[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[April 23, 1996]
[Pages 619-621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 619]]


Remarks at the National Teacher of the Year Award Ceremony
April 23, 1996

    The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary Riley. To 
all of our Teachers of the Year and their friends and family members; to 
Senator Wellstone, Senator Grams, Congressman Minge; and to the 
educators and their supporters who are here, let me say that this is a 
day I look forward to every year. And every year God has blessed us with 
good weather in the Rose Garden, and that ought to tell you something 
about where teachers will stand in the ultimate measure of things. 
[Laughter]
    As I think you know, I have been away now for some days on a trip 
which literally took me around the world, from Korea to Japan to Russia. 
And before I make the remarks I'd like to make in honor of our Teacher 
of the Year and her counterparts here, I think it's important to comment 
on a couple of events that are unfolding now here in Washington.
    Let me begin with a compliment to the Congress for working in a 
bipartisan way for the American people. Last week Congress passed strong 
legislation to crack down on terrorism which I expect to sign right here 
tomorrow. I thank them for that. I also am pleased that Congress is 
moving forward on the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill which would improve access 
to health care for 43 million Americans and, if an amendment adopted by 
the United States Senate is carried through, would include mental health 
coverage for American families who need that.
    I'm also pleased to report that we're continuing to make significant 
progress on bipartisan agreement for the remaining spending bills this 
year. There is, of course, more to do. I am very hopeful that Congress 
will now, as a result of movements in the House and comments in the 
Senate by Republican Members, go ahead and raise the minimum wage for 
working people. No one can raise a family on $4.25 an hour, and if we're 
going to have family values coming out of Washington, we ought to start 
by valuing families that are working hard, trying to stay off welfare, 
and doing their best to raise their kids. We ought to do it with no 
gimmicks, a bill that I can sign into law.
    And finally, let me say that I hope that Congress can now bring this 
bipartisan momentum to bear on the challenge of finally passing a 7-year 
balanced budget plan. Last year and early this year, we had over 50 
hours of negotiation between the congressional leaders, the Vice 
President, and me. We made real progress toward agreeing on a balanced 
budget. Our plans have in common more than enough savings to balance the 
budget, provide tax relief to working families, and reflect our values 
by protecting the fundamental structures of Medicare and Medicaid and 
our commitments to education and a clean environment.
    Last week, the Congressional Budget Office certified that the budget 
plan I presented to Congress would balance the budget in 7 years. This 
is the first time in 17 years that the Congressional Budget Office has 
determined that a President's proposed budget is balanced. Moreover, the 
CBO has issued new and now more optimistic budget projections which will 
make the task of agreeing on a balanced budget significantly easier for 
both sides.
    It's been over 3 months now since the negotiations over how to 
balance the budget were suspended. I think we all understood there were 
intervening events that required this work to be suspended. But the time 
for waiting is now over. Now is the moment to finish the job and work 
toward a balanced budget.
    We should resume negotiations over how best to do this in 7 years. 
My door is open, and it's time to get the job done. We should begin 
again to seriously talk about this budget process. We should include 
congressional leaders, obviously the leadership, but also a broad enough 
range of representatives from both parties and both Houses who represent 
a broad diversity of views so that we can actually agree on something 
that can pass. We should put together a mainstream coalition to get the 
job done.
    Now if we do that, that will help all the educators. Why? Because if 
we have a balanced budget amendment, interest rates will come down, 
investments will go up, the economy will be stronger, and people will 
pay more funds in local school taxes so that they can support your 
educational institutions.
    We can make this a season of bipartisan achievement. We're off to a 
good start. There

[[Page 620]]

will be time enough for us to honestly debate our disagreements in the 
fall. We don't need a yearlong campaign. Most countries just have 
campaigns of 5 or 6 or 7 weeks. In the coming weeks, we should take the 
time to sit down and work together on an area where we are very, very 
close to real agreement. If we stop fighting about yesterday and balance 
the budget, we can face the challenges and have the debates of tomorrow.
    Let me say, too, that this is really about laying a foundation for 
the future, the same kind of work that you do. There is nothing more 
important than building the right kind of future for America, whether it 
is in balancing the budget or teaching our children. This fact was 
brought home to me again very forcefully in my recent visits to Korea 
and Japan and Russia. At each stop, I had discussions with leaders of 
those countries which focused on a fairly simple but very big question: 
How can we all work together to preserve world peace, to enhance human 
freedom and define ways to enable all of our people to seize the 
opportunities of this new information technology-driven age?
    The dimensions of economic change we are now experiencing, because 
of these sweeping changes and because of the end of the cold war and the 
growth of a global market, are the most profound changes affecting our 
economy and, therefore, how our people work and live that this country 
has experienced in 100 years, since people moved fundamentally from the 
farm to the factory.
    And I might say that Bill Gates, the American computer wizard, gave 
a speech not very long ago that I had the privilege to hear, and he 
wrote in his book ``The Road From Here'' that the changes we are now 
experiencing in communication are the most profound the world has 
experienced in 500 years since Gutenberg printed the first Bible in 
Europe with a printing press.
    We have to build a bridge to the 21st century that all Americans who 
are willing to work for it have a chance to cross. Education is the way 
we do it, the way we can give every child a future, to live the American 
dream, to make the most of his or her own life, to build solid families 
and strong communities and a strong America. If our children succeed, 
America will do very well indeed.
    So we have to renew our schools and throw open the doors of college 
to all who want to go who are qualified for it. That's why, even as we 
cut the deficit in half in 4 years, we have maintained our commitment to 
invest in education, all the way from Head Start through the Goals 2000 
program that Secretary Riley mentioned, through access to college. But 
we also have to acknowledge that the demands of the 21st century require 
an honest assessment of what is right and wrong with our educational 
system, what money will fix, and what cannot be fixed by money alone.
    The education agenda Secretary Riley and I are pursuing is 
consistent with what parents and States have called for, tougher 
standards and accountability and higher expectations and greater 
opportunities. I believe that in a fundamental way, education is a 
matter of high expectations, high standards, good teachers, concerned 
parents, and a supportive community.
    High technology will play a bigger and bigger role, and that's why 
the Vice President and I are trying to make sure that every school and 
every library in this country, every classroom and every library in the 
country, from the smallest rural school to the largest urban one, all of 
them are connected to the information superhighway by the year 2000.
    But we all know that we have to have those other things: the good 
teachers, the concerned parents, the high expectations, the high 
standards. We know that these things will make a difference. At last 
month's National Governors' Association education summit, I challenged 
the States and the Governors there to create a system that rewards and 
inspires and demands higher standards for teachers, removing barriers 
that attract the most talented people, rewarding teachers who meet these 
high standards, making it easier to remove people who should leave the 
classroom.
    But in the end, we know that what we have to do, all the rest of us 
who give these speeches, is to support the good teachers. The magic that 
occurs between the teacher and the student is still the ultimate--the 
ultimate key to successful education. It is partly a science but largely 
an art. It is sometimes a mystery and always a wonder.
    All of us who ever amounted to anything like to tell people that we 
were born in a log cabin we built ourselves. We'd like for everybody to 
believe we were self-made. But the truth is, I don't believe there's a 
single person in America who is really successful today, at least there

[[Page 621]]

aren't many, who can't point to at least one and sometimes a lot more 
teachers that had a profound impact on his or her life. I know that is 
certainly true of me. I carried on a correspondence with my sixth-grade 
teacher until the day she died at the age of 90; she wrote me a week 
before she died. I have kept up with many of my teachers from elementary 
and high school and college all my life, because I know that I wouldn't 
be here if it weren't for them.
    And I'm so glad that our Teacher of the Year not only brought her 
own fine children who are a pretty good monument to her teaching--Sarah 
and Christie and Mark--but also five of her students, because they 
really represent the ultimate success of all of your endeavors.
    I want to thank, again, Mary Beth Blegen and all of you for devoting 
your lives to teaching. Mary Beth has taught humanities, history, 
writing, and English for more than 30 years at Minnesota's Worthington 
High School. When she was first hired, it was a violation of the child 
labor laws.
    Mary Beth Blegen. Right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, you are 
such a good man.
    The President. She has seen many of the changes that all of us have 
witnessed in America. Worthington has evolved from a mostly white and 
rural middle class community into one that is more economically and 
ethnically diverse. It is a community that has seen a shift in jobs from 
primarily agricultural jobs to factory jobs and other supporting jobs.
    Her greatest achievement has been her ability to help her students 
understand the complex relationships that exist in our changing world. 
And I might say that that may be the toughest thing we all have to do. 
We have to figure out how to meet the challenges tomorrow while 
preserving our basic values. We have to understand that for every 
complicated problem there is normally a simple, appealing answer that is 
wrong. That does not mean that our values can't be simple, 
straightforward, and unbending, but it does mean we have to understand 
these kind of complex relationships that she has done such a marvelous 
job of explaining to her students.
    She is the embodiment of the all-American teacher, a hard-working, 
dedicated, caring person, always working to do better. Her approach to 
teaching, they tell me, is just as fresh and enthusiastic today as it 
was 30 years ago. I think anyone who can do that and avoid burnout and, 
instead, keep burning on deserves an award for that, if nothing else. 
And she's done it while raising these three fine children of her own, 
one of whom has followed in her footsteps as a teacher.
    Mary Beth likes to say, good teaching changes lives. She has changed 
countless lives in 30 years of teaching, and I am proud that she is here 
as a symbol of all the good that America's teachers do every day all 
across America.

[At this point, Ms. Blegen, National Teacher of the Year, made brief 
remarks.]

    The President. Thank you very much. We're adjourned.

Note: The President spoke at 1:45 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House.