Craig Scott's speech to President Bush / The Nation

Summit on School Violence, Washington DC, October 10, 2006

THE PRESIDENT: The whole purpose of this exercise is to help educate and, if there needs to be cultural change inside schools, for teachers to become more aware and more active -- or principals -- is to try to stimulate these kinds of discussions, obviously, outside of Washington, at the local level or state levels, in the hopes of preventing these from happening in the first place.

SECRETARY SPELLINGS: One of the people who's been doing that in a very meaningful way is Craig Scott, who has talked all over the country to teenagers and teachers and educators and school leaders. And he has a very powerful story, as you know. His sister, Rachel, was murdered in Columbine.
So, Craig, why don't you share your thoughts.

MR. SCOTT: Well, just to give a little background, I was in the school library during the shooting. I had 10 classmates that were killed around me. I lost two friends underneath a table, and then later that same day learned that my sister, Rachel Joy Scott, was the first one that was killed. And really I've been just now traveling over the last seven years just sharing a simple story of compassion. And it's had a huge impact on the school culture. Kids really have looked to her as a role model. She's been a hero to a lot of kids.

And last night I just was looking back over the last seven years and I was in my hotel room and I just journaled, and I wanted to express real quick over the next couple minutes, just read to you what I wrote in my journal that expresses my feelings best.

I said: Once upon a time, our goal of education in our country was, first and foremost, character. Academic achievement is now the main goal. I knew two students at Columbine that achieved the goal of knowledge. Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold were very smart. They planned the shooting for a year and predicted the events that would unfold afterwards. The problem wasn't their education at my school, Columbine. Their problem was their character.

I've grown up in a culture today that doesn't teach me anything of substance, of value, how it bombards me every day with messages of emptiness and shallowness. And the youth are crying for something to stand for, something to believe in. If it weren't for ……..my family, I possibly could have fallen into the lies that our culture tells us. But now I've traveled, I've spoken to over a million teens across this country. I've not always seen -- I've not always liked what I've seen in the schools. I've seen depression, anger and loneliness, students without direction or purpose. I've seen students who called themselves cutters, have cut themselves because that's the way they know to take out the pain that they're dealing with. I've learned a lot about my generation. And I've learned a lot since I lost my friends and my sister. And the main thing I've learned is that kindness and compassion can be the biggest antidotes to anger and hatred, and I believe the biggest antidotes to violence.

With the program my father started called, Rachel's Challenge……. we've seen bullying stopped, suicides aborted. We have ……. incidents where a student came up with hit lists or plans to shoot up his or her -- his school, all male -- and told either the speaker or told the teacher about their plans, but had a change of heart. As a side-effect, we've seen -- and our statistics have shown and the more our program -- has been a rise in school attendance and an increase in academic achievement.

How have we done it? We've done it with a simple story of a young girl who believed in compassion……. That was the story of Rachel Joy Scott. But my sister is not the only one who believes in kindness, and she's not been the only one in her brave stance against the injustice willing to stand up for the one who gets put down in school, to sit by the student that sits all alone at lunch, and to talk to or reach out to the one who is consistently ignored or made fun of. She literally has inspired millions of people to continue the chain reaction she started. A lot of those are students across the country.

I've read Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold's journals that were recently released, and basically Eric wrote in one of his journals, "If only you were nicer to me, maybe this wouldn't have happened."
I don't know who else is tired of band-aid answers, but I know band-aids aren't going to save kids from dying. I give every student out there a challenge my sister put down on paper a month before she died when she wrote for her class -- she said, "I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go."

I challenge every teacher, principal and superintendent and educator here today to take a look at teaching that doesn't just teach the head, but teaches the heart. The students today that I've met are looking for truth. You can help point them to what's right and what's wrong. Truth is not all relative, despite what our culture or pop culture tells us.

To parents in the room today, please love your kids like my parents love me, like my parents loved Rachel. To the media and entertainment industry, I would give the challenge to take responsibility, own up to the product -- (applause) -- own up to the product that you create and the effect that it has on its audience, that two shooters were very much impacted and influenced by violence through the media and dwelled on violent video games, violent movies, music, and things they saw through the Internet, and is a common theme with a lot of these shooters that they've chosen very negative influences in their life. I believe there needs to be the positive influences that are highlighted on our television and through our media. You're a powerful institution affecting my generation every day. Please think about, when releasing your next movie, your next song, your next game, your next headline story. I myself am a film maker, and I want to create movies that inspire, build people up with stories of ennobling characters.

To the lawmakers and politicians who want to slap those band-aids on deep, gaping wounds, I'm simply going to repeat a poem that my dad read to the House Judiciary of Congress several months after the Columbine shooting……….(Craig reads poem)

…I do believe in education that touches and teaches the heart and helps form the character. And I believe if that can be implemented in the education on a daily basis, we'll see a change. I'm not out to change the world, just to change one person, one teen at a time. And I've finished with, just please take my words to heart today. They were bought at a high price. (Craig in tears) (Applause and standing ovation)

THE PRESIDENT: Good job. (Applause.) Whew. (Applause.) Which one of us up here can now talk after that? Thank you. Yes, that's great. You are changing our society. You may not realize it, but thank you -- powerful statement.

That was great, Craig. Thank you. Could I have that? (asking for Craig's speech) MR. SCOTT: Oh, absolutely.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT WENT ON TO SAY: Secondly, it's really important…that people not think government is a loving entity. Government is law and justice. Love comes from the hearts of people that are able to impart love. And therefore, what Craig is doing is -- he doesn't realize it -- he's a social entrepreneur. He is inspiring others to continue to reach out to say to somebody who is lonely, I love you. And I'm afraid this requires a higher power than the federal government to cause somebody to love somebody. And therefore, it's a -- (applause) -- and therefore, one of the things we can do, though, is to call upon people…You know, Craig said something interesting. I believe societies change one heart at a time. I don't mean to mimic what you said, but I was actually praising what you said, because that's how it works. And the truth of the matter is, if we really think about it, the primary responsibility, the primary teacher of character is the parent. That is the front line of enabling our society to be a compassionate, decent place. You wouldn't be sitting here if your mother and father hadn't instilled in you a -- something inside your soul that caused you to sit here in front of the President of the United States and give an unbelievably eloquent testimony about compassion.