Political Quotes

“this evening I want to talk with my colleagues about the future. As I talk about the future, I want to talk about the children of this country, because they truly are our future. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk about education, particularly an effort in education called character education. We talk about a lot of things that work and things that do not work; but as my colleagues know, before I came to the people's House to serve in this body, I was the State superintendent of schools in the State of North Carolina. I happen to know firsthand that character education can make a difference to teach our children values and make sure that our students are well rounded and prepared to become good citizens. In 1989 when I took over as State superintendent, we did a survey of about 25,000 students across our State, and I was quite alarmed at some of the results we got back. About 37 percent of the students said that they did not respect their fellow students nor their teachers, and it was quite obvious from that data that something needed to be done.”