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okay? Uh huh. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You? Mm. Hi. I'm Senator Lawton Child's, and I want to welcome you to the Lawton Child's update this month. We're going to consider an old adage with a new meaning. The adage is simple. Experience is the best teacher.

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We're going to visit a high tech workplace and find out what it has to teach about competition in the area of world trade will also look briefly at the lessons we've learned from the drug experience. But first, let's look at a classic example of how people with lots of experience, of bringing out the best in our young people.

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It's the story of both giving and receiving. And I thought it was important enough to talk about. In a speech on the Senate floor not long ago, I saw a video presentation by Bill Moyers on the topic of creativity. Mr. Maurier said one of the main reasons our country had achieved its leadership position in both international commerce and innovation to benefit mankind was the creative ability of our citizens.

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But he pointed out that apparently we were falling behind in that capacity as our output in patent registrations had dropped significantly in recent years. He was challenging our educational system to again provide individual stimulation and call forth the creativity of our population. One group is heating this.

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Call our school volunteers and they're doing in a number of ways. But I'd like to make you aware of some of the achievements of both individuals and the program. My state is unique in a number of ways. One of which we get instant recognition is our large number of retirees.

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Of the fifty states, Florida has the largest percentage of its population falling above the age of sixty. The majority of these retirees are are not native Floridians. They came down to join us from all parts of the country, but they have invested themselves in our young people in a most giving an unselfish manner.

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My speech came as I introduced a resolution designating November twelfth as Salute to School Volunteers Day. You know, in Florida alone, we've got more than a hundred and twenty thousand volunteers giving over five million hours of their time every year to our students. The Nike program is an outstanding example, but it's not the only one we've got to listen to Children Program, where community mental health clinics help trouble Children deal with problems.

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We've got the business education partnerships where representatives from some of our top firms come to the classroom, offer training camps and time release programs to help our kids get a leg up on learning. But not all the involvement comes from big business in Ju Lincoln Creek near Jacksonville, Arnold's Grocery adopted the elementary school.

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The grocery sponsors field trips and offers tours of the stores and supports the school's activity. Even the Navy's involved with the Math and Science Initiative program. Navy personnel give their time after school hours and on Saturdays to help young people with math and computer science. What these and many other programs represent is community involvement.

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Business industry clinics and schools are working to make the learning experience an effective teacher. I recently visited Fort Myers and talked with some of the people involved in the retired Senior Volunteer Program and the Senior Mentor Program. It was a festive time, with bands playing and students sitting side by side with their older mentors.

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It was sort of a reminder of the lesson I learn every time I'm with our senior citizens. And the lesson is that while other states have natural resources like oil and gold, Florida has an even more valuable resource. Are experienced people going to sleep? No state has a larger percentage of folks over sixty than Florida, and all these seniors form a tremendous reservoir of experience that can spell opportunity for our young people.

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In the senior Mentor program, a whole range of creative backgrounds unfold for our Children. Retired astronomers, scientists, managers, writers and people in the arts share their past to help shape the future of students just starting out. I spoke with several of the people in the program, and what they had to say gives you an idea of just how fortunate students in Florida really are.

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This is Wendy White, an eighth grade student in Fort Myers Middle School. Well, there are lots of things in the classroom teacher. As hard as they work, they can't attend to the the needs of every single child and the Senior Volunteers program. It just helps those kids who who needs special attention might be having difficult areas.

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Or you might need to excel. You know, Wendy makes a good point. The volunteers who help in her school really give teachers more time to concentrate on the fundamentals in the classroom. And one of those who's helping is Bowman Smith, a seventy five year old retiree confined to a wheelchair.

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I wanted to know what the voluntary involvement means to him. The big thing about it is that those of us who have a certain handicapped, it is necessary for us to feel useful. There's I I feel by tutoring that I'm contributing to society. I feel as if I'm useful and this is most important thing.

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I get as much from the students as I give because of this feeling of sufficiency that I have. It's fundamentally important to to us. One of the people Bowman Smith works with is Alison Spiegel of Cyprus High School. She explained how large a role Mr Smith plays in her education.

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Well, he gives you special help it with extra help and all its like, because your teacher doesn't have enough time to sit down and talk to and explain everything. And Mr Smith explains everything and helps you out when you have troubles. Another volunteer is Frank Crossley of Alva, Frank is seventy nine, and by his own description and old vaudeville man, he was once part of the team of Wiley West and McGinnity.

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Today, he's part of a different team. Does he enjoy it? You bet I do. What would I do? Feet. I were unfortunate. I'll ask both my knees and my hip and they put metal stuff in there. And, uh, I have to do something like he does.

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I have to do something to give out of myself. And this is I use soap business every day. I'm in the school. Frank's outlook is the same sort that led Marion Pots to be named volunteer of the year in Lee County. It's clear Marion loves what she does.

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I'm a volunteer Cyprus, like middle school, the greatest bunch of teachers you have ever met. They care about the kids and wherever they put me, I did what I was supposed to. I don't do windows, by the way, and I told him that. But I tutored kid in science and I made the teacher gave me the book because when I went to school who thought of science, you know, and then I had two young ladies and spelling This year I'm helping out in the Home Department, and I thoroughly enjoy it over there.

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I love doing this. I'll be eighty one in October. The whole idea behind the Senior Mentor program is to match up some of our most distinguished retired people with some of our most promising youngsters. The volunteers aim to draw out the talent of the kids to tap their curiosity and show them what they learn in the classroom can lead to exciting careers.

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The Mentor program was so successful in its first year that Chevron Corporation gave a fifty thousand dollars grant to help in the second year. The Florida State Legislature matched that in later years, and now the program is operating in twenty two of our counties Now. Early this fall, I invited some of the top Florida volunteers to Washington to talk about the work they're doing.

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Claire Leverage, the volunteer coordinator for Brevard County, told me how easy it is to get involved. Well, becoming a volunteer is as easy as lifting up the telephone receiver, and we received its that easy to get started. But once you're a volunteer, you become aware right away of how fast things are changing.

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Pam Laskowski, Florida's top volunteer coordinator, describe what the changes in the schools are like in the olden days we called our school Librarian library. Today. It's called the Media Centre because the services expanded. So same thing has happened to the volunteer program. We're moving away from the term volunteer program and calling its citizen involvement.

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Pam went on to explain the leadership role Florida plays in the National Volunteer Network. We like to think that we're number one. Florida is is viewed nationally as a lighthouse in the volunteer effort. You know, the kinds of things that I mentioned earlier about having appropriation provided by the Legislature and being legislated is very unique.

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It's the only state in the nation that has those kinds of advantages and has the kind of network that exists from district to district. Judy Meyer is the state coordinator for the Senior Mentor Program and the Business Education Partnership, and she outlined the senior mentor program in operation.

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Senior Minister for Creative Students is a program that was developed in Broward County and is a special program for us in Florida because it utilizes two of our really untapped resources. There's our senior citizens and creative and talented students. And through a grant from Chevron, we've been able to take that model program and replicated so that at this point in time, it's now being It's an operation in twenty two counties across the state, and since Florida has such a tremendous resource in our older people, it is just one of the best ways we found to utilize those resources takes a student who is identified by their teachers as being creative and talented, matches them with the senior citizen of similar interests.

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And together they developed a project which expands that child's creativity and also helps them understand better. The intergenerational closes those inter generational gaps so they have a better perspective of older people. And we also, like, I say, tap into that wealth of resources that's there. Of course, the heart of any voluntary program is the actual volunteer.

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This is Doncaster of Cocoa Beach. He's seventy two, and the doctors told him several years ago he'd never reached that age. Don had other ideas. Right now, he's the outstanding volunteer of the year in Florida, and he's also been named an outstanding national school volunteers. I worked with slow learning, specific learning disability Children, and I worked one on one most of time with reading.

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I give each one ten minutes to read. Then I give an entire class that are spelling list, and I worked with him on math. I work with them on social science or what Whatever the Children need when they're when the full classes there, I work reading and spelling.

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Then of an afternoon. I have one on one with kids. If they need I R special, like on math or social science or something like that, I try to help pick up on that. Doncaster is a remarkable man. You meet a lot of remarkable people in the Florida volunteer program these days.

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With budget so tight and teachers so busy, we depend more and more on people with the selfless spirit. We've got a lot to be thankful for. With people like these helping out so much, they're putting their experience to work because they believe in the future. And when we return, we look at the kind of future that today's students in the classroom will face in tomorrow's workplace has an executive at a large construction company.

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I know how my military training helped my business career. A veteran's military experience means loyalty, discipline, responsibility and teamwork. I'm an employer. I'm also a veteran, and I can tell you what experience counts. Count on a veteran for your employer's certificate of support. Rights SV at the Veterans Administration, Washington, D.

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C. Two o four two Oh, ever since the end of World War Two, the rest of the world has owed the United States money. We always had money to lend, and the reason we had it was because we always had money coming in our industries, produce goods by the boat load and sold them overseas.

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Other countries borrowed that money and bought more of our goods, and we thought it would never end. But things have changed. Instead of lending more money than anybody else, we now borrow more than anybody else. And now we're the world's largest borrower. Many of these countries we used to borrow our money have now borrowed our ideas, and they're giving us a stiff run for the money in the world market place.

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Some people say things have been hard on us because we haven't been able to change. They say We can't adapt. They say We can't compete. I think we can. I know we have to. That's why I've introduced legislation in Congress to make other countries lower their trade barriers that now prevent our goods from entering their markets.

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The idea is basic. If they want to sell here, we want the same right to sell to them. But the problem isn't just trade barriers abroad. A lot of the problem is homemade to solve it. We need a better fit among business, industry, labor and government.

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All of us have to cut down the barriers among ourselves. If we want to compete for tomorrow's jobs in today's market, we've got to make better products. We've got to produce them at lower cost. If America is to compete in the world. The advent of computers, robots and the promise they hold has been hailed as a breakthrough for American industry.

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But the breakthrough is yet to come for many small manufacturers who can't afford the technology or can't afford to update their equipment every time there's a new model. Another problem for the small and medium workplace is that computers built by one company don't always match up with the computers and robots built by another firm, and so they can't communicate.

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The nation is John Simpson of the National Bureau of Standards, like to say, lacks an interface standard. Well, the interface. So there is no standardized interface in, uh, machining, for example, there is no standard way of talking to a machine tool. Well, that's one way to put it.

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But Mr Simpson also had a practical way to illustrate the dilemma. Well, the ideal situation of interface standards is a exists in the home stereo business, where you can buy your your tape deck from some company your amplifier from another company, your turntable from yet a third company.

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You plug them all together in your system plays. That's because everybody has decided, as agreed upon, what is an interface between an amplifier and a tape deck. It was now you'd like to be able to put a factory together in the same way, but at the present time is not only impossible because there are no standards agreeing for a robot says to a machine tool on how it says it or vice versa.

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The National Bureau of standards was created by the government to do just what its name implies. Set standards. It was created in nineteen six after fire departments called Baltimore to help fight a fire had to watch as the city was almost destroyed. Their hoses didn't fit the Baltimore fire hydrants.

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That was over eighty years ago. But today the bureau is working with industry to create a standard interface to allow computers to talk to computers and two robots. This will help the small business match one company's robots with another's computers and allow the business to expand machine by machine over the years.

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But will that actually cut production cost? Well, seeing is believing, and the bureau has just set up a model machine shop of the future. It's already turning out for seventy five dollars, an item the Navy has been buying for fourteen hundred dollars. The item is this pipe connector covered with rubber.

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This connector, a sound insulator, as the Navy calls it, helps deaden the operating noise of a nuclear submarine. Thirty nine of these connectors are built into every nuclear submarines. The way things are now, the Navy has to stockpile many more of the connectors as replacements, since it takes industry so long to retool and make others.

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But now, in the bureau's factory, computers can order robots to leave one job cut another pipe connector in a matter of minutes. Production time goes down to forty five minutes, compared to fourteen hours. It now takes private industry. The bureau manufacturers these parts because the Navy, in an effort to cut procurement cost, is participating in the factory of the future.

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Soon the Navy will begin producing connectors this way in a California plan. Another part turned out by the bureau, is a pipe clamp also for a nuclear submarine. This clamp is cut by computer driven robot and sent by way of a robot truck to another workstation.

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The robots work together here to place the soon to be finished clamp on the platform and then re sand and deeper the final product. The clamp then goes to an inspection station, where a computer driven sensor will gently glide over each surface, ensuring that the parties within the tolerance allowed by the Navy if the sensor to text even the smallest deviation from the original plan, it rejects the clamp and then orders up corrections by the appropriate machine.

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It's an exacting process. If the cutter made a hole too large or too small, the computer will order the correction made instantaneously. When you hear the term quality control, you really find it here. The brains behind the robots are the computers, and the computers in this factory come from IBM's plan in Boca Raton.

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IBM is one of the forty two firms participating in the bureau's factory of Tomorrow. Together, these firms have donated four point five million dollars in manpower and machines help set a standard for the industry. The firm's learned they could achieve an industry wide standard and compete against other countries, primarily Japan, far sooner if they pool their knowledge and resources.

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Rex Nelson represented IBM during a session at the bureau's plant and Gaithersburg, Maryland, just outside Washington, D. C. IBM, internally for years, has been working on an integrated approach to much of its manufacturing. We found that's where most of the payoff comes from. It's the systems integration that these folks are working on so well and effectively that's going to make the difference.

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I think in America's manufacturing future, this ultra modern factory is an awesome place. Well, what exactly does it all mean to America's ability to compete in the world market place? Well, Japan has more robots than all the other countries combined, and it also leads other countries in the design and production of computer hardware.

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If the United States wants to regain its position as pacesetter in high technology, we've got a long way to go. And the stakes are very high. Doctor Jim Albus of the National Bureau of Standards. The Japanese are working very hard on standards, and the country whose standards become the world standards will have a competitive advantage.

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The team that put this factory together is obviously concerned about the standard of the product, but they're just as concerned about the standard of living for the worker. I think the real answer to that is that you lose jobs in industries which are obsolete, and you create jobs in industries where you're where you're productive and you're repetitive, particularly internationally competitive, and the jobs the real problem of jobs is in the obsolete industries, like shoes and steel and, um, those areas not in the high tech job, not in the high tech industries where we are in fact creating more jobs.

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Florida led the nation in the growth of high tech industry, and it's because our state is always looking over the next horizon in search of an opportunity. You see that spirit in the high tech council established in the governor's office. Like the National Bureau of Standards, the state office involves leaders from industry government in our schools.

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In fact, the National Bureau of Standards has already awarded the University of Florida a million dollar grant for research in robotics and computer aided manufacturing. If you'd like to visit this high tech factory, have your business get in touch with me at my office and we'll see that that can be arranged.

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Guess what the hack it's are doing Taking another cruise Know they've joined the Peace Corps? You're kidding. What in the world is the Peace Corps doing Peace Corps? It's creating food systems in Africa, building homes in Costa Rica and fighting malaria in Asia. It's teaching math and learning French.

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It's working side by side. It's been tough. But for twenty five years the Peace Corps has been making a difference in the world. My goodness, why? I had no idea. Peace Corps the toughest job you'll ever love. Welcome back. This is National Drug Awareness and Education Month.

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There's little question we're all more aware of the drug threat than ever before. Over the last few years, it's crawled closer and closer to our homes and our own lives. A year ago, most of us didn't even know what crack cocaine was. Now we know, and in the meetings I've held throughout Florida this year, it's clear to me the awareness has produced outrage in Fort Myers in Miami, Tallahassee, Sarasota, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Panama City.

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In Pensacola, I've heard people say the same thing. Enough communities just don't want to put up with poison on their streets and in their school. You really have to be impressed with what can be done when people get angry and then get to thinking and then get moving.

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There's no single formula that works everywhere, and not every community is as far along as they'd like to be. But it's a problem people are ready to deal with. In Orlando, for example, Chief Fred Roles displayed some of the weapons his forces confiscated from drug dealers the way they're responding in Orlando is to turn the table on those dealers with a sting operation.

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The Orlando police has made it very clear if you're out selling drugs, you may be selling to an undercover agent. If so, he'll get your money and he'll arrest you. If you're out buying drugs, you may be buying from an undercover agent, and if so, he's going to get your money and he's going to get your car.

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This is going to get the dealers off the streets and into the cells. Drugs claim many victims not only the ones who end up with poison in their body, but others who see drugs tearing up their families. Mrs. Gloria Summer Fields eighteen year old son Greg has been in the county jail waiting to be sentenced for stealing several thousand dollars from his parents and writing bad checks to finance his crack cocaine habit.

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Greg knows he needs treatment. He's asked us to write to the judge and to talk to the public defender in the state's attorney's office so that he gets at least eighteen months in a drug rehab prison, and the prison is only for eighteen to twenty one year olds.

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But They have a drug rehab center, a drug counselors. They have Alcoholics Anonymous, and they also have vote so that he could learn a trade while he's in jail. Greg had private treatment once an eight week stay that cost twenty eight thousand dollars. Unfortunately, it didn't work.

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I think he believes that he cannot be put out with society right now that he is not strong enough. The chemical cocaine rock cocaine is not out of the system. The urge is there. The desire is there, and he knows he's not strong enough and he needs all the help he can get to get over this.

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And we love him so we wouldn't want to help him. I suppose there's a natural tendency for parents to blame themselves when their Children do something wrong. But councillors for parents of drug abusers make a different case. I think every parent blames themselves when something happens to one of their Children, and Bruce and I were no exception.

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Guilt is very what where did I go wrong? What could I have done before my son? So that's the first thing that we were taught, that we were not to blame. We have two other Children that were fine, so we must have been doing something right.

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Mrs. Summerfield and her husband, Bruce, a minister in Naples, are examples of what the drug awareness and education movement is all about. Instead of hiding their problem, their sons crack cocaine addiction. They're speaking out about it. My husband is actively working with the drug program. He's, and the optimists have a same no program going into all the elementary schools in Southeast and Southwest border.

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We're trying to tell as many people as we can, and at times it's difficult. I don't like sometimes getting up in front of somebody saying my son is a drug addict, but I have to. I have to accept that, and I'm I'm accepting it. Some years ago, I saw a stage play that had a line in it that went something like this.

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Prison doors can swing both ways. The caskets have no hinges. That play was about medieval times when the world faced a different kind of play. The plague today is drugs. Greg, incidentally, was sentenced to twelve months in prison. The judge recommended he spend that time in the state Drug Rehabilitation Center then be placed on probation for four years.

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Well, that's our program for this month. I hope you'll join me again next time for another edition of the Lawton Child's update. Mhm. What? Mhm. Mhm. Okay. Mm. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Due to mhm two. Yeah, yeah.