comes from the people that are in the trenches, that are actually doing the work. And so we in Sacramento, the best thing we can do is then adopt those ideas as quickly as possible. So this is one of those great ideas and we want to adopt it as quickly as possible.
So anyway, thank you very much and I'll be back. Thank you. Yes?
QUESTION: Back to the budget, as high school students, how can we do our part to save the state money during this budget crisis?
GOVERNOR: Well, I don't think that you can do as much in the position that you are in, because you guys are doing your job. You're supposed to study hard. And we, the grownups, are supposed to do everything that we can to provide for you, because, you know, we consider kids as, like older people, as the vulnerable citizens that don't have really lobbies in Sacramento and fighting for this money.
So that's why I always say that kids ought to have the first right to the treasury and I tell you something, that I feel horrible that we have to make the cuts that we make in education. And that's why the CTA, the teachers union and us, we worked together this last time to make those initiatives pass, to make sure that we have this extra $6 billion, because that would have saved $3 billion for education.
So we, it's our responsibility to do all that. You guys just have one responsibility and that is to study hard and to think about your education and your future. And also simultaneously think about what can you do with your knowledge and with your gifts to help those that are less fortunate. We always think about the double track. What can you do for yourself and what can you do for others that maybe are not as bright as you are or not as privileged as you are, not as talented, whatever. So that's the only responsibility I think at this point that you have.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
