[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 31 (Monday, August 3, 1998)]
[Pages 1532-1535]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Education International World Congress

July 29, 1998

    Thank you. First of all, let me thank my longtime friend Mary 
Hatwood Futrell for that wonderful introduction. And thank you for your 
warm welcome. I thank the leaders of our education organizations, Bob 
Chase and Sandy Feldman, for their work, and welcome all of the members 
of EI here to the United States. I am delighted to join in your Second 
Congress on your final day in Washington. I hope you've had a successful 
meeting; even more, I hope you will be going home with new energy for 
your lifetime commitment to your children and the future of your 
nations.
    It is always an honor for me to meet with educators. As President, I 
have had the privilege of visiting schools around our Nation and around 
the world. And wherever I have been, whether in a small village in 
Uganda or a poor neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, a town in California or 
an inner-city school in Chicago or Philadelphia, I always meet teachers 
whose dedication to their students is nothing short of heroic, men and 
women for whom kindling the spark of possibility in every child, from 
that once-in-a-lifetime mathematics prodigy to a young girl who dreams 
of being the very first in her family just to finish school and go on to 
college.
    For those people, teaching is not a job, but a mission. I know that, 
for you, it is such a mission. So let me thank you and your 23 million 
colleagues across the world for making the education of our world's 
children your life's work.
    We are living in an era of unprecedented hope and possibility but 
profound challenge. A technological revolution is sweeping across the 
globe. It is changing the way we live and work and relate to each other. 
It is binding our economies closer together, whether we like it or not. 
It is making our world smaller. Today, 100 million people are logging 
onto the Internet. In just 3 years, that number will be about 700 
million.
    With all these changes come new challenges. We know that new 
democracies must be very carefully tended if they are to take root and 
thrive. We know that with technology advancing at rapid speed, the best 
jobs and the best opportunities will be available only to those with the 
knowledge to take advantage of them. We know that if we do not take 
action, dangerous opportunity gaps between those people and those 
nations who have these skills and those who do not have them will grow 
and deepen.
    The best way, therefore, to strengthen democracy, to strengthen our 
Nation, to make the most of the possibilities, and to do the best job of 
meeting the challenges of the 21st century is to guarantee universal, 
excellent education for every child on our planet.
    Where once we focused our development efforts on the construction of 
factories and powerplants, today we must invest more in the power of the 
human mind, in the potential of every single one of our children. A 
world-class education for all children is essential to combating the 
fear, the ignorance, the prejudice that undermine freedom all across the 
globe today in the form of ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds. It is 
essential to creating a worldwide middle class. It is essential to 
global prosperity. It is essential

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to fulfilling the most basic needs of the human body and the human 
spirit. That is why the 21st century must be the century of education 
and the century of the teacher.
    As Mary said, throughout my career, first as the Governor of one of 
our States and now as President, I have worked to make education my top 
priority. Today I want to share with you what we are doing to provide 
every American at every stage in life a world-class education. And I 
want to recommit the United States to working with other nations to 
advance education as our common cause.
    We are working very hard with nations all across the world through 
our AID programs, our Agency for International Development, and in other 
ways. At the recent Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, we 
reaffirmed the commitment of the Americas to work in common on the 
training of teachers and the development and dissemination of not only 
technology but educational software, so that we could learn more 
everywhere we live, so that children in small villages in South America 
could have access to things which today are only dreams.
    When I was in Africa, I reaffirmed the focus of many of our AID 
programs to be on education. We announced in South Africa a project with 
our Discovery Channel to try to bring technology and the benefits of it 
to small African villages. We are working in Bosnia and Croatia to help 
the students there learn about democracy so that they can preserve what 
so many have given so much to create, a real sustainable peace in a 
multi-ethnic democracy.
    All across the world America has an interest in seeing education 
improve. One-third of the adults in the world are illiterate today; two-
thirds of them live in the poorest countries. We are doing better. The 
literacy rate was only 43 percent in 1970. The percentage of our 
children going to school in 1970 across the world was only 48 percent. 
Today, it's 77 percent, at least in the primary school years.
    And something that's very important to my wife and to me, in 1970, 
only 38 percent of all schoolchildren were girls. Today the percentage 
is 68 percent--all girls in school. But think about it, that means 32 
percent of the girls who should be in school are not. And I still visit 
countries where basic primary education for girls is still a dream in 
some places. That must not be. If we want to see these societies 
elevated, if we want to see the economies grow, if we want to see 
families made whole and able to plan their futures, we must educate all 
our children, the boys and the girls alike.
    Here in America, we have recognized the increasing importance of a 
college education to our position in the global economy. In our last 
census, it became clear that young people who had less than 2 years of 
post-high school education were likely to get jobs where their incomes 
never grew and were far more likely to become unemployed.
    And so we have done everything we can to open the doors of college 
to all Americans who will work for it. We have made the first 2 years of 
college virtually free, with a tax credit we call the HOPE scholarship. 
Through expanded, low-cost student loans and more student work 
positions, through tax credit and deductions for all college post-
graduate and continuing education work by older workers, through giving 
our young people the opportunity to earn scholarship money by doing 
community service, we are making all forms of higher education more 
affordable to all kinds of Americans.
    Second, we are working to establish high national standards to 
ensure that our children, from the earliest years, master the basics. 
Many of your countries already have national standards. Because in 
America we have a history of education being the responsibility of state 
governments and being within the span of control of local school boards, 
we don't have such national standards.
    I believe, in a global economy, every nation should have national 
standards that meet international norms. I believe that so many students 
from around the world did better than their American counterparts in the 
Third International Math and Science Study because their country had set 
high standards, challenged their students to master rigorous and 
advanced material, and used national tests to make sure that they did. I 
want to do the same in America, beginning with high standards in fourth 
grade reading and eighth

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grade mathematics, to give teachers and parents the tools they need to 
secure our children's future.
    Third, we know that good teachers are the key to good school. We are 
working to reward the most innovative and successful teachers in our 
classrooms, to help those who fail to perform to move on or improve, and 
to recruit more of our best and brightest to enter the teaching 
profession, especially in areas where there are a lot of poor children 
in desperate need of more help.
    Fourth, we are working to create better learning environments by 
modernizing our schools and reducing class size, especially in the early 
grades, where research has shown it makes a positive and permanent 
difference in learning in our country.
    Fifth, we are working hard to prepare our children for the demands 
of the information age by connecting every classroom and library to the 
Internet by the year 2000 and by training teachers in these new 
technologies.
    Sixth, we are working to deal with one of America's most painful 
problems: the presence of violence in our schools. We have a zero-
tolerance policy for guns in our schools. Later this year, we will be 
having our first-ever conference--White House conference in Washington 
on school safety. I hope and pray this is not a problem in any of the 
countries here represented, but if it is, we would be glad to have your 
ideas and to share ours with you. Teaching cannot succeed and learning 
cannot occur unless classrooms are safe, disciplined, and drug-free. And 
we are working are on it, and we welcome your support and help.
    Next, we are working to end one of the most harmful practices of a 
public school system that is too often overwhelmed by the challenges it 
faces and the lack of resources to meet them, the so-called practice of 
social promotion, where children are passed from grade to grade, even 
when they don't learn the material first. But we believe that along with 
ending the practice we must follow the examples set in our city of 
Chicago, where there is extra help for the children after school and in 
the summer, so that we don't just identify children as failures, but 
instead say, ``We're going to give you more help until you succeed.'' I 
think that is profoundly important.
    Finally, we are working to establish mentoring programs for children 
in our poorest and most underserved areas, along with guarantees of 
access to college that they get in their middle school years if they 
continue to learn and perform, so that when these children are 11 or 12 
or 13 they can be told, ``If you stay in school and learn and you want 
to go on to a college or university, we can tell you right now you will 
have the help you need to do it.'' I think it is a powerful incentive, 
and in areas where children have been so used to being ignored for so 
long and feel that they will always be trapped in poverty, I think it is 
profoundly important.
    Today, there is a vigorous debate going on in our Congress over the 
nature and extent of our responsibilities as a nation to our children's 
education. There are some in the other party who don't see eye-to-eye 
with me on what we should be doing for our public schools. Even as we 
recognize the importance of raising academics, challenge standards, and 
challenging our students to meet them, there are those who would 
actually prohibit the development of national tests for our schools, 
even if it's voluntary to participate.
    Even as more studies confirm what we have already suspected about 
the importance of early childhood development, some would deny Head 
Start opportunities to as many as 25,000 of our disadvantaged children. 
Even as the greatest number of children since the baby boom are 
enrolling in our schools, some would weaken our efforts to recruit new, 
highly qualified teachers. Even as hundreds of thousands of high-paying, 
high-tech jobs all across America go begging for workers, some would cut 
our investments in education technology and technology training for 
teachers. Even as the evidence is overwhelming that smaller classes, 
especially in areas where children have difficulties learning, can make 
a permanent, positive difference in what children learn and what they 
continue to learn throughout their lifetime in the early grades, there 
are those who say we have no business investing national tax dollars in 
such endeavors.

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    Believe it or not, there are even some who are trying to kill one of 
our most successful efforts to provide on-the-job training to our young 
people and to give them something positive to do and ensure that they 
stay out of trouble in their free time. For a generation in our country, 
legislators from both our major political parties have supported the 
summer jobs program that has helped millions of our most disadvantaged 
young people appreciate the responsibility of a regular job and the 
reward of a regular paycheck.
    Eliminating summer jobs would mock the very values we Americans 
cherish most, hard work, responsibility, opportunity. If we truly 
believe in these things, then we should help to expose all our young 
people, especially those who need it, to the world of work. If we insist 
upon responsibility from all our people, then those of us in power must 
take responsibility for giving our teenagers the jobs that will help 
them succeed in the future and keep them on a good path today.
    If we believe in opportunity for all, then we must not deny our 
young people this vital springboard to opportunity. I say this to point 
out to all of you that if you don't get your way on education every day 
in your own countries, don't be surprised if we don't get to do 
everything we want to do, either. What seems so self-evident to you and 
me is still not entirely clear to all decisionmakers. But I want to 
encourage you to keep up the fight.
    In all my visits at home and abroad, I have found out that you can 
learn a lot about a country's future by visiting its public schools. 
Does every child--boy and girl, rich and poor--have the same opportunity 
to learn? Are they engaged by patient, well-trained and inspiring 
teachers? Do they have access to the materials they need to learn? Are 
they learning what they need to know to succeed in the country they will 
live in and in the future that they will create? Do they have 
opportunities to go on to university if they do well and deserve the 
chance to do so? Are the schools themselves safe, positive, good places 
to learn?
    We have to build a future together where the answer to all these 
questions is ``yes'' in every community, in every nation. I believe we 
can build a future where every child in every corner of the world, 
because of the explosion of technology and because of the dedication of 
teachers, will have the skills, the opportunity, the education to 
fulfill his or her God-given potential.
    I know this will happen if teachers lead the way. I know that there 
will be political fights to be fought and won. I know one of your 
honorees at this conference is being honored for taking huge numbers of 
children out of bondage and putting them back in school. Some people 
still view children as little more than a material asset. They are us as 
children, and they are our future and the future of the world.
    When he came to the White House to be honored as our National 
Teacher of the Year, Philip Bigler said, ``To be a teacher is to be 
forever an optimist.'' I thank you for your unshakeable optimism. I ask 
you not only to be vigorous in the classroom but vigorous as citizens. 
You must not stop until every political leader with any political 
influence, in any political party, in any nation knows that this is 
something that has to be lifted above political partisanship. This is 
something that ought to be beyond all debate.
    If you understand how the world is going to work tomorrow and you 
have any concern about the integrity and the richness of the human 
spirit in every child, then all of us must join hands to help you 
succeed in giving all those children the tomorrows they deserve.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:31 a.m. at the Washington Hilton. In his 
remarks, he referred to Mary Hatwood Futrell, president, Education 
International; Robert Chase, president, National Education Association; 
and Sandra Feldman, president, American Federation of Teachers.