    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [June 23, 1993]
    [Pages 923-925]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Presidential Scholars Awards Presentation Ceremony
    June 23, 1993

        I want to thank you all for being here and welcome the Members of
    Congress who are here and those who were here who had to leave for a
    vote. I want to say a special word of--it's a good vote--[laughter]--I
    want to say a special word of thanks to the Marine Band for being here
    to play for us today. Thank you. Since my office is just over there,
    when they come out here to play for you, they also keep me in a far
    better frame of mind as I work through the day.
        I thank the Commission on Presidential Scholars for all the work
    that they have put into selecting this year's recipients. I especially
    want to thank my good friend Governor Florio of New Jersey for his work
    as Chairman. I asked him to serve as Chairman because I admire the
    courage and conviction with which he has conducted himself as Governor
    of New Jersey and particularly the bravery that he showed in dealing
    with the educational needs of the people of his State.
        The Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, formerly was Governor of
    South Carolina, and in that connection he labored mightily for years to
    improve the education of the children of his State and served as a
    mentor of mine. And I thank him for his leadership.
        As I look out at this group today of proud parents and family
    members and friends and educators, I'm reminded once again of the
    curious mix of things that produces the sort of achievement that we see
    embodied in the young people on this stage today. There are,
    unfortunately, still a lot of people in the United States who believe
    that how much you learn and how well you do in life depends primarily on
    your IQ. And yet we know that if you strung all the people on the globe
    together from first to last by IQ, you couldn't stick a straw between
    any of the two. A remarkable combination of ability and intangible
    things like encouragement and love and support as well as personal
    effort and drive and commitment go into making up really gifted learners
    who are committed to doing it for a lifetime.

    [[Page 924]]

        All the young people who have been acknowledged today have great
    natural talents, and they should be grateful for what God has given
    them. But every person on this stage today, not only them but me, we're
    all here because of the people who helped us along the way.
        There's a young man who was supposed to be here today named Justin
    Konrad, from the State of Maine, who on June the 5th was in an
    automobile accident that claimed the life of one of his friends and
    claimed part of one of his legs. Today he's in a hospital in Maine
    recovering from his injuries. I talked to him this weekend when I was up
    in Maine, and he's already talking about going to Harvard and majoring
    in government and playing sports. When he gave his--let me see if I can
    pronounce this--salutatorian's address at his high school graduation, he
    gave a speech about optimism. And he still has it, and I hope all of you
    will be able to keep it as you go through college and you pursue your
    careers. Keeping a positive frame of mind may sound like an obvious and
    easy thing. It becomes increasingly difficult with a difficulty of
    circumstances, but more important with every passing day.
        Last Saturday, just before I spoke with Justin by phone, I was
    speaking at the commencement of Northeastern University in Boston, and I
    met another young student there graduating from college named Doug
    Luffborough. He was the person who was designated by his fellow students
    at Northeastern to speak on their behalf. Doug's mother is a cleaning
    woman who earns $7,000 a year and who, in addition to her regular job,
    cleans a private school part-time to pay tuition for another of her
    sons. For a while, the mother and all of her children were actually
    homeless.
        It's remarkable that this young man ever got to go to college at
    all. The advice he got from one of his counselors was to give it up and
    start looking for a job. But his mother believed in him and refused to
    let him aim low. When she couldn't get a babysitter, she took him along
    to work. And he watched her day-in and day-out never give up hope, and
    by her example he learned a powerful lesson. When he came to
    Northeastern University, the school made it possible for him to work
    part-time while going to school, and his on-the-job experience helped
    him to get a very good job when he graduated. He's shown an amazing
    amount of responsibility, but his mother stood by him, his school stood
    by him, and he had an employer who stood by him.
        So no matter how heroic individuals are, they still need help to
    make it, and support. Chances of success increase dramatically when
    other people believe in you, give you opportunities, and ask you to take
    the responsibility to make the most of them. And I want to thank every
    person here today who made it possible for these young people to be up
    on this stage and to have the kind of life they're going to have.
        I also want to say that this administration is working hard to open
    the doors of college education to all young people, to make it possible
    for them to get loans to go to college and to pay them back on much more
    favorable terms than has been the case in the past. And we are trying to
    pass, with strong bipartisan support, a national service program which
    will make it possible for tens of thousands of young people to earn
    credit against those loans before, during, or after their college years
    by giving something back to their communities where they live. Vice
    President Gore has just returned from California where he kicked off our
    Summer of Service program, which is the beginning of this national
    service effort.
        I know that a lot of you have been involved in service programs. I
    want to recognize one of the scholars, MarLeice Hyde, from Valley High
    School in Afton, Wyoming. Where are you? I want to tell you about her.
    She organized the junior volunteer program at her local hospital, which
    contributed over 1,000 hours of community service at the hospital, while
    holding two jobs, attending evening college courses, and meeting the
    responsibilities that come from being the oldest of six children. Let's
    give her a hand. [Applause] Congratulations.
        Finally, let me say a word about our educators. We often spend our
    time talking about what's wrong with our educational system, but we
    ought to also acknowledge that there is a great deal that is right with
    it. And a lot of these young people today might not be here were it not
    for their teachers, their principals, the people who worked with them
    and believed in them. We think that the educators of America who are
    trying to do a good job shouldn't have to go it alone and should have
    some way of knowing whether they're meeting the competition around the
    globe. That's why Secretary Riley has worked so hard with his Goals 2000
    program and with the legislation now moving

    [[Page 925]]

    through Congress to embrace world-class learning standards that all
    American schools will be given the opportunity to meet and that all
    American parents and students can judge their own progress by. I am very
    encouraged by that work and very grateful for the cooperative spirit
    that we see now in Washington between everybody involved in the
    educational endeavor. We think that Goals 2000 will turn a nation at
    risk into a nation on the move in education.
        Let me say in closing that I've thought a great deal about education
    this summer because I just celebrated under this same tent a couple of
    weeks ago my 25th college reunion. I saw some of my classmates: One of
    them runs a refugee center for Palestinians in Jordan; one came all the
    way back from Cambodia where he had his life at risk monitoring the
    elections in that troubled country where once so many people were killed
    by tyranny. Many of them have made incredibly valuable contributions to
    their lives. And all of us were sitting here 25 years later in this very
    spot remembering with incredible vividness actual specific things our
    teachers had said to us in class. We had a contest to remember how many
    verbatim sentences we could remember from different professors we had.
    And every one of us concluded at the end that none of our lives would
    have been possible if we hadn't had the benefit of a world-class
    education.
        I hope this Presidential scholarship brings to all of you on this
    stage those kinds of memories 25 years from now. I hope you will do
    everything you can to make the most of the opportunities before you. And
    I hope you will take some time along the way to enrich the communities
    from which you came and the people who made it possible for you to be
    here today.
        Thank you all. Congratulations, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:42 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White
    House.