[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 137 (Monday, October 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H8435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Redmond). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Souder] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I want to finish this point, because in my 
kids' own high school in Indiana, a survey was passed out in class 
through the high school yearbook that led me to get upset in my first 
term, and we passed some legislation here, but it concerned questions 
asked about anal sex, among other things, and it was one of the most 
offensive surveys I have ever read, even worse than this, even though 
this is probing even deeper into religious beliefs. But in Indiana the 
school board responded. They changed the rules of the school and they 
took back the test.
  The parent of the child who was in this class is taking it up with 
her school board and it can have an impact. When something happens in 
our local schools, we can try to do something about it and try to 
affect change. But when something happens in Washington, we are 
virtually powerless to change that. I say that as a United States 
Congressman. We are virtually powerless. It is very frustrating.
  And if we let Washington take over the national testing, it is a 
frightening scenario ahead.
  Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield, I just want to conclude 
what we talked about the last hour. I applaud the gentleman for going 
into those other areas and pointing out that it is not just the one 
example that I chose of math, which is what the President is proposing, 
math and science, but indeed in other areas it goes into far more 
subjective subjects, far more invasive and intrusive questions, but 
importantly, as the gentleman pointed out, those invasions, those 
abuses, those trends occur at the States level where we have a chance 
to deal with them.
  I just want to conclude this hour, or the hour and now 5 minutes we 
picked up, by saying I hope that our colleagues listening realize that 
it is not that we do not care about the education of our children. I 
know the gentleman has young children both in high school, grade school 
and in college, I guess, and I have mentioned earlier in the hour I 
have young children. I care very much about their education. And as I 
said, I resent it when the other side says Republicans do not care 
about education or Republicans do not care about public education. I 
care deeply about public education. And as I said, I went all the way 
through public education myself and both my children are in public 
education.
  I hope that those listening understand that we can deeply believe in 
education, we can deeply believe in public education, and we can be 
very concerned and very, very much opposed to national testing, a 
sound-good motherhood and apple pie idea, because of the dangerous 
consequences.
  What the gentleman said is exactly right. If we have tests written in 
Fort Wayne, Indiana, or in Phoenix, Arizona, or wherever it might be, 
we can deal with the problems that might creep into those. But if they 
are written in Washington, D.C., in a mindless bureaucracy which is 
hard to penetrate and where, quite frankly, only the views of the most 
deeply imbedded, entrenched educational bureaucracy are heard, I think 
we will lose control of our kids' education.
  I do want to point out that this is a critical issue; that it is in a 
conference report. There are members in the United States Senate 
mentioned in Lynne Cheney's article who are fighting against the Senate 
position on this issue, who agree with us that as good sounding as 
national testing is, it is, in fact, bad for education in America. And 
I would urge our colleagues to talk with their friends on the other 
side and try to get them to accede to the House position on this issue 
and let us study this issue further and make sure we do not write a 
national test.
  I also want to point out that having read Lynne Cheney's column, 
which mentioned Steven Leinwand, I wanted to find his actual article. I 
have the actual article and it does in fact say it is time to 
acknowledge that continuing to teach pencil and paper computational 
algorithms to our students is not only unnecessary but 
counterproductive and dangerous.
  He goes on to say that learning long division and its computational 
cousins, meaning subtraction and multiplication, is an obsolete notion.
  These are rather shocking notions that are written here. I also 
wanted to point out that several times in my remarks I talked about 
mathematics association with which Mr. Leinwand is associated and it is 
called the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and they have 
already written a national assessment which has reduced the math 
portion of the exam where we do computational skills by 20 percent 
already.
  These are not us talking about crazy ideas that some individual 
extreme person has. These are trendy ideas that are catching on across 
America and could be dangerous if they in fact take hold and are 
embodied into a single national test.
  Mr. SOUDER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the 
gentleman from Arizona for bringing the attention of this country to 
the math standards.

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