[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 17 (Monday, April 29, 1996)]
[Pages 707-710]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks at an Award Ceremony for the National Teacher of the Year
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
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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 will be time enough for us to honestly debate our
disagreements in the fall. We don't need a yearlong campaign. Most
countries just
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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.
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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
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 6th-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.
Ms. 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, Teacher of the Year Mary Beth Blegen thanked the
President for his support of education on behalf of all teachers and
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.