‘Challenge’ Looks at What’s Working

Occasionally during his 4 1/2-hour report on the state of the nation, Hedrick Smith’s “Challenge to America” sounds as if it is making a clarion call that has never been heard before. The message, in a sentence: If the U.S. is to stay afloat in the stormy waters of global business competition, the nation must rethink its approach to education, training workers, business and government relations and the free market itself. Anything less, Smith asserts, spells economic and social disaster.

The four-part, two-evening report begins tonight (9-11 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and KPBS-TV Channel 15 and 8-10 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24) and concludes Tuesday (9-11:30 p.m. on KCET and KPBS and 8-10:30 p.m. on KVCR).

The only problem with this is that the themes of long-term planning, teamwork models and public-private sector cooperation are old news, even on television. The late guru of teamwork and corporate restructuring, W. Edwards Deming, sounded forth on the airwaves on just these topics (though Smith never mentions his name). Bill Clinton, whom Smith interviews in the concluding 30-minute segment, has a secretary of labor, Robert Reich, who made the similar-themed “Made in America?” for PBS in 1992.

What is new here is Smith’s explicit linking of successful models in Germany and Japan with new American approaches in education, job training and high-technology research. The recent Tokyo stock market collapse and grinding recessions in both of Smith’s model foreign countries--along with equally recent sales successes in the U.S. auto industry--might seem to undercut the report’s entire point. But as Clinton himself notes, such up-and-down economic blips shouldn’t hide long-term structural problems in the American economy.

Indeed, Germany and Japan may be better able to cope with their downturns, given the structures each country has in place. In the first and second parts (“Old Ways, New Game” and “The Heart of the Nation”), Japan’s Sharp Corp. is shown outstripping giant RCA in the revolutionary liquid crystal business, while Japanese and German students appear infinitely more prepared for work than their American counterparts.

In part three (“The Culture of Commerce”), it’s clear that classroom habits have carried over to the German and Japanese corporate boardrooms--but with big differences. While Japan provides a corporate “family” of mutual management-worker loyalties, Germany defuses conflicts by bringing labor into the boss’ office, with real voting power. But can any of this translate into American culture?

Smith is warily optimistic, showing in the final part (“Winning Strategies”) how Motorola remade its organization and is competing with Japanese products in Japan, and how Ford Motor Co. instilled German-like forms of worker involvement. Even more cheering are the looks at New York’s Central Park East Secondary School--using rigorous academic standards and training to produce college-bound inner-city students--and Wisconsin’s statewide apprentice program, which rescues mediocre students from hamburger-flipping and trains them for skilled, high-wage work.