Bob Schaffer: “These are good goals, but they really mean a lot more if you are smart on top of that. There may be some citizens, some…”

“These are good goals, but they really mean a lot more if you are smart on top of that. There may be some citizens, some of our constituents perhaps, who would prefer that relationships, resilience, and readiness as the Clinton administration states should be more important and the goal of education rather than reading, writing and arithmetic, science, history and all the rest. I think there ought to be a school for those parents. I think there ought to be places around the country where teachers who agree with Secretary Riley, where Secretary Riley can send his grandkids, I suppose, where people who agree that these concepts are more important than real learning can send their own kids. The problem is you have somebody with a goofy idea here in Washington that wants to impose these values on your children, my children, everybody else's children and it is just wrong. We do not get to vote for Secretary of Education. This is an appointed person. He does not hold town meetings in my neighborhood like I do or in your district like you do. He is not accountable to anyone in my district or anyone who is a parent of these kids who he thinks should be focusing on relationships, resilience, and readiness.”