    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 21, 1995]
    [Pages 1419-1421]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California
    September 21, 1995

        Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to thank Mr. Delacote
    and all the people who hosted us here. To Mayor Jordan and your
    outstanding California commissioner of education, Delaine Eastin, and to
    all of the others who are gathered here today, thank you very much for
    being here with us. I want to say to all the students here that the Vice
    President and I are delighted to see you. Normally, we would not want to
    be responsible for taking you out of class, but today we think maybe we
    have a good reason. And we hope we have a chance to shake hands with a
    lot of you as soon as this brief ceremony is over. I want to say to all
    of the executives of the information companies that we just met with how
    very grateful I am to you, and I'll say a few words about them in a
    moment.
        I came here to San Francisco today to issue a challenge to America
    to see to it that every classroom in our country, every classroom in our
    country, is connected to the information superhighway. To demonstrate
    that this is possible, we are all here today to announce a giant step
    toward that future.
        By the end of this school year, every school in California, 12,000
    of them, will have access to the Internet and its vast world of
    knowledge. By the end of this school year, fully 20 percent of
    California's classrooms, 2,500 kindergartens, elementary, middle, and
    high schools, from one end of this State to the other, will be connected
    for computers. If that can be done in California, we can do it in the
    rest of America.
        But the key is to have the kind of partnership that we are
    celebrating here. The job of connecting California schools will be
    undertaken by a wide alliance of private sector companies, among them,
    Sun Microsystems, Apple, Xerox Park, Oracle, 3Com, Silicon Graphics,
    Applied Materials, TCI, Cisco Systems, and others. Our administration
    has brought these companies together, we have set goals, but they are
    doing the rest. Just as the connecting of our classrooms is a model for
    the 21st century, so is the way we are doing it here today, with
    Government as a catalyst, not a blank check.
        So today, I challenge business and industry and local government
    throughout our country to make a commitment of time and resources so
    that by the year 2000, every classroom in America will be connected.
        Tens of millions of parents all across our Nation have watched their
    children play every kind

    [[Page 1420]]

    of video game from Mortal Kombat and Primal Rage to Killer Instinct and
    Super Streetfighter. But the really important new computer game in
    America is learning. And we are going to put it at the disposal of every
    child in this country by the end of the century.
        Last month, I announced a broad initiative to stop our children from
    being addicted to tobacco because it was bad for them. Today I hope to
    encourage a good habit, a lifelong commitment to learning. I want to get
    the children of America hooked on education through computers.
        Our country was built on a simple value that we have an obligation
    to pass better lives and better opportunities on to the next generation.
    And we see them all here. Education is the way we make this promise
    real. Today, at the dawn of a new century, in the midst of an
    information and communications revolution, education depends upon
    computers. If we make an opportunity for every student a fact in the
    world of modems and megabytes, we can go a long way toward making the
    American dream a reality for every student, not virtual reality, reality
    for every student.
        The facts speak for themselves. Children with access to computers
    learn faster and learn better. Scores on standardized tests for children
    taught with computers, according to ``Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow,'' a
    10-year report that is coming out in a few days, caused scores to go up
    by 10 to 15 percent. Children mastered basic skills in 30 percent less
    time than would normally have been the case. Also, they stayed in
    school. Absenteeism dropped from over 8 percent to under 5 percent.
        I cannot emphasize how important this is at a time when we want
    people to stay in school and get as much education as they possibly can.
    Technology enriches education; it teaches our children how to learn
    better, as the Vice President and I saw with the young people who walked
    in with us and their three different exhibitions of learning, and we
    thank them for that today.
        We must make technological literacy a standard. Preparing our
    children for a lifetime of computer use is now just as essential as
    teaching them to read and write and do math. With this effort, we are
    also reinforcing the core convictions that have stood us so well for so
    long. Computers offer a world that lives up to our highest hopes of
    equal opportunity for all. And look what we need equal opportunity for
    all for.
        Computers give us a world where people are judged not by the color
    of their skin or their gender or their family's income but by their
    minds, how well they can express themselves on those screens. If we can
    teach our children these values, if they can learn to respect themselves
    and each other, then we can be certain we'll have stronger families,
    stronger communities, and a stronger America in the 21st century.
        I could think of no better place for us to begin than here in
    California, the State that leads the world in technological innovation.
    Until now, this leadership too often has stopped at the schoolroom door,
    for California ranks 45th in the Nation in the ratio of students to
    computers. While suburban children often have access to computers in
    their homes, other children in rural areas and inner cities pass their
    school years without coming close to the information superhighway. The
    longer they're kept away, the less chance they have of building good
    lives in a global economy.
        Well, thanks to the dedicated Americans gathered here today, all
    that is going to change. These companies who compete vigorously every
    day in the marketplace have come together in the classroom. We shared
    with them our vision, and they shared with us their ideas, their
    resources, and their know-how. Every company represented here today is
    making a different contribution, but they're all committed to the goal
    of connecting California because they know the future depends upon it.
        Sun Microsystems is organizing a coalition of companies and
    volunteering for net day, an effort to install networks in at least
    2,000 schools. And the number is growing with each new company joining
    the effort. In the morning, volunteers will arrive at each school. By
    noon, they will have wired the library, the labs, the classrooms. By
    nightfall, those schools will have the technology they deserve.
        Smart Valley, a coalition of Silicon Valley companies, has
    contributed $15 million to putting technology in our schools. Smart
    Valley has agreed to develop 500 model technology schools over the next
    2 years.
        America Online has offered Internet services for a year. Even those
    phone companies that are always going after each other on TV have joined
    forces in this cause. AT&T will provide

    [[Page 1421]]

    Internet access and voice mail to all California schools. Sprint will
    help to connect the schools. MCI will provide software for entry into
    the Internet and help to connect the schools. And Pacific Bell, which
    has led the way in linking California schools, is accelerating its
    efforts this school year by hooking them up to high-speed phone lines.
        I want to thank them all, and I'd like to ask the leaders of these
    companies here to stand, and I hope the children will give them a hand,
    because they've done a great thing for your future. Please stand up, all
    of you who met with me earlier today. Thank you so much. [Applause]
        This is an enormous effort. It will take the same spirit and
    tenacity that built our railroads and highways. It will take leadership
    and dedication of groups like the advisory council I have appointed on
    the information superhighway. So let us begin. Let today mark the start
    of our mission to connect every school in America by the year 2000. If
    we can connect 20 percent of the schools in the largest State in the
    Nation in less than a year, we can surely connect the rest of the
    country by the end of the decade.
        In the coming days, I will announce the winners of our technology
    learning challenge. And over the next several weeks, I will put forward
    a public-private partnership plan that lays out how we can move our
    entire nation toward the goal of technological literacy for every young
    person in America.
        Here are its guiding principles: modern computers in every
    classroom, accessible to every student from kindergarten through 12th
    grade; networks that connect students to other students, schools to
    other schools, and both to the world outside; educational software that
    is worthy of our children and their best aspirations; and finally,
    teachers with the training and the assistance they need to make the most
    of these new technologies.
        Make no mistake: You can count on us for leadership, but the goal we
    have set cannot be set and cannot be achieved by Government alone. It
    can only be met the way these companies are doing it, with communities,
    businesses, governments, teachers, parents, and students all joining
    together, a high-tech barn-raising.
        What we are doing is the equivalent of going to a dusty adobe
    settlement in early 19th century California and giving every child a
    slate and a piece of chalk to write with. It's akin to walking into a
    rough-hewn classroom in the Sierras of the 1860's and wiring it for
    electricity for the first time. It's like going to the Central Valley in
    the 1930's to the canvas classrooms of the Dust Bowl refugees and giving
    every child a book. Chalk boards, electricity, accessible books, there
    was a time, believe it or not, when all these were rare. Now, every one
    is such a familiar part of our lives that we take them for granted.
        If we stay on course, we'll soon reach a day when children and their
    parents and their teachers will walk into a classroom filled with
    computers and not even give it a second thought. Let's go to work. Our
    future depends upon it, and these children's lives will be better for
    it.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:42 a.m. in the Rotunda. In his remarks,
    he referred to Goery Delacote, Exploratorium director, and Mayor Frank
    Jordan of San Francisco.