Date: 1997-05-06
Speaker: BOB SCHAFFER (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Colorado

Mr. Speaker. today is National Teacher Appreciation Day. and we celebrate this all week long. I am reminded today especially of the teachers that have had such a profound influence in my life. and powerful influence at that. not the least of which was my father. a school teacher for his whole career. retired now. taught in a governmentowned school system in which I did not live and did not have the chance to attend there. but he had the good sense to send me to another school where I had the opportunity to learn from this man here who I brought a picture of today. Mr. Speaker. this picture is from January 7. and the man. this is me over here on the left. the man at the right here is Father John Putka who my colleagues will find at the University of Dayton presently. This was the day that I got sworn in. and this was a teacher who made the trip here to the U.S. Capitol to celebrate the occasion. and I have to tell my colleagues that there are many. many individuals throughout this country who have been inspired by Father John Putka. Now he was my high school teacher at More High School in Cincinnati. OH. It is a Catholic school and one that is run by the Marianist Brothers. which Father Putka is a member of that holy order. and Father Putka was my senior Christian marriage teacher. Now he taught several different topics. His training is in political science. and in law. in philosophy and divinity. and he manages to bring all of those disciplines together in a way that has such a remarkable influence upon the lives of all of the students that havehad an opportunity to sit in the chairs before him. It is interesting about this picture itself. because when we were having it prepared and it was downstairs in one of the offices. one of the staff members who was preparing this did not want to part with it. and the reason was because she had the opportunity to learn from Father Putka too. as it turned out. I have to tell my colleagues that it is unfortunate that there are not more students throughout the country that have a chance to learn in the kind of setting that I had an opportunity to learn in and that many students do throughout the country. but still not enough. I was able to attend this school because choice. school choice. was something that was available to me and to my family and to my brother and sister and others in my community. It was an opportunity for me to choose which kinds of education settings made the most sense for me. For me this was the setting that was most meaningful and most purposeful. This was the setting under Father Putka where we learned quite a lot about character and character education. We learned quite a lot about our history as a great Nation. a nation where. as our Founders observed in our Declaration of Independence. is a nation where we are organized around certain Godgiven unalienable rights to life. liberty. and the pursuit of happiness and that our Founders appealed to the Almighty for the rectitude of their intentions. and in fact they pledged to each other their lives and their fortunes and their sacred honor with a firm reliance upon the protection of that same divine providence. Now those are lessons that I would submit one does not learn everywhere. They are lessons that frighten some people when it comes right down to it because there are many people in government schools and in government settings and centralized bureaucracies who are afraid of the lessons that people like Father Putka teach their students. They are afraid that individuals might take his lessons seriously about not being conformed to this world. about renewal of the mind. that we may recognize what is good. what is bad. what is perfect. what is imperfect. what is. proper and imptoper. Those are lessons that more and more students need to learn and need to hear. especially here in America. Father Putka keeps in touch with his students. I can assure my colleagues of that. He kept in touch with me when I was a State senator back in Colorado. For 9 years I would hear from him frequently on issues that we were dealing with in the State legislature. issues dealing with family. issues dealing with life and death. euthanasia. all kinds of topics of those sorts. I spoke with him often about the relevance of our Constitution and the decisions that we make every day. A constitutional scholar. he has reminded me every single day. recalling from those lessons at More High School in his classroom about how we organize ourselves as Americans and how we are. in fact. governed by that Constitution. Teachers like Father Putka understand full well that the students that they teach are in fact messengers that we send off to a distant time. and what message will they carry? They will be future leaders perhaps. they will be business leaders and government leaders and perhaps even spiritual leaders or maybe teachers themselves. What message will they convey? Mr. Speaker. I can tell my colleagues that the message I am here to convey is that we have to move away from a centralized bureaucratic structure of public schooling. The Republican Party is committed to the freedom to teach and the liberty to learn. We believe full well that every student in America ought to have the same choices I did to choose the educational setting of their choice. the same kind of choices that occurred to our President here in Washington. DC. Mr. Speaker. congratulations to all the teachers throughout the country today on this commemoration of their profession.