[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 48 (Wednesday, April 4, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H1461]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         MENTORING FOR SUCCESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, a few years ago I ran across a study which 
was done on the Fullerton, California, public schools in 1940. It was 
kind of interesting, the number of the concerns that the teachers in 
the Fullerton, California, public schools had at that time. Number one 
was talking in class, number two was chewing gum in class, number three 
was not putting waste paper in the waste paper basket, and number four 
was getting out of turn in line when going from one class to another.
  More recently I saw this study replicated when they went back to the 
Fullerton, California, public schools and asked the teachers what their 
main concerns were, and this is what the list read like. The number one 
concern was drug abuse, weapons in school, gangs, teenage pregnancy, 
teenage suicide, alcohol abuse, violence and so on.
  So, in the last 50 to 60 years, we have seen an amazing shift in our 
culture. I guess over 36 years of coaching, I saw some of the same 
changes, the same dynamics in some of the young people I was dealing 
with.
  So I guess I have asked myself from time to time, what has caused 
this shift? I think really two basic elements that I can point to. One 
is family disintegration. Currently one-half of our children grow up 
without both biological parents, and back in the 1940s and the 1950s, 
this percentage was probably no more than 5 or 10 percent. We have 18 
million fatherless children in our country today. When your dad does 
not care enough to stick around to see what you look like, it leaves a 
vacuum in your life, it leaves a hole that you are oftentimes trying to 
fill with all the wrong things. So fatherlessness is a huge problem. 
The out-of-wedlock birth rate has gone from 5 percent in 1960 to 33 
percent today. So the family structure has definitely changed.
  Secondly, I think there have been some things that I would refer to 
as the unraveling of the culture. I think almost everyone is aware of 
the fact that we are living in the most violent Nation in the world for 
young people. We have the highest homicide rate, the highest suicide 
rate for young people of any civilized nation or any nation anywhere.
  Thirdly, drug and alcohol abuse has certainly become rampant and a 
very virulent problem in our society, and, of course, there has been a 
media influence that I think at times some of the music, some of the 
television, some of the movies that young people are exposed to has 
been a problem.
  So, we may say that I have outlined a lot of problems. What are the 
solutions? We need some answers. I guess one of the things that I would 
point to that has proven to be effective is mentoring. A mentor is 
someone who supports, affirms, provides stability, provides a vision of 
what is possible for a young person. I guess in athletics I saw this 
very graphically borne out, because if you told an athlete or a player 
that he was not very good, that he did not have a future, that he was 
limited in talent, it would not be long before he would begin to play 
down to that expectation, and usually he would leave the team before 
very long. But on the other hand, if you said, I see a great deal of 
potential, I see some talent, I see some things where you could be a 
great player, many times that player will begin to perform in a way 
that he himself did not even begin to expect. So affirmation is 
critical.
  Basically, that is what mentoring is. It is affirming. It is 
supporting. It is telling somebody they can do it.
  So mentoring actually works. There are studies that have shown 
realistically that people who are mentored, who are in good mentoring 
programs, young people will be 52 percent less likely to skip school, 
50 percent less likely to begin using drugs, 36 percent less likely to 
lie to a parent, 30 percent less likely to commit a violent act of any 
kind, and they are less likely to drop out of school, and have better 
relationships with friends and family.
  So for that reason I am introducing today a bill called Mentoring for 
Success. What this bill does is it provides grants to expand mentoring 
through new programs and existing programs throughout the country that 
supposedly, I believe, would probably reach about 200,000 young people 
in our country. It also would provide for training of mentors, 
background checks on mentors; and it would study the long-term effects 
of different types of mentoring programs. Right now there are a lot of 
them out there. We do not know exactly what is most effective, and this 
would provide for a study that would provide more data and more 
information.
  Currently we spend billions of dollars on incarceration, on juvenile 
justice programs, and once someone is caught up in the juvenile justice 
system or the criminal justice system, oftentimes they just do not get 
out of it. So we need to spend more time on the front end of the 
process, and mentoring is certainly a very viable alternative and 
something that I hope that all people would certainly consider.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill is very important. I think it is something 
that we really cannot afford not at this time to address.

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