Timothy Roemer: “I believe it was Socrates that said the living are to the dead as the educated are to the uneducated. In our society…”

“I believe it was Socrates that said the living are to the dead as the educated are to the uneducated. In our society today, an education is a person's future and their future extends from cradle to grave, and we all will be learning our entire lifetime in this next millennium. I have to agree with the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia when she said that D.C. has some of the finest schools in the country, and D.C. has, just as every other school system in our country has, some schools that are in dire need of help. I have visited D.C. schools and met with Vera White, a principal at Jefferson Junior High School. She knows every single name of every single student and knows where they live and keeps them after school for homework. They have a space lab in the basement. They have honor roll students and people clamoring to get into that public school. It is a great school. They have the charter school, the Options charter school in D.C. that may be the best charter school that I have been in in the country. But we also have problem schools in D.C., and in Chicago, and in L.A., and in New York, and in Indiana.”