[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 14, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H966-H970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      CHARACTER EDUCATION IN OUR SCHOOLS: AN INNOVATION THAT WORKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Isakson). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Etheridge) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, this evening I want to talk with my 
colleagues about the future. As I talk about the future, I want to talk 
about the children of this country, because they truly are our future.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about education, 
particularly an effort in education called character education. We talk 
about a lot of things that work and things that do not work; but as my 
colleagues know, before I came to the people's House to serve in this 
body, I was the State superintendent of schools in the State of North 
Carolina. As I have told many of my colleagues from time to time, there 
are a lot of things in education that a lot of us who work in it, if we 
are honest with ourselves, do not know a great deal about when we do do 
some of the things that work and a lot of the things that do not work. 
I happen to know firsthand that character education can make a 
difference to teach our children values and make sure that our students 
are well rounded and prepared to become good citizens.
  In 1989 when I took over as State superintendent, we did a survey of 
about 25,000 students across our State, and I was quite alarmed at some 
of the results we got back. About 37 percent of the students said that 
they did not respect their fellow students nor their teachers, and it 
was quite obvious from that data that something needed to be done.
  We pulled together teachers, administrators, members of the clergy. 
We pulled together members from the bench and we did an extensive study 
for about a year and a half, almost 2 years, and came up with what we 
called ethics education. We put together some principles, and 
ultimately that evolved into character education. It was later adopted 
by the State board of education and then the North Carolina general 
assembly in 1995; and we received a grant in 1995 from the U.S. 
Department of Education to begin a process in three of our school 
districts, three of the larger ones, incidentally, Wake County, 
Cumberland County, and Mecklenberg County to pilot character education.
  Now, across my congressional district, school leaders have developed 
character education initiatives that really are making a difference for 
stronger schools and better communities. Wake County, as I just 
mentioned, was one of the early leaders. Not only were they a leader by 
receiving the funds and initiating the project and having community 
meetings, because this truly is based at the school level and the 
community level; but they have become a leader through their innovative 
effort that they call Uniting for Character.

  In that process, there are a number of principles that they focus on 
and that they come together on, which are respect, citizenship, justice 
and fairness, honesty, caring, respect and trustworthiness are the 
core; and each community must develop those issues that they believe 
in. What we recommend is that the educators, the parents, the business 
community, all in the community come together and work together 
collaboratively to come up with those core issues that they want to 
use.
  In Johnston County, another county in the district, they have come 
together and done theirs. The principal of Selma Elementary School, a 
school which I visited just a few weeks ago, attributes 59 fewer 
suspensions during the 1995-1996 school year to their character 
education program. They also attribute the fact that they have had 
academic growth, tremendous academic growth over the years and again 
this year, and I visited that school again to see what kind of progress 
they were making. They again are showing progress as a result of 
character education. It is not a program that teachers have to struggle 
with as another addition to their already crowded school day. It is 
integrated in the curriculum in the standard course of study that we 
use in North Carolina, and it is taught along with everything else they 
do, and I will talk about that more in just a few moments.
  Mr. Speaker, some of my colleagues and certainly others across the 
country may have seen the CBS News profile that was done several months 
ago on one of the successful character education programs in the Nash 
Rocky Mount school system, Baskerville Elementary School, a school that 
really was having a difficult time. They were having problems with 
truancy, they were having problems with discipline, their academics 
were suffering, and under the leadership of a dynamic principal named 
Anne Edge, she took this on, she got her staff involved, she got the 
community involved, and she literally indoctrinated the children in 
that school, and it is working well.
  I visited there several weeks ago, and I can tell my colleagues as a 
result of that program being implemented properly and being supported 
by the community, supported by the central office staff and the local 
school board, that is one public school that has turned around and is 
making a difference and it has become infectious. It is working all 
across Nash Rocky Mount school system in North Carolina.
  This morning, Mr. Speaker, I had the opportunity to visit Tramway 
Elementary School in Lee County, another school in my district where 
character education really fills the entire community with hope. I went 
into that school this morning, and I was so pleased to see the number 
of parents who were there. They were there participating, active in the 
school. They had other members of the school faculty there, but the 
impressive part of it was what was happening with the students. The 
young people in that classroom gave reports, probably half the class 
got up and read reports and shared with me and with the others present 
what character education had done, what a difference it had made, and 
the different character traits that

[[Page H967]]

they had picked up as a result of reading such books over the last 
several months as Charlotte's Web and any other number of books that 
they had been assigned to read as special reading projects. That is 
what making good citizens is all about.

  When we have good citizens in the classroom, we have good citizens in 
the school; and it flows over into the community, and it goes home with 
the children. They are reinforcing in Tramway Elementary and 
Baskerville Elementary and schools all across the second district, and 
certainly across North Carolina, what parents are teaching at home; and 
in some cases, children are taking it home and reinforcing it with 
parents and really helping parents understand.
  I was in Combs Elementary School in Wake County, one of the first 
schools I visited talking about this issue of character education and 
the bill that I introduced on February 16 entitled character education, 
or Character Counts in the 21st Century. We have in that school 
children speaking languages from probably about 12 to 14 different 
countries. It was amazing how they were sharing and helping one 
another, talking about these issues of character that brings them 
together, that helps those children be better students academically and 
better students in terms of sharing within that school environment 
being good citizens.
  Mr. Speaker, character education works because it teaches our 
children to see the world through a moral lens. Children learn that 
actions do have consequences, and if we deal with it at an early age 
with early intervention, we will see a difference not only in our 
classrooms, but in our communities and across this country, and many of 
the challenges that we are facing together we will not have to face in 
the future. Yes, we will continue to face the challenges in the adult 
community for years to come, but we need to get back to those 
principles that we talked about many years ago, and character education 
certainly works. It works when teachers work with parents and with 
children and with the entire community to instill a spirit of a shared 
responsibility.
  That is why character education is so important, if we can get it on 
issues like this that are important to the community. Education is a 
shared responsibility. I try to remind my colleagues here and in every 
speech I give back home, education starts in the home; and if there is 
no education in the home, the challenge of teachers is almost 
insurmountable. How in the world, if we cannot teach one child or two 
children at home, do we expect a teacher to take the responsibility of 
30? It is a shared responsibility.
  When we talk about character education and we emphasize those values, 
as I talked about earlier, of courage, and certainly courage is 
important in everything we do; good judgment, as we talk to children; 
integrity in our teaching every day in the various courses, whether it 
be math, whether it be history; kindness, in the things that children 
do for one another, and we reward those things. It is one thing to be 
punished; it is another thing to be rewarded when one does something 
good.
  Children learn very quickly in life, if they get rewarded for doing 
good things, they will do good things again. And if they are not 
rewarded, and all they see is punishment and the dark side of life, I 
can tell my colleagues it will be difficult. Early intervention works. 
Kindness. Perseverance. We can teach it without having it laid on to 
something else. We can do it in the course of what we are teaching 
every day. How we respect one another. We respect other's property; we 
respect the school property, and it carries over into the community 
where young people work with their brothers and sisters, where they do 
it on the job. Self-discipline. Self-discipline is an important value. 
These are principles we can agree on. They are things that the 
community decides they want to do. It brings the PTAs together with the 
teachers, with the community interest. It is important.
  As a father of two public school teachers, my heart aches for the 
victims of recent school violence. I can assure my colleagues that not 
only do the parents hurt, but so do all of those folks who work with 
children, whether it was in their school or not, because it affects 
them. The scars are there.
  So rather than engaging in those divisive debates and partisan 
posturing, I call on my colleagues in this Congress on both sides of 
the aisle to pass progressive innovations that work, things like 
character education. It is not one-upsmanship, even though I introduced 
it on February 16. It is going to take both sides of the aisle, 
Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, working together 
to make a difference.
  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield to my colleague from New York who 
has really been a leader not only on this issue of character education 
but in school construction and in the areas of education.

                              {time}  2100

  Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), for all his good works 
and especially in introducing this piece of legislation. I think this 
is, I say to the gentleman, in all honesty, long overdue. We have to go 
back to teaching civics. We have to go back to teaching responsibility. 
We have go back to teaching on self-worth.
  How can a child have respect for others when the child does not even 
respect himself or herself? That is what this legislation, I believe, 
is attempting to do and will do teaching respect, citizenship, I will 
just list them, justice and fairness, honesty, caring, responsibility, 
trustworthiness. That almost sounds like the Boy Scout oath that I 
recollect as a child, but things that I think have been lost 
unfortunately, and not only reflective in schools, but just in general.
  We see it on television. We see it in the movies, and that is what 
the children are exposed to today. They are not getting enough, I do 
not believe, of that attention on these issues in the classroom.
  I do not understand what we are afraid of. I do not know what it is 
we are afraid of by instilling these into children, that is what is 
going to make them better individuals when they get older.
  Going back again, as I said before, we cannot expect these children 
to have respect for others when they do not respect themselves. We see 
what is happening in our schools today. We see the violence that is 
coming out of our schools today and what is happening in schools, a 6-
year-old child being shot to death by another 6-year-old child. It is 
incredible, incredible, but it is existing. It is happening.
  Mr. Speaker, we have to do something about it. I am a strong 
proponent of gun control. I think we need to do something about that, 
but I think we have to do more than simply gun control. Instilling 
values, again, into children is really where we have to go.
  And I say to the gentleman, you know how much I have been working 
with you on the issue of school modernization. This is a part of school 
modernization, school modernization and construction. We have to do 
more than build new schools and modernize those schools.
  We have to build the character of the children that we are educating 
in those schools. We do have a responsibility. We do have to provide a 
seat for those children.
  In my district, as the gentleman knows, School Districts 24 and 30 in 
New York City are in the top three most overcrowded school districts in 
the City in New York, the most overcrowded school district in the 
country.
  We have over a million students in that school district. The average 
age of a school building in New York City is 55 years of age, and one 
out of every five is over 75 years of age.
  We are teaching children in classrooms and schools that were built at 
the beginning of the last century. And as the gentleman was pointing 
out on the poster there, the issue of caring, what message are we 
sending back to our children when we do not give them the proper tools 
that they need to learn, to take it a step further, to prepare them for 
their life, to have a proper job, a pensionable job, to have the 
ability to invest.
  Unless we instill in them the virtues that the gentleman is 
suggesting we do today, we are in deep, deep trouble. We have to go 
back to the way we used to do things I think, to new, modernized 
classrooms and to new schools, but to go back to the basics. I think 
that is where we have been lost.

[[Page H968]]

  I want to thank the gentleman for all of his hard work and leadership 
on this issue.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Reclaiming my time just one moment please. The 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) was talking about these things of 
school modernization; that is so critically important. I was in a 
school this morning that I was talking about and that is in Lee County 
in my district. It is a relatively new school within the last 2 years.
  You can tell all the difference in the world when you go into the new 
school. It was a new building. They had moved from an old building into 
a new building. There was a corridor in the middle of the building that 
was open, one of the parents as a memorial to his mother, I believe it 
was, had planted flowers and kept them on a regular basis in planters, 
just a gorgeous area where children could go during the day, a little 
respite to get away for a child that goes to that school who may come 
from a home where there are no flowers, from a home where there is no 
caring for flowers.
  Schools need to be safe havens for all children. It is important to 
teach all of these character traits, but for us as adults, as the 
gentleman has pointed out, it is very important that we live up to 
those. Children are a lot smarter than we give them credit.
  I was listening to those children this morning when they went through 
talking about the character traits they had learned from each book they 
had read. They were seated on the floor in a carpeted classroom that 
was new and fresh. And it was nice.
  Mr. Speaker, I could not help but think as I walked away what a 
difference it would make in this country if every child, every child in 
every community had a nice, spacious classroom, well lighted, well 
supplied with the resources that the teachers needed. And there was 
just an outstanding teacher there. It is a lot easier to recruit 
quality people in a quality facility and that goes to the point the 
gentleman was making. I would yield.
  Mr. CROWLEY. It is a great point. I think maybe all too often we 
forget about those who are entrusted with an incredibly difficult job, 
but a so important job, and that is teaching our young.
  We forget sometimes about the lack of resources that they have. We 
forget that they are also in those overcrowded classrooms; that they 
are called upon to perform duties without the proper resources, and in 
those same Archaean schools, they have their hands full.
  Some may say what are we doing now, we are asking them to not only 
teach them math and science and history and reading, we have to 
transform them into mothers and fathers as well.
  We are not really asking them to, mothers and fathers have a 
responsibility, but it is enhanced and reinforced by teachers. It is an 
incredible responsibility they have, but one we ought to cherish more 
as a society. I do not quite frankly think we do enough.
  I have, as the gentleman knows, a 6-month-old son at home. Every day 
I just take pride and joy in looking at him develop. He is 6 months 
now. In 6 more months he will be a year. It is not too far from now 
that he is going to be going to kindergarten and first grade. I am 
concerned about what environment he is going to be in and other 
children like him are going to be in.
  It has changed my life incredibly, but it has also opened my eyes up 
in many respects to what we have to do, this Congress, individual 
States and local governments, but especially this Congress, to make 
sure that my son and other children like him have all that they can 
have to make the best of their lives.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman. When we think 
about it, I went into two schools today and last week I was in two 
others talking with children, school administrators, looking, 
listening, seeing what was going on.
  Sometimes I am not real sure I am hearing what I hear, but I hear 
people say, it is not the Federal government's role, it is somebody 
else's role. We do not need to be doing this or doing that.
  The gentleman was talking about his child who is 6 months now. I 
remember when we had one in elementary PTA and one in middle school PTA 
and one in high school PTA. It has changed our lives.
  The point I want to make in talking about this whole role of 
education and who has responsibility, all of us do. There is a Federal, 
State, and local role. There is a parent's role and there is a 
community role.
  I have never, in all the years I have been going into schools, 8 as a 
State superintendent and years before that as a county commissioner, a 
State legislator, and now a Congressman, I have never had a child nor 
an administrator nor a teacher ask me whether the money came from the 
Federal, State, or local. They just knew they did not have enough.
  Even in some of the nicer schools we go into, and it is true in my 
State and I assume it is across the country, as the gentleman talked 
about earlier, these people are there because they care. They work 
hard. They take our most precious possessions, our children, and they 
work hard at educating them. But they have never asked me who provided 
the money. They do not really care. They just do not have enough.
  I do not know of any PTA that is not selling something today or maybe 
having a fund-raising project to buy some resources for the school, 
because they in many cases are short something, copying paper or 
whatever it may be. The reason they do it is because they care. They 
care. And I care, as the gentleman cares. I hope more of our colleagues 
will care on both sides of the aisle, and make sure that we do not get 
into partisan rhetoric of whether or not character education is in or 
whether or not we put money into school buildings or whether we put 
counselor money in or special education funds. We will never have 
enough resources to meet all the needs. We recognize that.
  But as the gentleman pointed out, the commitment of caring and 
putting the resources we can will send a powerful signal that we will 
support those people who every day go in, and a lot of folks say at 8 
and get off at 3, but it is not so any more. That is not so. Many of 
them show up at 6 and 7 for bus duty and a lot of other duty. At the 
end of the day when the children leave, they are still there tutoring 
or having a lot activities in the evenings, or PTAs.

  They are long hours for not the kind of pay that we ought to be 
giving them for the most precious thing we have in this country, and 
that is our children.
  Mr. CROWLEY. I think the gentleman is absolutely right. I would also 
add that teaching these subjects in any which way that the curriculum 
will be developed, and I understand through the gentleman's legislation 
it would vary from school district to school district, and it could be 
done with the cooperation of businesses and local entities that would 
be able to come in and work on it as well, but I think in many 
respects, in many ways, by addressing these issues in a classroom, we 
can start to see through to some of the troubled students, and realize 
a little earlier some of the children who may not be coming around, who 
may still be outside the pale here, and get them the professional help 
they may need to bring them back in, as well.
  Quite often really for children their first exposure to the general 
public and to other children outside the family is really in school; 
social development, where they really begin to do that is in school, 
and their first exposure. I think teachers more often than parents are 
in a position to see that these children interact with those who they 
may not be familiar with.
  They are not experts, they are not psychiatrists or psychologists, 
and maybe sometimes we expect them to be everything. I do not mean to 
be saying that. But they are really in the front line, and they can see 
these children and they watch them develop, whether it be the principal 
or the guidance counselor or their home room teacher.
  There are many ways in which they can teach these things. It can be 
taught in history classes. Certain aspects can be taught in science 
classes, language arts classes, on and on. There are different ways 
these can be taught and graded, as well. There has to be that grading. 
There has to be that responsibility. There has to be reporting back so 
someone is accountable. I think this is really what is sorely missing 
in our schools today.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman touched on the 
accountability piece, because that is part of the accountability piece, 
responsibility.

[[Page H969]]

  The point the gentleman made about children in schools and how much 
they can be impressed by their teachers, that is true. I am sure the 
gentleman can think of a teacher that made a difference in his life. I 
certainly can, my fifth grade teacher, who is still living. I visit 
with her from time to time and call on her, Ms. Barbara. She is a 
delightful lady.
  I think of my own children. The gentleman will do this as he goes 
through with his child, as he goes to school. The first thing is, the 
child has a good-looking teacher, the teacher becomes their first 
girlfriend, in some cases.
  Mr. CROWLEY. I had a couple of those myself. I hope my wife is not 
listening.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. My older son liked one of the teachers. We had her 
home for dinner because he just idolized her. All of a sudden, that is 
why this is so important to be taught and integrated in the curriculum, 
because teachers do have a significant impact. They can change lives, 
there is no question. They are changing lives every single day in 
classrooms across this country, because those young minds are like 
little sponges, they really are. They can be changed and molded for 
good.
  I certainly know teachers made a difference in my life, and in 
telling me that I could be whatever I wanted to be. I never had the 
idea of being in the United States Congress, but they at least told me 
I could go to college. For a lot of children, that is what they need.
  I think the gentleman is absolutely correct in what he said. Teachers 
have a great opportunity. I think we have a great challenge of honoring 
what they do every day.
  Mr. CROWLEY. I think in many respects teachers are doing these things 
already, too, in an informal way, inspiring young people, but they are 
not getting everyone. It is almost impossible to get everyone.
  I daresay if this bill became law, we are still never going to get 
everyone, but I think we would get a lot more than we are getting right 
now. There would be more accountability on these issues.

                              {time}  2115

  I certainly remember teachers that influenced my life in so many, 
many different ways. But one of the things I see that is missing today 
in my district is a lack of a sense of involvement by young people in 
the community. I do not see the volunteerism. I do not see the 
dedication towards voting, being inspired to want to get out. That is 
not universal, but I do not see enough of it where we see young people 
wanting to get out and vote, wanting to learn who their elected 
officials are, what the process is about.
  I am almost amazed sometimes when I go to a school and teach, like 
many of us do, a little government class. They have some ideas and some 
concept. They are obviously learning. But they have not put the whole 
thing together yet. That is because they do not think they are living 
it. They are learning about it, but they are not living it. They are 
not really going out to the community and putting what they are 
learning in schools together.
  I think going back to the gentleman's bill again, learning about 
respect, citizenship, justice and fairness, caring, those are words 
that say to me, one cannot just do it in school, one has to do it 
elsewhere, in the home, and, as the gentleman says, in the broader 
community. I think what we are making is better citizens.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, what the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Crowley) is really talking about is civic responsibility. It has to 
start at a young age, and we reinforce it every step along the way with 
teachers in the classroom, with parents, in the community, where 
students come in contact with one another. I have seen that over the 
last several weeks in visiting schools.
  I would even encourage my colleagues here to go in and talk with 
students as much as they can. I think they appreciate it. I think the 
schools appreciate it. The teachers do. Because it makes all the 
difference in the world.
  I remember growing up, I never remember seeing an elected official in 
my school that I remember. I really do not. A Member of the United 
States Congress I know I did not see. But I think it makes a 
difference.
  I agree with the gentleman from New York, teachers are doing it in a 
number of ways. But I think if we can formalize it in a way, and with 
this, it would allow the Secretary of Education to provide grants to 
those communities on a one-time basis to pool these groups together, 
because one does need some resources to facilitate the community coming 
together, to at least define these issues or other issues that they 
think are as important to that community.
  Ultimately, we start to see the point the gentleman from New York 
made earlier, the involvement of the community in that public school, 
because it is about the public, bringing them to that school, getting 
their involvement. Because children can feel when their parents are 
concerned about the school. They will ask the questions. Then we start 
seeing it turns into academics.
  I know in our State, North Carolina, we have seen, over the last 7 or 
8 years, academic scores go up in every category, one of two States in 
the Nation where it is happening, and our discipline problems have gone 
down.
  Now, I think it is part of that is, number one, we have good people 
in the classroom. That is the beginning point. But, secondly, we do 
have a lot of character education in a lot of our schools. Thirdly, we 
have started to put more resources, we need to do more of that.
  A lot of things that we need to do, I do not know that there is any 
one thing, but there is one thing about it, if we start with the good 
core principles of developing strong character, we can build a lot of 
things around that foundation.

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley).
  Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Speaker, the one thing I think I would like to say 
is that it is heartening to know, I guess to a degree, that a Yankee 
from New York and a southern gentleman from North Carolina share 
similar concerns and have similar problems as well in terms of 
overcrowding and old school buildings, but also on these issues that 
the gentleman from North Carolina is talking about.
  This is universal. This is not a New York issue. This is not a 
California issue. It is not a North Carolina issue. It is not a 
Democratic from the party sense, it is not a Democrat or Republican 
issue, it is really an American issue. It is an issue we all have to 
grapple with and we should all be working on, not trying to, as the 
gentleman said before, to create one-up-one-upmanship. This is 
something we should all be working on together.
  If one asks the average Member here, I think everyone would be in 
agreement, I think they agree 100 percent, these are the things that we 
believe are lacking right now. I do not see politics coming into play 
here. It is common sense to me. This is all pure common sense.
  It is my hope doing these special orders and talking about the 
legislation of the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) and 
other bills as well, like the Rangel-Etheridge School Construction and 
Modernization bill, again, to me, it is not about politics.
  Children do not know Democrat or Republican, they are just learning 
about it. In the first grade, they have an idea who George Washington 
and Abraham Lincoln were, but they do not know what party they belong 
to. Really, this is about children. Black, white, it makes no 
difference, they are all the same. They all deserve to have equal 
treatment. A part of that equal treatment is being exposed to these 
very issues the gentleman is talking about.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I could not help but thinking as the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) was going through it, we talk 
about children. If one goes in certainly the early classrooms, early 
years, kindergarten, prekindergarten, first, second grade, their eyes 
are so bright, they have such visions and opportunity, and they are so 
trusting. If we can capture that, we can help them there, we can make a 
difference.
  One of the leading newspapers in our States said a number of years 
ago, and they are absolutely correct, and I have used it a number of 
times since then, they said that children do not know what they need, 
they only know what they get. It is our responsibility as adults, as 
policy makers at every level to make sure they get what they need to be 
good citizens, to be well educated,

[[Page H970]]

and make sure the 21st Century is productive for them so that those of 
us who are now adults are a lot better off.
  It is like one of my friends said when we had a study commission, and 
I appointed one to get some things done, he was a corporate head of a 
large corporation. He came to North Carolina from New York, an 
outstanding citizen, never finished high school. Never went to college. 
He made a substantial sum of money. He said, I am a lucky fellow. He 
said, I may never see anyone else like me. He said, but I am going to 
make sure every child that comes through these public schools has the 
best opportunity they can have, because I do not care what they look 
like or where they come from, I want them to get a good education and 
make a lot of money because I want to draw my Social Security when I 
retire. So I have always remembered that.

  But getting back to this issue of character and really formalizing 
that in our public schools, I agree with the gentleman from New York. I 
do think that it is important that every child be exposed to these 
types of principles, hopefully in every classroom, that is agreed to by 
the school community and the broader community. I know it will have an 
impact. It has in North Carolina on discipline, on academics. When 
children feel good about themselves, they have their own self-respect, 
their own inner strength, they do so much better. They do so much 
better.
  Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more. I hate to keep 
harkening back to my own problems back in New York. It is sometimes 
difficult for me to imagine, though, how children who are being taught 
in hallways, are being taught in closets, or school rooms that were 
once bathrooms, those are really some of the problems that our teachers 
are faced with and our administrators in New York City.
  I guess if I lived in other parts of the country, I would have a hard 
time believing as well that that is how we can treat our children. I 
think I said it to the gentleman from North Carolina once I heard that 
Reverend Jackson had taken a number of children from inner-city schools 
in Chicago and brought them out to the suburbs and showed them what it 
was like in those suburban schools. What I thought was more important, 
he took those children from the suburbs and brought them back to the 
city to show those children what the city schools are like and what 
they were not afforded in those schools.
  I think the same can be done in my district. We are lacking so much 
in terms of proper environments to, as the gentleman said before, 
caring, instilling that in children.
  Getting back into buildings, we really have to address that issue. I 
do not want to wait to address that issue before we start addressing 
this issue as well. But sometimes it can be difficult to imagine how 
can we do this, how can we teach all these issues, respect and caring 
and honesty and justice and fairness and citizenship, when children are 
being taught in makeshift classrooms and hallways. There is no gym 
anymore because it has been put into cubicles so children can have a 
seat in a classroom.
  What we are facing in my district is that, by the year 2007, if we do 
not do more, we are going to be between 20,000 and 60,000 seats shy in 
Queens County alone. Queens County is going to be between 20,000 and 
60,000 seats shy. It is a major, major crisis. So it is sometimes hard 
for me to imagine how we can do it.
  We have great teachers in New York City. We really do, fantastic and 
dedicated people. But it is hard to imagine how can they do it. They 
have to.
  We need to do this, and we cannot wait for the other to get done 
first. We have got to address both. But it is an awesome task and 
awesome responsibility. But I do hope, despite our problems in New 
York, that this bill does become more.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I think it comes back to the issue that 
the gentleman from New York raised earlier. We have to do it whether it 
is done at the Federal, State, local, however, jointly get the job 
done.
  In my district, well in North Carolina as a State, over the next 10 
years, we are projected to be the fifth fastest growing State in the 
Nation in school population. We cannot build schools fast enough. Yet, 
I went by a school, visited a school earlier this morning where my 
children used to go. It is a fairly new school by school standards. 
They had trailers all over the place. All the inside interior of the 
building, like the gentleman from New York was saying, the lounge was 
now a classroom. It was never built for a classroom. It was a small 
area where one was tutoring students. That is not acceptable. That is 
not acceptable. They are doing it, but it is not acceptable.

  One can talk about these principles, and one can teach them, and 
teachers can reinforce them. But children also understand that 
somewhere along the line somebody is not being quite honest with them 
when they say they do not have the resources when they see other nice 
new buildings going up or they think they are not really caring whether 
other things are happening when they could provide those resources. 
Children do not know what they need. They only know what they get.
  Mr. CROWLEY. Mr. Speaker, just going back to the list of the 
gentleman from North Carolina again, it is a lack of responsibility, a 
lack of caring, a lack of being honest, a lack of justice and fairness, 
a lack of respect.
  A word that is not up there but I think is encompassed in all of that 
I think is dignity. There is no dignity here if we are not teaching 
these points we are talking about here. But more importantly, if we are 
not demonstrating it on a daily basis in school construction and 
modernization, giving them the tools and making sure the teachers are 
prepared are really all a part of that. But right now, if we do not 
provide these, we are guilty of not showing the true dignity of the 
student and the individual and the human being.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Crowley) for sharing with me his time this afternoon and sharing with 
my colleagues and the people the critical needs of, not only character 
education, but this whole issue of education that he cares so much 
about and has worked so hard on here, and I thank him for it.
  As we work together with our colleagues to make sure that, not only 
is character education integrated and a part of our curriculum in the 
future, but all of these issues of education continue to be at the top 
of our agenda. Because if we are going to have the kind of future we 
want to have in the 21st century, and America continues to be strong 
and a Nation that leads the world, we will do it through one thing. We 
will do it through education and providing those opportunities to our 
children and all the children of this country, no matter where they may 
live, no matter what their economic background might happen to be.

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