[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 85 (Thursday, June 25, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H5300]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                LIBERALS' RECORD ON EDUCATION IN AMERICA

  (Mr. CHABOT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. CHABOT. Madam Speaker, as a former schoolteacher myself, I would 
like to review the liberals' record on the issue of education in this 
country.
  In the 1960s, the liberals decided to ``dumb down'' the curriculum 
and now across the country academic rigor is absent from many of our 
public schools. The predictable result is that student achievement in 
many areas has plummeted.
  The liberals also decided that self-esteem was in and that actual 
knowledge was out. The liberals embraced bogus, faddish teaching 
methods and produced a generation of children who never learned to 
read.
  And now the liberals oppose legislation we recently passed here in 
Congress which would allow parents to put their own money in accounts 
and not to pay tax on the money in those accounts for educating their 
children, kindergarten through high school. They say it would somehow 
hurt the public schools.
  Baloney. Let us make it a little easier for parents, particularly 
middle-class parents, to provide a quality education for their 
children.

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