[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 38 (Monday, September 25, 1995)]
[Pages 1632-1634]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks in 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 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;

[[Page 1633]]

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 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

[[Page 1634]]

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 1930s 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, director, the Exploratorium, and Mayor 
Frank Jordan of San Francisco. A tape was not available for verification 
of the content of these remarks.