Jack Kingston: “the junior high school that I went to in Athens, GA, had strict discipline. Students were taught to respect each other…”

“the junior high school that I went to in Athens, GA, had strict discipline. Students were taught to respect each other, to respect teachers, and to respect the institution. The high school, however, that I went to had a different view of discipline, that is to say, a very spotty record, if any, on it. When I was in 10th grade, a student pulled a gun on another one in a basketball game I was playing in, and then another time a student was shot on the campus. When I was in high school, I had a group of students jump on me and beat me up. Without discipline, students somewhat behaved in a bad fashion. Currently today teenagers account for the largest portion of all violent crime in America. Offenders under the age of 18 commit more than one-fifth of all violent crime. If this trend continues, we will have a 31 percent increase in juvenile offenders by the year 2010. H.R. 3 addresses this. It tries to make our school yards and our streets safer from juvenile offenders. I hope that my colleagues will support me in supporting it.”