Bok Plans Conference To Discuss Education

Prompted by the increasing national attention on education, President Bok and the president of Stanford University. Donald Kennedy, have organized a conference for top-ranking officials from several universities to discuss the roles their institutions can have in improving the quality of the country's public schools.

The meeting which will be held in mid-August in California, is the first such gathering of officials from different universities on this topic, Patricia A. Graham, dean of the Graduate School of Education said yesterday. Graham will be attending the meeting with two other education school deans, as well as seven research university presidents.

Bok said yesterday that the conference would not necessarily produce solutions but that "there is more of a feeling that we ought to have a chance to trade off ideas and stimulate ourselves to make the most of a particular important opportunity."

The presidents of Columbia University, University of California at Berkeley, University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan will attend along with the deans of education schools from Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley.

Briefing Books

Bok said he will send some education briefing materials along with certain questions in advance, so that more participants will arrive with well thought-out opinions on how universities can help highlight public education problems and make improvements.

Bok added that he and Kennedy felt that this summer was a timely occasion for the gathering since "clearly the issues of education have been pushed up several notches on the national agenda."

There is currently a perception that improvements should be made but people need to be informed by places such as Harvard how those changes can be implemented, he commented.

Bad Schools

In his speech at this year's Commencement, Bok discussed the poor condition of the nation's public schools and outlined steps Harvard has made towards improving the system. He pointed especially at the new emphasis on training teachers at the Ed School.

Bok said he and Graham will be bringing ideas to the table, and that everyone should come away with a "sharpened sense of our own responsibilities which we can then try to put into effect on our own campuses."

Next year, the Ed School will be implementing several new programs aimed at improving the quality of education including a special curriculum for training math and science teachers.