Political Quotes

“let me thank all of those who worked on this legislation. I am pleased to see almost near harmony with respect to support of this. I cannot imagine anything as important as teaching young people, and even older people for that matter, how to read. It is significant, be it the simple act of being able to read traffic signs or being able just to get around, to reading manuals, to higher education, or the simple pleasures of being able to read a book and to escape to some fantasy as a result of that reading is one of the tremendous necessities and pleasures in the life of anybody in this world, and we want our American citizens to be able to do it. The President, I think, was on the right track to recognize the power and importance of literacy when he announced his literacy initiative, but I think his focus was a little bit misguided in terms of having volunteers, who are certainly a very important component in ascertaining a level of reading in children, but we have to go beyond that, I believe. My office indeed has been involved as volunteers in the Everybody Wins program, where staff go to Tyler Elementary right up the street here and read with their children to whom they are assigned once a week, and it makes a huge difference as far as the kids are concerned. But the problem is more fundamental than trying to get children to like reading. It rests in the fact that many children simply cannot translate the written word into the spoken word.”