The Empire Gives Back

Through his foundation, ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas is promoting innovative ways to use technology in education

George Lucas, the film maker who created the immensely successful Star Wars saga, is working on two visions simultaneously: one of an imaginary galaxy long ago and far, far away — and one of a very real future in every classroom right here on Earth.

As Mr. Lucas, 53, puts the finishing touches on the first of three “prequels” to his blockbuster trilogy, the educational foundation he created in 1991 has just released a video documentary that gives a glimpse of his vision of “Edutopia” — his term for an ideal educational system where technology is ubiquitous.

Mr. Lucas’s interest in using technology to advance education is exciting to grant makers, who say that, as a good storyteller, he has a knack for getting people to listen — and that, as a celebrity, he has the clout to make things happen.

“A lot of Americans believe the schools are failing and that they can’t be made better,” says Andrew Blau, director of the communications-policy program at the Benton Foundation, a Washington organization that has an interest in technology and education. “George Lucas is a man who can get us to pay attention, and he wants us to pay attention to technology and classrooms and how to make that effective for education.”

The Lucas foundation has many colleagues in school reform. In 1995 alone, almost 7 per cent of all foundation grant dollars went to elementary and secondary education, and 11 per cent of that amount was earmarked for projects intended to overhaul teaching.

But missing in those efforts and in national debates about school reform, Mr. Lucas has said — and observers agree — is a picture of what a great educational system would look like. Filling that void, he decided, was a matter of personal responsibility — a major theme in many of his films, which include American Graffiti, Willow, and the three Indiana Jones movies. (Mr. Lucas has adopted three children, two of them after his marriage ended in divorce.)

“We want to show people what the possibilities are,” says Patty Burness, the Lucas foundation’s executive director, who was chief of staff for Bill Honig, California’s former State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

For Mr. Lucas, who was unavailable to be interviewed because of his film commitments, illuminating what works is one of the main goals of the foundation, says his sister Kate Nyegaard, a member of the fund’s board and of her local school board in Modesto, Cal., where the Lucas family was raised.

“What he wants to do is to make the whole public — the parents, the government people, and the business people — aware of where we need to go and that we all need to be involved in educating our children,” says Ms. Nyegaard.

A down-to-earth sensibility pervades the 3,000-acre Skywalker Ranch, nestled here in the hills of Marin County just north of San Francisco.

The lushly wooded property, with Victorian-style buildings and a fruit and vegetable garden all designed by Mr. Lucas, is the headquarters for Mr. Lucas’s group of licensing, merchandising, special-effects, and sound companies, as well as for his foundation. Dress is casual, and people seem caught up in their work, not in maintaining Hollywood appearances.

An operating foundation, the Lucas fund makes no grants of its own. On most days, its seven full-time staff members are busy gathering and disseminating information about educational innovations around the country, encouraging the use of technology in classrooms, and getting others involved in school-reform efforts.

Mr. Lucas is worth an estimated $2-billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him the 69th wealthiest person in America. He has funneled about $5.5-million in cash and in-kind donations from his licensing, motion-picture, and television company into his foundation since 1992. And he and Lucasfilm have made numerous other gifts, almost always anonymously. No one would disclose how much has been given away by Mr. Lucas or by the Lucas empire.

In addition to supporting the work of Mr. Lucas’s foundation, the company’s gifts benefit children in the San Francisco Bay area, Lucasfilm officials said.

One of the few gifts that Mr. Lucas has made publicly was to the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California, from which he graduated in 1968. When the gift was made, in 1983, it was reported as $5.7-million to help build a six-building complex, but Lucasfilm and U.S.C. officials would not confirm the amount, adhering to Mr. Lucas’s requests for privacy.

Mr. Lucas’s gift to the school was more than just money, says Elizabeth Daily, dean of the School of Cinema-Television. He persuaded many other people from the entertainment industry to make gifts, including his fellow film maker Steven Spielberg and the former talk-show host Johnny Carson.

“I consider him the ideal philanthropist,” Ms. Daily says. “He understands the nature of fund raising and is willing to help in soliciting. He’s really a partner in keeping this place running.”

Mr. Lucas, a member of the school’s Board of Councilors, an advisory group, since 1991, invests much of his free time and energy at the school. He returns to U.S.C. several times each year to meet with students about their film-making projects and studies and to discuss the direction the film school should be going. Says Ms. Daily, “He is very much a guiding force behind everything that happens here.”

The man who wrote, directed, and produced Star Wars, the biggest money maker in U.S. box-office history, did not find his passion for learning until he enrolled in college, after having been involved in a near-fatal car accident at age 18 that prompted him to re-evaluate his life and to become a better student. His frustration and boredom in classrooms as a boy are what shaped his dream of making learning exciting for children from the very first day of school.

His work has always had educational messages within it. His television series The Indiana Jones Chronicles, for example, was meant to excite kids about history and get them interested in biographies of important people, says his sister, Ms. Nyegaard.

And Mr. Lucas, who delighted moviegoers around the world in the 1970s and 1980s with the most far-reaching computerized special effects they had ever seen, believes that technology has the power to stimulate learning like few other tools can.

“I long ago became convinced of the power of new technologies to excite people’s imagination,” Mr. Lucas has said. “Technology is the one change that exists today that will facilitate a revolution in the learning process.”

He has already put some of his vision into practice at the National Geographic Society Education Foundation, where he served as a trustee for four years, until 1992. Partly because of his participation, the Washington organization’s assets multiplied and its programs grew more technologically sophisticated.

One of the teaching tools he helped develop was Geographic Television, or GTV, a laser-video disc that was released in the early 1990s to help kids learn American history through video images, maps, and photographs.

“He made a major contribution by really showing us the possibilities of technology for the classroom and for homes,” says Dale Petrosky, the society’s senior vice-president for public service.

Originally, Mr. Lucas thought that his own foundation would focus on developing software and other technological prototypes for learning. The foundation even created a makeshift classroom in its offices, then brought in kids to test computer equipment and software to see how they learned.

But it soon became clear, says Ms. Burness, that developing software was not the best way to improve education. For one, the foundation could not duplicate what it was like to learn in a school setting. For another, the students could not take the technology back to their classrooms. Educators and other advisers told the fund “that software alone would not change the educational system,” recalls Ms. Burness.

So the foundation decided to create a dramatic film that would show a perfect educational system. But that project was called off when Mr. Lucas, who had begun writing the three new movies for the Star Wars series, found that he could not put in the time to direct the feature film.

The Lucas foundation had been convening educators, business leaders, and foundation and charity officials for a series of meetings over a two-year period. After hearing their recommendations, it decided to produce a documentary that would showcase innovative public-school efforts.

Mr. Lucas hired Gerardine Wurzburg, who won an Academy Award for Educating Peter, to direct the film. The end result was Learn and Live, a documentary narrated by the actor Robin Williams that highlights innovative programs at four schools and in one school district.

The straightforward film, which has no technological razzle-dazzle itself, includes comments from educators like Howard Gardner, a Harvard University professor, and corporate leaders like Bill Gates, as well as from Gen. Colin Powell, now chairman of America’s Promise, a non-profit group trying to mobilize volunteers to help children.

It highlights a class in Chula Vista, Cal., that uses interactive video technology to connect kids with scientists at a local university to study insects under an electron microscope; a school-to-work program in Boston that helps a teen-ager become an electrocardiograph technician; a school just north of Seattle that incorporates interdisciplinary subjects in its curriculum; a family support-services program in San Diego where kids can go for help and advice from full-time social workers and psychologists; and a school district in West Des Moines that keeps its schools open after hours for neighborhood programs.

Approximately 100,000 free copies of the video are being distributed to educators, charity officials, and members of Congress, along with a 300-page resource book that builds on the programs depicted in the film. In addition, the video is available for rent, free, at Blockbuster video stores nationwide. The full text of the book is also available on the foundation’s World-Wide Web site (http://glef.org), along with such other information as a listing of education conferences, links to the Web sites of other groups working in education, the foundation’s Edutopia newsletter, and video footage, with sound bites, of Mr. Lucas himself.

The video has not been widely disseminated yet, but some of those who have seen it disagree about how useful it will be as a tool for education reform. Some charity officials complain that the one-hour film is too long to sit through and that it is geared to people who are unfamiliar with education reform, as opposed to educators, who need new material and ideas. But others praise it as the most comprehensive video on education ever.

Dee Dickinson, the chief executive officer of New Horizons for Learning, a small non-profit group in Seattle that is also trying to foster innovative learning strategies, says she has been waiting for years for someone as visible as George Lucas to pick up the cause.

Ms. Dickinson says the foundation’s work to disseminate information on enterprising classroom programs is highly valuable because good efforts are not always brought to the attention of others.

“There are a whole lot of wonderful things happening that often are not known about except in the local environment,” she says.

Pat Edwards, associate executive director of the National Center for Community Education, a non-profit teacher-training organization in Flint, Mich., believes that the film will be an excellent motivational tool.

Ms. Edwards, who is working on loan to the center from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, says she has shown parts of the film in training programs that she runs and that teachers have come away inspired.

“A video isn’t going to change everything overnight,” Ms. Edwards says. “But this one gets to the heart of the matter in enough cases where a teacher could say, or someone watching it could say, ‘Now that makes sense, but that’s not how I do things.’ ”

She adds, “And that might be one of the first steps toward change.”

Mr. Lucas, who has not yet determined what big project the foundation will take on after its work with the video is complete, believes that the most important thing he can do is convince people that meaningful reform is possible, says Ms. Nyegaard.

In a scene from The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda — the Jedi Master who is training the young hero Luke Skywalker — uses his mental powers to lift Luke’s spaceship from a murky swamp. To this feat, Luke says, “I don’t believe it.” Yoda replies, “That is why you fail.”