[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 8 (Monday, February 28, 1994)]
[Pages 335-343]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the American Council on Education

February 22, 1994

    Thank you very much, Father Malloy, for that introduction. Now that 
we're in Washington, DC, I should tell you that the most important thing 
about him is not that he is the president of Notre Dame but that he was 
a legendary high school basketball player who played on the same team 
with the great John Thompson, here in Washington, DC. This is one of our 
big struggles in life. Some people would question, is it better to be 
the president of Notre Dame or be a great high school basketball player? 
The answer is, it's better to do both, if possible. [Laughter]
    I'd like to thank you all for inviting me here and to say that I've 
looked forward to this day. I want to recognize many of you in the 
audience, but I think if I start I don't know where I'll stop. I am glad 
to be joined here by the Secretary of Education, and I know that the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Labor also 
are on this program.
    Many leaders in our administration have come from the ranks of 
higher education. Donna Shalala was the chancellor at the University of 
Wisconsin. The Director of USIA, Joseph Duffey, who came in with me, was 
the president of American University and formerly the president of the 
University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Dr. David Satcher, the Director 
of the Center of Disease Control, was formerly the president of Maharry 
Medical Center in Tennessee. Shirley Chater, the Commissioner of Social 
Security, was the president of Texas Woman's University. Then there are 
the people in our administration like the Secretary of Labor Bob Reich, 
the First Lady, and me, who taught at institutions of higher education 
and complained about you all the time. [Laughter] So we're actually all 
exhausted after the last year and we're looking for a home to go back 
to--[laughter]--so I sort of came here for a job interview today. 
[Laughter]
    For 75 years, the American Council on Education has represented 
colleges and universities with real distinction. And in large measure 
because of your common efforts, it is now generally agreed that we have 
the finest system of higher education anywhere in the world. No other 
nation gives such a high percentage of its high school graduates the 
opportunity to go on to college. None other offers such diverse choices 
among institutions. No other nation conducts as much basic research at 
its universities or produces as many Nobel laureates. No wonder tens of 
thousands of students come here from all over the world every year to 
study.

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    The shape of American higher education is changing, and with it, the 
needs and demands. This morning, in preparation for this speech in part, 
I went jogging with about 12 students from the Northern Virginia 
Community College. One had just become a citizen, was a native of Iran; 
another was a native of Sierra Leone; another was a native of Peru; 
another a native of Scotland. Nobody but me had a southern accent in the 
whole crowd. [Laughter]
    Every great chapter in our history has begun by expanding 
educational opportunities, from guaranteeing free public education to 
creating the land grant colleges to enacting the G.I. bill. Education 
has propelled our economy, strengthened our democracy, and created our 
great American middle class.
    As Governor, I worked to improve our schools because I thought it 
was the best way to lift people up in a State with a lot of people who 
worked hard but were not rewarded sufficiently for their work. I ran for 
President in large measure because I thought too many of our people were 
working too hard for too little, that the American dream of upward 
mobility was seriously imperiled, and that our country was coming apart 
when it needed to come together. As President, I work every day to try 
to secure and expand opportunities for people to be in that middle class 
and to see that American dream.
    It is now clear that in order to do that, more than ever before, 
Americans must seek their own opportunities to improve their lives 
through education and training and that it must happen over the course 
of a lifetime. We now know that the average American, because of changes 
in the economy at home and abroad, will change work seven or eight times 
in a lifetime, even if that person stays with the same employer, 
although most will change employers frequently throughout a lifetime. If 
that is true, it is clear that we need an agenda as a people for 
lifetime learning.
    And so today, I want to offer you a seven-point agenda for lifetime 
learning: first, to help every child begin school healthy and ready to 
learn; second, to set and achieve world-class standards in public 
education; third, to open the doors of college opportunity to every 
young American who is eager and able to do college work; fourth, to 
expand opportunities for our young people to serve their communities and 
their country while earning money for their education; fifth, to provide 
new learning opportunities for young people who are going from high 
schools to work; sixth, to change our unemployment system into a 
reemployment system; and finally, to challenge every sector of our 
society to accept greater responsibility for achieving an environment of 
lifelong learning.
    I come today to ask for your support, to invite the Congress to 
continue its cooperation in enacting the lifelong learning agenda, and 
to call on all Americans to do their part.
    Throughout our history, people have had the idea that if they worked 
hard, played by the rules, and made the most of their opportunities, 
they would be rewarded by a decent life and greater opportunities for 
their children. But for the last two decades, that whole idea has been 
called into question as more and more Americans have lengthened their 
work week while their wages have remained stagnant or have actually 
declined relative to inflation.
    This happened because of a lot of things. The world is changing 
rapidly, more rapidly than our policies, perhaps more rapidly than our 
ability to understand the changes themselves. An economy that was once 
almost entirely domestic is now global in its competition for markets 
and for jobs. Once capital and information, management and technologies 
were limited by national boundaries. Clearly, today, they are not. Once 
the principal source of wealth was natural resources. Then it was mass 
production. Today it is clearly the problem-solving capacity of the 
human mind, making products and tailoring services to the needs of 
people all across the globe.
    In the 19th century, at most, young Americans needed a high school 
education to make their way. It was good enough if they could read well 
and understand basic numbers. In the 20th century, as the century 
progressed, more and more they needed more education, college as well. 
And in the 21st century, our people will have to keep learning all their 
lives.

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    This is clearly evident everywhere. Next month in Detroit, I will 
host a conference of the world's leading industrial nations to discuss 
how we can make technology, information, trade, and education create 
more and better jobs for all our citizens. This now is a problem 
throughout all advanced countries, the problem we have been experiencing 
for 20 years. In America we have had more good fortune than the 
Europeans, for example, in creating new jobs; our problem has been 
increasing incomes. In Europe hardly any new jobs have been created. Now 
in Japan they're having great difficulty creating new jobs. So you see, 
in all the advanced countries there is a combined crisis of jobs and 
incomes. In the United States, even though we created almost 2 million 
jobs last year, we are still millions short of where we would be, going 
back in 1989, if this had been a normal economic recovery. So you now 
have a global crisis in the advanced nations: How do you create jobs, 
how do you raise incomes?
    If you look at the charts behind me, you will see, however, that 
even though this is an international problem for all the advanced 
countries, it is clear that for individuals in our country, education 
goes a long way toward solving the problem of jobs and incomes.
    First, if you look at the unemployment rate in America in March of 
1993--these numbers would be all slightly lower now but still more or 
less the same, the ratios would all be the same--people with no high 
school diploma had a 12.6 percent unemployment rate. People with 4 years 
of high school had a 7.2 percent unemployment rate. People with some 
college education had a 5.7 percent unemployment rate, that is, below 
the national average. People with 4 years of college had a 3.5 percent 
unemployment rate, way below the national average. And I would point out 
that this is after several years of severe defense downsizing which has 
dramatically increased unemployment among college-educated workers in 
some sectors of the economy. And these numbers still hold.
    Now, if you look at the chart to my right, and now I'm on your 
right, too--I've turned around--[laughter]--if you see the earnings 
here, it is clear that what you earn depends upon what you're able to 
learn. Again, the mean earnings of full-time workers--this is calendar 
year 1992--$19,100 for people with no high school diploma, $5,000 more 
for 4 years of high school, $4,000 more for some college, $11,000 more 
for 4 years of college, stepping up.
    It is, therefore, clear that if we really want America to grow jobs 
and increase earnings, we will have to dramatically improve the levels 
of education of the American people, that we have to start with the 
preschoolers, but we can't stop with the adults.
    Today, these dozen young people that I ran with, I asked them what 
their ages were. The youngest was 19; the oldest was 32, in this 
community college. I would say their average age, I didn't run the math, 
but their average age was probably, oh, 24, 25. The average age of a 
college student in America today is, I think is 26. And it is likely, 
given the demographics and the fact that the youngest of the baby 
boomers are now 29, if my math is right, that the average age will 
continue to go up for another 10 years or so.
    So any hope we have to hook the American economy to the 21st century 
and to open up opportunity again depends upon making sure that our 
education system is responsive to and adequate to the demands of the 
times and able, I might add, to make a strength of that diversity that I 
spoke about a few moments ago.
    In 1993 we tried to clear some of the noneducational obstacles to 
our growth away by bringing the deficit down, creating incentives to 
invest in a growing economy, stripping away controls on exports that 
were outmoded so that we could export more of our high-technology 
products, opening up trade opportunities in Mexico and throughout the 
world with the GATT agreement and other initiatives, trying to build a 
foundation for economic growth.
    Last year our economy created almost 2 million jobs, 90 percent of 
them in the private sector, a real change from previous years when more 
and more job growth had come only from Government. And we have begun 
clearly to move in the right direction. But over the long run, if you 
look at these charts behind me, it is clear that the future of our

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economy and, therefore, the fabric of our society, is in no small 
measure in your hands and the hands of others who are committed to 
educating our people for a lifetime.
    We're going to have to make some tough choices because we can't do 
everything we would like to do. But I believe we can, with discipline, 
continue to bring the deficit down and make room for investments that 
improve the skills and the productivity of the American people. In order 
to do that, we have to take the long view, and we have to avoid 
gimmicks. I believe--and I think I have some credibility in saying this 
now since I lived in a State and governed a State for a dozen years 
with, I think, the toughest budget mechanism in the country and since we 
now have adopted one tough budget, bringing the deficit down, and if 
this budget is adopted, our administration will be the first since Harry 
Truman's to have three consecutive declines in the deficit--I think I 
can say that I think this balanced budget amendment is not a good idea 
for the United States. And I'll tell you why.
    First of all, if you constitutionalize the budgeting process and no 
one's sure what it all means, you're going to wind up having courts 
making decisions about budgets. If any of you have ever had your budgets 
in court, you know that's not a very good place to do it.
    Secondly, if the amendment is carried out, it will lead to, in the 
near term, until we reform health care, it will lead in the near term 
either to huge tax increases which could cramp economic growth or to 
huge cuts in defense or Social Security and Medicare or investments in 
education and technology or all of the above. And if it is decided to 
ignore that, then what you will do is basically put the filibuster in 
the Senate and in the House in the only area where it doesn't exist 
today, the budget. That is, you will put 40 percent of the Senate and 40 
percent of the House plus one vote in total control of the American 
Government and America's future. Now, that's what this does if it passes 
the way it is.
    The budget that I presented cuts or eliminates outright over 300 
Government programs and reduces the deficit according to very tough 
targets and increases our investment at the national level in lifelong 
learning by 23 percent by getting rid of some things and investing in 
others. If you think that's the way we ought to go, I wouldn't mind it, 
since you're in town, if it's not even a long-distance call, if you call 
your Senator or Congressman and tell them that that's the way you feel.
    Why do we need to spend this money? Let's look at the various 
elements that I outlined earlier. First, in lifelong learning: With 
regard to early childhood, we all know that parents are the first and 
most important teachers, but sometimes Government can help them to do 
that. That's why our agenda begins with investing in our youngest 
children, giving them a healthy start in life, giving them a chance to 
succeed later as students and ultimately as citizens, giving them a 
chance to stay out of prison and in the work force and become full-
fledged human beings in every way. That's why we're increasing our 
investment in child nutrition and immunization and investing not just in 
a bigger Head Start program but in a better one as well. Our budget will 
serve about 850,000 children this year and provide new opportunities for 
the very youngest children.
    With regard to public schools, I want to talk a little about our 
Goals 2000 legislation that the Secretary of Education has worked so 
hard on. Back in 1989, I represented the Governors in negotiating the 
national education goals with the administration. The goals were 
designed to recognize the fact that from the day they start kindergarten 
to the day they graduate from high school, we owe our young people the 
best education in the world and then the chance to go to a lifetime of 
learning.
    Our States and communities have always taken the lead in public 
education, and they'll continue to do so. But the National Government 
can do more to help. With the Goals 2000 legislation, we enshrine the 
national education goals, establish national standards by which we can 
determine whether schools are meeting those goals, encourage grassroots 
reforms, and give the schools the flexibility and the tools they need to 
meet the goals. We encourage States and communities to learn from one 
another, empower individual school districts to experiment with ideas

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like public school choice and charter schools, asking always one 
overriding question of every education official: Are the children 
learning what they need to learn to compete and win in the global 
economy? Goals 2000 has been approved by bipartisan majorities in both 
Houses of Congress. I look forward to a speedy conference and to signing 
the bill into law next month.
    We also favor dramatic reforms in the education and secondary 
education act. Our efforts to raise standards and to focus resources 
have sparked some controversy, so I thought I would mention this, even 
though it only indirectly affects you. I just think the status quo in 
this act is not good enough. As the House debates this act this week, we 
will fight for fundamental changes: first of all, high standards of all 
students, wherever they are; secondly, significant waiver authority for 
schools to make experimental decisions.
    We've got real problems in this country today, folks. Baltimore, for 
example, has in effect chartered several of their schools, I think up to 
nine now, to be operated by private corporations to see if they can at 
least fix the physical facilities. If you want to know why--I don't know 
how many of you saw--here, I'll promote Al Gore a little bit here--the 
Sunday Times magazine has a wonderful article on the Vice President. It 
also has a stunning picture essay which says this better than I could: 
``America's Best Building.'' See, this is a beautiful library, and this 
is a lousy building. This is a school building; this is a prison 
library. Why? Because you can take a State into Federal court and make 
them build buildings like this for prisoners. And the students don't 
have any such constitutional claims now.
    So these school districts are having to try some fairly radical 
approaches, and they're trying to say, ``Well, if we've got some fat in 
this budget, if we can clean up the physical facilities, if we can make 
it available, we ought to try some things.'' We want to give people a 
chance to try that.
    I made a joke about Father Malloy's basketball prowess, but you 
know, I think it's important for children when they're in school to be 
able to play basketball and baseball and have music and learn something 
about art. And a lot of schools in this country where the kids need it 
the worst, can't afford it anymore. You know, there are kids in 
neighborhoods that produce the greatest baseball players in the history 
of America where there are no gloves and balls and bats and playgrounds 
anymore. It's a serious problem. I could spend the rest of the time 
talking about that picture essay, but you ought to get that picture and 
ask yourself: How did my country come to this? Why, when it's so much 
cheaper to educate somebody than it is to keep them in prison, can you 
get a better library in the prison than you can in the school?
    Which leads me to the next point. The other thing we try to do in 
this is to make sure that the limited money we do have goes to the 
school districts that need it the most. Why? Because they don't have 
access to the Federal courts to order people to build them those kind of 
buildings. So we have to spend the money that we have where it is needed 
the most.
    And finally, we try to promote more parental involvement in the 
schools, knowing it will make a difference. If it makes a difference in 
Head Start, it will make a difference in elementary school, too.
    We have a safe and drug-free schools initiative. First of all, we 
know that more than 160,000 kids every day stay home because they are 
afraid to go to school. Tens of thousands go to school carrying not just 
their lunches but knives or guns. In that kind of environment it's hard 
for teachers to teach and for students to learn, people are scared and 
people are armed. Our safe schools act helps to reduce violence by 
adding security, removing weapons, and maybe most importantly, helping 
schools to get the resources to teach young people to resolve their 
problems peacefully. And our national drug strategy provides more 
education to help them stay away from drugs and guns and gangs.
    Let me just mention one thing. I know you're going to think I'm 
obsessed with this, but I heard about a program the other day in a 
school that is immensely successful: teaching children ways other than 
violence to resolve their difficulties. It was wildly popular among the 
students. There was a drop in violence in the school in question. A 
business had given this school $3,000 to pay for somebody to come in and 
teach the program,

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but because it was dependent upon largesse, the grant wasn't forthcoming 
the next year and so the $3,000 was gone. If $3,000 kept one person out 
of the penitentiary, it saved $30,000 a year. We have got to get our 
priorities back in order on this investment issue.
    The next thing I want to talk about with regard to education is 
student loans, something you know a lot about. Last June I addressed a 
commencement at Northeastern University in Boston, and I met the young 
student who spoke there named Doug Luffborough, who delivered an 
incredibly moving address. He talked about how his mother had worked 
hard at very low wages all her life, and he tried to tell her that he 
wanted to give up college so he could help her support his two younger 
brothers and their sister. But his mother insisted that he go on to 
college no matter how difficult her circumstances. His message was, 
``Never say I could have, I should have, I would have; just say, I can, 
I will.'' Well, that's great that he did that. But you and I know that 
there are too many young people who go to college and drop out or defer 
going to college because they think they can't afford it. And last year 
I proposed and the Congress adopted initiatives to change the student 
loan program to help people like Doug Luffborough, and I thank all of 
you for helping it pass.
    The new direct lending program reduces fees, interest rates, and 
monthly payments for millions of borrowers. It gives every student the 
choice of repaying loans as a small percentage of income over time, 
which is a big deal for young people who know they want to do things 
that are personally rewarding but don't pay very much. It will decrease 
the debt burden that crushes too many of those people and discourages 
them from spending a few years in lower paying jobs. And it will save 
the taxpayers over $4 billion in just the first 5 years.
    We have also strengthened the Pell grant program. When I became 
President, the Pell grant program was $2 billion in arrears. That's one 
of those pleasant things you don't know about until you show up one day 
and they drop that on your desk. I am pleased to report that if Congress 
accepts the proposal that the Secretary of Education has developed, the 
shortfall will be eliminated by the end of the next fiscal year, the 
number of student recipients will increase to 4.1 million, the most 
ever, average awards will increase, and for the first time in 4 years, 
the maximum benefit will increase.
    Congress has also given us the tools to root out fraud and to 
decrease default, and we're beginning to use them. We want to listen 
attentively to your suggestions for reducing Federal intrusion and 
redtape. But we have to faithfully implement and vigorously enforce this 
law. That was the compact I made with students all over America in 1992: 
If I became President, I would try to open the doors of education to all 
young Americans, never make the cost a deterrent, but you've got to pay 
your loan back.
    We also need to do more to open the doors of equal opportunity. Last 
fall, I signed an Executive order strengthening the partnership between 
the Federal Government and historically black colleges and universities. 
Last week, the Department of Education issued guidelines that lifted the 
cloud hanging over scholarships for minorities. [Applause]
    You know, it's interesting to me, the more people know about this 
issue, the more likely they are to be on our side. Did you notice that?
    Later today, I will sign another Executive order to advance 
educational excellence for Hispanic-Americans. I believe we now live in 
a Nation with way over 150 ethnic and racial groups. In a global economy 
with shrinking distances, instantaneous communication, and blurred 
borders, this can give us an advantage in the 21st century unlike that 
enjoyed by any other nation, but only if we have a genuinely deep 
commitment to universal education and the development of the capacities 
of all Americans.
    Now, let me say one word about my favorite project, national 
service. Last year we provided new opportunities for tens of thousands 
of our young people who wanted to contribute something to their 
communities and earn money for education. The national service program 
which Congress adopted, AmeriCorps, will this year send 20,000 young 
people out across our country, helping police to stop crime and 
violence, tutoring the young, keeping company with the old, helping the 
illiterate to learn to read, organizing

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neighborhood cleanups, conserving national parks. Within 3 years, we'll 
have 100,000 young people a year doing that.
    There was a program in Texas last summer where the young people 
helped to immunize over 100,000 people, and a respected evaluator just 
looked at the program and said that for every one dollar in tax money 
spent in that program of immunization, $5.50 in tax money would be saved 
with a healthier population. National service is more than a program, it 
carries the spirit of what America is going to have to be like if we're 
going to solve our problems and grow closer as a people.
    I want to thank the colleges and universities that are 
participating. Smith College makes community service a requirement for 
graduation. Spellman is forming real partnerships with communities 
throughout the Atlanta area. Hampshire College matches assistance with 
the national service program and provides for young people who join 
AmeriCorps. For every American who needs to find a first job, national 
service is a good place to begin.
    Let me also now talk very briefly about this school-to-work issue, 
something that the community colleges have been particularly involved 
in. We have the best system of higher education in the world, but we are 
the only advanced country that basically has no system for helping all 
of our young people who don't go to the 4-year colleges at least have a 
smooth transition from school to work where they've got a chance to have 
a good job with a growing income.
    For the half of the young people who don't go to college and the 
nearly three-quarters who don't get a 4-year college degree, we propose 
a better system to move from school to work, a new kind of education and 
training connecting the classroom and the workplace, removing the 
artificial distinction between the academic and the practical. Students 
will learn practical problem-solving in the classroom and at job sites. 
And for at least a year after graduating we want young people to get 
more training in workplaces and community colleges.
    We have to have rigorous academics and practical learning. We have 
to tie the workplace to the learning environment in high school for 
young people who know they are not going on to 4-year colleges in a way 
that makes them respect learning and gives them the option, therefore, 
to go on to a 4-year college later and to work and succeed if they do 
not.
    We know now, from a lot of studies that have been done of people's 
personal learning capacities, that a lot of very bright people actually 
learn more in a practical setting than in a more abstract setting. We 
also know that a lot of practical tasks now require very sophisticated 
levels of knowledge. Therefore, we have an opportunity to do something 
that Americans have resisted for too long, which is to merge instead of 
keep divided our notion of vocational education and academic education. 
And that is what the school-to-work program is all about.
    Part of Goals 2000 is voluntary national skills standards that will 
enable every young person who goes through this program to get a 
nationally recognized credential, good for young men and women, good for 
employers who need skilled workers but don't always know how to 
recognize them. A B.A. degree should not and must not be the only ticket 
to a good job and a good livelihood, but you shouldn't be foreclosed 
from going on to get one by what you do in the school-to-work program. 
Our approach would solve both problems.
    Finally, let me say, just as we need to train our young people, we 
have to retrain millions of workers who are losing their jobs, people 
who have been displaced by technological change, international trade, 
corporate restructuring, reduced defense spending, and ordinary cycles 
in the business economy aggravated by changes in the global economy.
    The unemployment system into which employers all over America pay 
taxes was designed for a time when there would be cyclical changes in 
the economy which would require them to lay their workers off so that 
humanity demanded that they give their workers some, even though a 
reduced level, of compensation. And then they would be brought back to 
work when the economy cycled upward again. The truth is that that 
doesn't describe what happens to most unemployed people anymore. And 
yet, the

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structure of unemployment is still designed for that economy.
    What we need to do is sort of erase the whole concept of 
unemployment and develop one of reemployment. What would that mean? It 
would mean that at least on the day that someone loses a job, and before 
if they have any advance notice, people would be planning to use the 
unemployment time as a retraining time, not just waiting around until 
the unemployment benefits run out to have to look around for a new job 
or a new skill but to use the time on unemployment to learn and to grow 
and to develop new job skills and new awareness of what kinds of jobs 
are offered. We want to create one-stop job centers where unemployed 
workers can get counseling and assistance and learn about new job 
opportunities, the skills they require, and where they can best get the 
training.
    Last month, just to give you one example, I attended a Labor 
Department conference on training and retraining, and I met some 
interesting people. I met a woman named Deb Woodbury from Bangor, Maine, 
who lost a factory job, had a bunch of kids, didn't know what in the 
world to do, learned new skills to be a marketing representative. I met 
a woman named Cynthia Scott from San Antonio, who went from welfare to a 
training program in nursing and a good job in a hospital. I met a man 
named John Hahn from Niagara County, New York, who was laid off from a 
job he had for 28 years because of defense cuts and, being an older 
worker, was still given the opportunity to learn new skills for a new 
career as a biomedical technician. And I might say, he was lucky enough 
to find an employer who was smart enough not to discriminate against 
people because they weren't young, which has got to be a big part of 
this. We're going to move people through a mobile learning environment, 
we have to get over the notion that since you're not going to keep 
somebody for 30 years anyway, or at least not in job X for 30 years, 
people are going to have to be willing to hire people who are not young 
as well as people who are young.
    Ironically, we've got two big blocks here in the labor mobility. One 
is a lot of young people can't get hired coming out of college because 
they haven't had any experience, and so they keep running around like a 
dog chasing their tail. How do you ever get it if nobody hires you? The 
other is people who have worlds of experience, but because they're so 
old, people say, well, they don't want to hire them. Well, they look 
younger to me every day. [Laughter]
    So I think that employer attitudes are some things we're also going 
to have to work on. But if we can set up this kind of system, this 
reemployment system, it will become normal. Then losing a job may not be 
so traumatic because with income supports and retraining, people will be 
able to see it as an opportunity to move to a new and exciting and 
different career, so that job security won't be tied to a particular job 
so much as it will be to the ability to work and the ability to find a 
job. We'll have to redefine that security, but if we do, it will be 
deeper because it will be real, real meaning tied to the realities of 
this economy, not the economy of a generation ago. And I know all of you 
can identify with that, and many of you have worked hard on it.
    Finally let me say, in order for any of this to work, there has to 
be a whole ethic that grips the American imagination. Parents and 
schools and teachers have to believe that this is important and have to 
support it, all of them. This is not something that professional 
educators alone can do.
    I just--to give you an example of that, the kind of a flip side of a 
very troubling story today--I don't know how many of you saw the cover 
story in USA Today today, but it's about teen pregnancy and what a 
terrible problem it is and how births to teen mothers are going up again 
and now most of them are out-of-wedlock births. A couple of years ago, 
the Children's Defense Fund did a study on teen mothers. And they 
surveyed two groups of them, one who had a second child out of wedlock, 
another group that did not have another child out of wedlock. And the 
single most significant determinant for the ones who never had another 
child out of wedlock was the acquisition of a good education, which gave 
them an appreciation for what they could become and a devotion for the 
future and an understanding about what it took to raise children 
successfully. So this is something that has to grip the American

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imagination. Government programs alone can't do it. Educational 
professionals alone can't do it. There is something for all of us to do. 
But it begins with us here in Washington passing our agenda.
    So again, I would say, if you believe we should prepare children for 
school better, if you believe we should set higher standards for our 
public schools, if you believe we should expand college opportunity and 
encourage national service and provide a transition from school to work 
and create a system of reemployment to replace unemployment, and if you 
believe we have to challenge every American to be a part of this ethic, 
then I ask for your support. I ask for your support in the Congress. I 
ask for your support in your institutions. I ask for your support in the 
country.
    Education has always been important for democracy. Democracy is 
always a gamble, at every election, in every crisis, at every turn in 
the road, because it requires that a majority of the people have enough 
information in the proper context with a high enough level of security 
to make the right decision, sometimes under the most arduous 
circumstances. We are now being called upon to make a lot of those right 
decisions. And one of those right decisions is the simple question of 
how we can guarantee the success of this democracy into the 21st 
century. It begins with the program that I have discussed today. And I 
ask for your support, and I thank you for what you're doing to make the 
American dream real for so many millions of Americans.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:33 a.m. at the Washington Hilton. In his 
remarks, he referred to John Thompson, Georgetown University basketball 
coach.