[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 101 (Thursday, July 28, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          PIECES OF HUMAN CLAY

  Mr. BYRD. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I do not pretend to be a 
pedagogical expert, skilled educator, or a psychologist. However, I am 
a lifelong student, a man who loves the challenge of acquiring new 
knowledge, and I am a parent and grandparent, dedicated to bequeathing 
to the rising generation of Americans as much of our cultural, 
scientific, creative, and artistic heritage as one generation can pass 
on to another.
  Further, I am frankly alarmed that, in this age of television, 
affluence, and mass culture, many of our youth appear to be less 
competent in absorbing their heritage than their counterparts in prior 
generations were, and that, worse, American public school children are 
chronically ranking far below their contemporaries in many European and 
Asian societies in their mastery of academic subject after subject.
  Unless we call a halt to mediocrity in our school systems, unless we 
draw a decisive line in the educational sand now, and unless we demand 
concrete results and discernable improvement in the performance and 
achievement of our public educational systems, Mr. President, I fear 
for the future of our country, for the quality of life of the next 
generation of Americans, and, indeed, for the economic and political 
position of the United States in the fast approaching 21st century.
  Throughout the history of America, millions of our forefathers and 
mothers rested secure in a faith that America was providentially 
destined. They believed, as the Romans did, that their country was 
providentially destined for success as a nation and as a society--that, 
like unto the Israelites of the Old Testament, our immigrant ancestors 
had left foreign shores to plant new seeds and harvest abundant crops 
in this Promised Land. Indeed, taking their cues from that Old 
Testament, many of our ancestors believed that America, like the Chosen 
People of the Old Testament, enjoyed a sacred Covenant with Providence 
that guaranteed America's ongoing triumph, no matter the odds against 
them.
  Unfortunately, Mr. President, like the ``cows of Bashan'' mentioned 
in the Old Testament that took their ease in luxury and rested on their 
assumed privileged status, too many recent Americans appear to have 
forgotten that not only did our ancestors have faith in their 
destinies, but they also worked to guarantee the quality of those 
destinies for themselves and for their posterity.
  And in too many of our schools, students whose progenitors 
sacrificed, struggled, and suffered to win the privilege of obtaining 
the opportunity of getting a formal education--too many of these 
students today resent having to learn to read, having to learn 
mathematics, having to study science, having to learn to write, having 
to study history, and even having to go to school.
  Conversely, in country after country overseas, the future rivals of 
today's American school children hold their opportunities to be 
educated as a priceless heritage--indeed, the keys to their futures.
  Frankly, Mr. President, I am frustrated and angry that we have poured 
so many billions upon billions of dollars over the past half century 
into our schools systems, only to reap apparently lower and lower 
returns on those investments.
  I can remember the days, when I was in the House of Representatives, 
when there was great opposition to Federal aid to schools. It was a 
great issue in the country, a great issue in the Congress. But finally 
we decided we would march down that road. As I say, we have poured 
billions into education, and we are not seeing the results that were 
hoped for.
  I do not pretend to know exactly all that is wrong with American 
public education.

       If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, 
     chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' 
     palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own 
     instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be 
     done, than be one of the 20 to follow mine own teaching.

  But I want to share some of my perceptions and to explain my reasons 
for hoping that in the educational proposals contained within the 
legislation that we are considering now, perhaps something at last 
might be achieved to guarantee that the rising generation of American 
school children might reap some of the educational dividends and 
results that will be necessary for the survival in the international 
competition that, I guarantee, they will be facing in the years 2010, 
2025, 2040, and beyond.
  I think this legislation has been greatly improved by some of the 
amendments that have been offered and carried here, among which are the 
amendments by Mr. Simon, Mr. Jeffords, Mr. Gorton, and others.
  But I guarantee that in the decades to come, our children will be 
facing international competition that will curl their hair if they are 
unprepared to meet that competition.
       There are many events in the womb of time that will be 
     delivered.
  And so, our young people need to be prepared.
  Some generations ago, schools--and I can remember starting school in 
a two-room schoolhouse. Some generations ago, before my time, schools 
were for the privileged--largely the sons and daughters of the 
nobility, the wealthy merchant classes, and the professionals, both 
here and in Western Europe.
  Indeed, until relatively recently, reading, writing, science, and the 
arts were the domain of cultural, economic, and political elites.
  But the Calvinist fathers of New England, and prescient elders in 
other communities across a growing America, wrestled with the 
complacent and the selfish--the penurious and the shortsighted--to open 
up educational opportunities for more and more American children, 
regardless of the material circumstances of their families or the 
ethnic distinctiveness of their backgrounds.
  That was the impetus for public education in America--the desire to 
put all children on an equal footing as each boy and girl began his or 
her pilgrimage into maturity--for the good of the entire community and 
for the success of the whole country.
  Thus, children whose grandparents might have tended pigs--whose 
grandparents might have tended pigs for counts and landgrafs in 
Bavaria, or harvested grain for wealthy land owning gentry in the north 
of England--neither with any hope of advancement in society--those 
children, your parents, your forefathers and mine, learned, and 
trained, and disciplined themselves to become doctors and lawyers, 
scientists, and bankers, and even Senators and Presidents in this new 
country.
  Such achievements did not come without pains. But the men and women 
who exercised their privilege of going to school at public and 
community expense raised the United States of America to the pinnacle 
of world power, economic dominance, and material wealth.
  But somewhere along the line--there is an old song, I used to play it 
on the stringed instrument, ``Somewhere Along the Line''--somewhere 
along the line, learning for the sake of learning seems to have lost 
its appeal to certain pedagogues.
  Solon, who was one of those seven wise men of Greece, Solon the 
Lawgiver said, ``I grow old in the pursuit of learning.''
  Was it the siren writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who championed 
the theory of human perfectability through schooling and coddling? Was 
it John Dewey and John Dewey's apparently overenthusiastic disciples 
who sought to create a new religion and to educate out of children any 
supposed propensities to such archaic notions as ``sin'' and 
``depravity'' by substituting psychological tinkering for mastery of 
subjects and disciplined learning?
  Whatever its etiology, in the lifetimes of many here, schools that 
once taught rigor and excellence have been reduced to teaching children 
to ``feel good about themselves.'' In order not to assault tender young 
psyches, challenging textbooks featuring classic literature and 
increasingly sophisticated scholarship have been cast aside in behalf 
of sophomoric textbooks filled with pictures--not narrative, but 
pictures; we all like to look at pictures--``dumping down,'' the 
process is called--that depend too often on vulgar dialogue, ``street 
talk,'' slang, and even pornographic plots, all in the name of 
``realism,'' ``holding the students' interest,'' or ``preparing the 
kids for the real world.'' It is silly.
  Mr. President, civilization is a fragile treasure. the crumbling 
pyramids and collapsed temples of Ancient Egypt, the vine-smothered 
palaces and courts of the Yucatan, and the toppled pillars of Imperial 
Rome demonstrate how easily and how carelessly one or two generations 
of a culture can forever--forever lose and forfeit even the most 
elevated society.
  My hope is the educational reforms that we are considering in the 
legislation before us today is that just perhaps--just perhaps--we are 
not too tardy in setting America's educational system right before we, 
too, follow Ancient Egypt, the Mayans, and the Ancient Romans down the 
path of national decline and cultural suicide.
  My hope in the educational reforms in the legislation that we are 
considering is that, once again--once again, we might offer American 
school children textbooks that bristle--bristle--bristle with 
challenge, that provide insights and facts and truths that will wake up 
young minds to the magnitude of learning, that will chart the way to 
higher and higher study and deeper and deeper engagement with the 
mysteries of scholarship and research.
  Further, I want an end to the violence that is increasingly besetting 
schools across this country.
  No child who carries knives, pistols, and other weapons to school for 
the purpose of intimidating or bullying his fellow students, or for 
wreaking revenge on another student for some imagined slight or insult, 
or for punishing a girl friend for turning him down for a date--no 
student who brings weapons to school--deserves an education at taxpayer 
expense.
  Like churches, synagogues, and other places of worship, schools 
should be sacred precincts--``temples for the mind''--in which Truth is 
supreme and those who seek truth are free to learn, search, and expand 
their minds, without fear and without anxiety for their very lives.
  Hoodlums have turned some of America's schools into terror camps, 
with teachers living in fear for their lives and innocent children--
innocent children becoming casualties in scholastic ``free fire'' 
zones.
  Mr. President, I feel for the poor teachers who have to stand in 
today's classrooms and quake in fear that some hoodlums in the room are 
going to maim or assault and batter, or even kill, perhaps. How can one 
teach in such an atmosphere? How can students learn in such an 
atmosphere? Most of our students in the schools are wholesome, fine 
students. Most of them are there to learn.
  We hear too little about the students who are in the laboratories and 
in the libraries. Most of them are striving for excellence. But in such 
an atmosphere, they must be on nerve's edge, they must be cowered from 
fear of the bullies who might beat and batter them.
  Mr. President, in the legislation before us, we, in the name of the 
American people, are laying down the ultimatum: Either students leave 
their weapons at home and come to school to learn or they do not come 
to school at all.
  In this legislation, in large measure, we are struggling for 
America's future. We are struggling in the hope that America will, 
indeed, have a future. The most basic lesson that history teaches is 
that unless each generation is initiated into the truths that every 
past generation has learned, a civilization cannot expect to survive.
  Our schools are the kilns of our future. The hour is late, the rot is 
far advanced, ignorance is winning new battles for the minds and souls 
of children across our country. The Rubicon is before us.
  For the sake of our children, for the sake of our culture, for the 
sake of the continued promise of America, let us give American 
education the therapy that it requires before a new Dark Age descends 
further on our schools, and generations of men yet unborn some day 
wander among our cities, great monuments and university ruins, musing 
at the people who once lived in these skyscrapers and asking why 
America fell.
  Mr. President,

       I took a piece of plastic clay
       And idly fashioned it one day
       And as my fingers pressed it still
       It moved and yielded to my will.
       I came again when days were past,
       The bit of clay was hard at last.
       The form I gave it, it still bore,
       And I could change that form no more.

       I took a piece of living clay
       And gently formed it day by day.
       And molded with my power and art
       A young child's soft and yielding heart.
       I came again when years were gone,
       He was a man I looked upon.
       He still that early impress wore,
       And I could change him nevermore.

  That is what we are talking about: pieces of human clay.
  Mr. President, I have only a few minutes remaining. I have two 
amendments which I shall offer--they are to be accepted--if I can 
briefly explain them.
  One of the amendments would require that ``the Secretary shall 
collect data to determine the frequency, seriousness, and incidence of 
violence in elementary and secondary schools in the States. The 
Secretary shall collect the data using, wherever appropriate, data 
submitted by the States pursuant to subsection (b)(2)(B).''
  The amendment would require that ``Not later than January 1, 1998, 
the Secretary shall submit to the Congress a report on the data 
collected under this subsection, together with such recommendations as 
the Secretary determines appropriate, including the estimated costs for 
implementing any recommendation.''
  Mr. President, we really do not have the data on which to base 
legislation and chart our course. As we look to the future, as we look 
to future legislative actions, we need data on what is occurring in our 
schools. We need the kind of information that the Secretary would 
acquire to conduct an evaluation of the national impact of programs 
that are assisted under title V of this bill. The amendment would 
expand the evaluation to include all other recent and new initiatives 
to combat violence in schools. We cannot afford to continue programs 
that are not working. At the same time, if programs are having a 
significant effect on reducing school-related violence, we need to know 
that, too, so that we can build upon their success.
  And to continue to effectively assess the problem of violence in 
schools and determine the scope of the problem, this amendment would 
require, as I say, the Secretary to collect data to determine the 
frequency, the seriousness and the incidence of violence in the 
elementary and secondary schools.
  The last major study of violence in schools was the former National 
Institute of Education's Violent Schools/Safe Schools Study 
commissioned by Congress and issued in 1978.
  The other amendment provides that ``No funds shall be made available 
under this act to any local educational agency unless such agency has a 
policy requiring referral to the criminal justice or juvenile 
delinquency system of any student who brings a firearm or weapon to a 
school served by such agency.''
  And ``For the purpose of the section, the terms `firearm' and 
`school' have the same meaning given to such terms in section 921(a) of 
title 18, United States Code.''
  This is a serious problem that the amendment is attempting to 
address, the problem of guns and other weapons appearing in the 
classrooms and hallways of our Nation's schools. The amendment would 
require every local educational agency to establish policy requiring 
school officials to refer to the criminal justice or juvenile 
delinquency system any student who brings a firearm to school. 
Possession of a weapon on school property is a crime, and when a crime 
occurs, the police ought to be notified.
  Unfortunately, Joseph Maddox, Chief of Police for the Penn Township 
Police Department noted in the winter 1994 edition of School Safety 
Magazine:

       Often when crimes occur at school, the decision is made to 
     address the problem by means of school discipline, as opposed 
     to dealing with the criminal justice system.

  School discipline is fine, but it is simply not enough. Every 
thinking American should be outraged by the guns in our schools. And 
even if the police choose not to make a report or decline to submit the 
case for prosecution because of the nature of the offense, the police 
should, nevertheless, be notified.
  Individuals who bring dangerous weapons to schools are committing a 
crime and they ought to be dealt with by our juvenile or criminal 
justice system. To do anything less is to send a message of tolerance 
for breaking the law and of a less-than-serious attitude about the 
safety of other students. This type of odious behavior cannot be 
tolerated, and we, in this Chamber, have an obligation to do something 
to ensure that it is not tolerated. We must get the guns out of our 
schools, and while we are about it, we must also get the individuals 
that bring the guns out as well. My amendments would help to accomplish 
both goals.
  So let us think about preserving the good apples in the barrel, not 
just about preventing further spoilage of the bad ones.
  Mr. President, one of the most important things we can provide to our 
young people--those who will soon take up the reins of leadership in 
our country--is the ability to obtain an education. We owe our young 
people that. We owe them the chance to learn in a school free from guns 
and free from violence. We owe our teachers relief from the fear of 
being shot while they are simply trying to teach a class.
  We have come to a sad state of affairs when metal detectors have to 
be installed at the schoolhouse door. Let us end this climate of 
violence in our schools by ending the tolerance for lawbreaking 
students. Let the police deal with these youthful criminals so that our 
teachers and the good students in our schools do not have to.

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