In Her Own Words,

W
hat do you think of being called our nation's comforter in
chief?

After September 11, I felt I had the responsibility to continue
talking about children and ways adults can help nurture children. Last
summer, I had a symposium on early-childhood cognitive development, and
there's new research saying that when children are nurtured, they
actually grow brain connections. So something I'd already been thinking
about had new meaning and immediacy.

The context in which I say this, though, has to do with your
husband.

Oh, we comfort each other and we're lucky to have the kind of
relationship we have. We draw a lot of strength from each other. We were
30 when we met, 31 when we married and we were 35 when we had our
children. So we never took each other for granted. When we met, we were
really happy to find each other. But I thought of comforter in chief as
comforting the nation: talking about what parents can do to try to
relieve their own anxiety after September 11. And while they do that,
assure their children that they are safe.

Both images work well here. Your husband presumably has the
most stressful job in the world. I can't imagine anyone being subjected
to more pressures. How does that affect him?

He is very disciplined. He does a lot of things that keep him on an
even keel. For instance, he works out. He has since he was 25, when he
started running. That helps alleviate a lot of stress and relaxes him. We
both, since we married, take care of our health. We go to bed early. We
get up early. We eat well. Taking care of yourself physically really
helps emotionally. People who get a lot of sleep, who do the things that
relieve stress, can withstand a lot of stress.

And it is very stressful. But it helps to have good people around
you, people who are also even-tempered and stable. My husband is very
stable. I think that helps. But after something bad has happened, as with
September 11, a few weeks later, he'll have a sort of pain in his neck
from being tense. Literally. It usually doesn't come on until after
things have relaxed.

I've read that he refers to you as a rock.

Yes, in some ways I'm very stable. I have a lot of strength. We
wouldn't have ever won, or gotten to this point, if we weren't that way.
Because of everything a presidential race requires-all the stress, all
the criticism-it's difficult. And we never expected something like
September 11 to happen. You expect a lot of things in this job. You know
when your husband runs for president it's possible to be faced with
putting our armed forces, young men and women, in harm's way. But no one
expected-and certainly no one on my staff expected-to be told to run for
her life. To literally run out of the White House because, they thought,
the fourth plane was on its way.

September 11 seemed to mark a dramatic shift in your role, or
at least in the way the public knows you.

There was a lot of coverage of my role after that. I had been
working on the same things. On that day, I was on Capitol Hill, ready to
brief the education committee on early-childhood development. But you are
right: Both my role and my husband's role were magnified. Just like the
roles of firemen and policemen and soldiers and teachers. There is a
silver lining to the horrific happenings of September 11: Many Americans
realized what is important. A lot of the things that we took for granted
have new meaning-such as freedom and our open society. We want our
society to be as open as it was on September 10, but it requires
vigilance on everyone's part.

Do you envision your role expanding further? Will you be
doing bolder things in the future?

I have done a lot of things concerning women, children and
education in Afghanistan. I gave a speech in Paris, to the OECD
[Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development], about how
important education is worldwide. I didn't expect to be talking about
children and women in Afghanistan. So I guess my role may expand.

I also have some questions concerning education. How can
schools get more involvement from parents, especially in poorer
communities?

This is going to sound very simple, but I wonder why teachers don't
have telephones in their classrooms, like any other professional. It
would be great if teachers could call parents any time. It's very
important for schools to reach out as much as they can to parents. I know
of a Head Start program in Austin [Texas], where the parents are of low
income. To get the dads to come in and talk about ways to be better
parents, the teachers thought of having a Monday Night Football
party.

Are teachers getting the support they need in today's
increasingly diverse classrooms?

I think the answer to that is no. We, all of us, need to give
teachers more support. There are very few professions where you graduate,
get your certificate and then are put in a classroom with 30 kids-the
door is shut, and everyone just says, "Good luck." School districts need
a lot of support. Some school districts have used mentor teachers, those
who help new teachers. That's a great idea. Corporations can be more
supportive of schools and teachers too. And I really want to encourage
colleges of education to keep in contact with their recent graduates.
Alumni need to be asked what's really important: "Were you prepared? To
be better prepared, how could you better have spent your time in
college?"

In higher education, especially in light of September 11, how
should we fulfill our obligation to train international
students?

More than ever, it's important to have exchange programs in which
American students go abroad and foreign students come to the U.S. There
are a lot of scholarships that are designed specifically for exchange
programs. But I think it's very important for colleges and universities
to reach out to foreign students, to make sure they have the chance to
get to know American students.

Don't we need to be a little cautious, though?

Of course you can say that, but I wouldn't. It's important to try
to help foreign students acclimate to American universities.

Finally, as a professor for 20 years now, I have noticed a
decline in standards: horrible grade inflation, students coming in with
a sense of entitlement, "I paid, I deserve an A." Are you concerned
about this shift?

There have been newspaper articles about one Ivy League university
that's had a problem. But I really wouldn't have any way of seeing that,
because I am not in school myself now. And I don't see that my friends'
college-aged children are given special grades, or better grades now. So
I don't really have the answer to that question. The young kids I do know
don't seem to have a big sense of entitlement.