[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 20 (Monday, May 22, 2000)]
[Pages 1157-1162]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at Mayer Sulzberger Middle School in Philadelphia

May 19, 2000

    Well, one thing I can say is, I'm glad I didn't have to run against 
Toya Doe for President of the United States. [Laughter] Didn't she do a 
wonderful job? I thought she was great. She was terrific. Thank you.

[[Page 1158]]

    I'm so glad to see you all. I'm glad to be back in Philadelphia. I 
want to thank my great friend Chaka Fattah for so many things, but 
especially for championing this program and creating the certificate 
that the students will receive today. I also want to acknowledge the 
presence here of another great Member of the House of Representatives 
from the State of Pennsylvania, Ron Klink. Thank you for being here 
today, Ron.
    I thank Pedro Ramos for his fine remarks and his work. And I thank 
your principal, Kathleen Lacey, for having us here. Thank you. I'd also 
like to acknowledge, on this side of me is the Deputy Secretary of 
Education from Washington, DC, the people who fund this program, Mr. 
Frank Holleman. Thanks for coming, Frank.
    And we also have the Shoemaker Middle School principal, James 
Slaughter, and two of your cluster leaders, Janet Samuels and Armita 
Sims. Thank you for being here. And I'd also like to acknowledge the two 
school board members who are here, Sandra Glenn and my longtime friend 
Reverend Ralph Blanks. It's nice to see you, my friend. I'm glad to see 
you.
    There's one more Sulzberger success story I'd like to acknowledge 
today, and that is a man who was Vice President of his class here 42 
years ago, just got a master's degree in education--in elementary 
education and administration. And he's a teacher at Shoemaker, 
Congressman Fattah's father, Mr. David Fattah. Welcome. Thank you, sir.
    Now, before I talk about this program, I have to just mention one 
other thing, because something happened nearby here yesterday that I 
want to mention. Previous speakers have said that I devoted a lot of 
time as President to education, and I have. I have supported virtually 
every one of the reforms that Mr. Ramos discussed. I believe there 
should be no social promotion, but I think there ought to be strategies 
to turn around schools that aren't working. I think that children ought 
to have after-school and summer school programs and mentoring programs. 
I don't think kids should be branded failures when the system fails 
them. So I think all children can learn. That's why I like this.
    I have supported the school dress policy that you mentioned and zero 
tolerance for guns in schools. But one of the things I have recognized 
over the years is that the first and most important thing is that our 
children have to be safe in school and on the way to and from school if 
they're going to learn in school.
    The reason I bring that up today is that I've been heavily involved 
in trying to make our streets and our schools safer, for over 7 years. 
I'm proud of the fact that crime has gone down every year I've been in 
office and that we've put another 100,000 police on the streets. We've 
provided more after-school programs and other things for kids to do. We 
passed the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. But we need to do 
more.
    And I have advocated a comprehensive strategy for stronger 
enforcement of the laws on the books, putting 50,000 more police on the 
street in high crime neighborhoods, and doing more to keep guns away 
from criminals and kids, including closing the gun show loophole and 
requiring child trigger locks and stopping large ammunition clips from 
being imported. I also think if people buy a handgun, they ought to get 
a license, like they do when they buy a car, to prove they don't have a 
criminal background and they know how to use the gun safely.
    But anyway, the reason I mention this today is, yesterday the State 
Senate of your neighbor, New Jersey, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, 
Republicans and Democrats, voted to raise the legal age of handgun 
purchase to 21, to require ballistics tests for all new guns, so we can 
keep up with the bullets used in crimes, to increase enforcement efforts 
and require the development of smart guns that can only be fired by the 
people who own them and, therefore, cannot be stolen or otherwise used 
or abused.
    Now, this is a big deal because it will also minimize accidental 
deaths involving children. So I just wanted to say that the people of 
New Jersey and their representatives, in joining California, 
Massachusetts, Maryland, and other States in taking this kind of action, 
deserve our thanks. This will not keep any lawful gun owner from 
hunting, from sport-shooting, from having weapons for self-defense, 
nothing that changes the law of lawful ownership, but it will save some 
children's lives, like the kids that are in this room today.

[[Page 1159]]

    And that's what that Million Mom March was about last weekend. 
Nobody wants to take anything away from anybody they're legally entitled 
to. But we ought to do more to make America the safest big country in 
the world. And the NRA--they're about to meet in their convention down 
in Charlotte today, and I hope they have a good meeting, but I hope 
they--they need to think about this. Nobody who differs with them on 
this issue is trying to take anybody's gun away from them, but we just 
want more criminals and kids to be without the ability to get guns, 
because they're not suppose to have them. And nobody claims they can 
legally have them, and we just want to keep more people alive. And I 
think New Jersey did a good thing yesterday, and we ought to give them a 
hand for what they did. [Applause]
    Now, I want to talk about GEAR UP a minute. And I want to sort of 
tell you how this started. It was mentioned earlier that a person in 
Philadelphia had promised sixth graders if they'd stay in school that he 
would send them to college. I have a friend in New York, Gene Lang, who 
did that many years ago--promised the kids at this old elementary school 
that if they'd stay in school, he'd send them to college.
    And Chaka came to me one day, Congressman Fattah did, and he said, 
``You know, we're doing all this work to open the doors of college to 
everybody.'' Now, for example, all you kids, if you had to borrow the 
money to go to college, you might say, ``Well, how can I borrow the 
money to go to college? I might not be able to pay it back.'' So we 
changed the law so you can borrow the money at lower costs, and then, 
whatever you decide to do, you can pay it back as a small percentage of 
your annual salary, no matter how much you borrow.
    We increased the Pell grants. We passed the HOPE scholarship, which 
gives a tax credit of up to $1,500 for a college education, which 
essentially says that we make community college free. This year, I'm 
asking the Congress to allow a tax deduction of up to 28 percent of the 
cost of college tuition, up to $10,000. So if you owe $2,800 in income 
tax and you spend up to $10,000 on college tuition, you wouldn't owe any 
income tax anymore. That would be good.
    Anyway, what he said to me was, ``That's all well and good, but most 
people that I know in inner-city Philadelphia''--or rural Arkansas, 
where I'm from, for that matter--``they don't know we did that. And the 
kids that need it most are least likely to know about it.'' So, he said, 
``We ought to have a mentoring program to help kids when they're coming 
of age and they start to think about this, so that they get the learning 
and other support they need, and they know that they will be able to go 
to college if they do what they're supposed to do.''
    We worked as hard as we could to open the doors of college for all, 
but you guys have got to walk through those doors. And I really believe 
that in the future we will look back and see this GEAR UP program as a 
profoundly important step in ending inequality, in lifting people in 
America. And no matter what he said giving me credit for it, it was 
Congressman Fattah's idea. It wouldn't be here if it weren't for him, 
and he deserves the credit.
    One thing I noticed about being President is, because you've got the 
microphone, you tend to get the credit. Now, sometimes you tend to get 
the blame, too. [Laughter] I was glad to support it, glad to fight for 
it, and I'm glad we got it done. But I thank you, Congressman, for what 
you did.
    Now, why is it so important? Your great Philadelphian, Benjamin 
Franklin, once said, ``Genius without education is like silver in the 
mine.'' Not mind, mine. What does that mean? The silver is not worth 
anything unless you get it out of the mine, right? Otherwise, it's just 
down some dark hole somewhere. So always, always, education has been 
important. But today it is more important than ever before. And all of 
you know why, don't you?
    You've seen computers. You know how the Internet works. What you may 
not know is that we are doubling the whole volume of knowledge in the 
world about every 5 years now. We are developing supercomputers that 
will soon operate on chips the size of a teardrop. You will live in an 
age where you'll find out what's in the black holes in outer space and 
what's in the deepest holes in the ocean.
    You may know somebody that's in a wheelchair because they had an 
accident. Probably

[[Page 1160]]

in the lifetime of the children in this room, the biological sciences 
and the computer sciences will merge, and when somebody has an accident 
and they've injured their spine, they'll take a picture of that spine, 
and a computer program will design a little chip you can put in the 
spine that will allow people to get up and walk--in your lifetime.
    I think in your lifetime we'll find cures for Alzheimer's, for 
Parkinson's disease. I think we'll have a vaccine for AIDS. I think 
we'll be able to keep women from dying from breast cancer and men from 
dying from prostate cancer. I think that you will communicate, as a 
normal course, through your computers over the Internet with people all 
over the world. And pretty soon that little screen that you use for the 
Internet will get smaller and smaller, and you'll be able to use it for 
telephone conversations and for your television. And all your 
communications will be in one small but powerful computer, with one 
screen and one keyboard. And then someday, you'll get rid of the 
keyboard, and you'll just talk at the computer, and it will do what you 
tell it to.
    It's going to be an exciting time. But if you don't have a good 
education, if you don't read well, speak clearly, write well, understand 
basic math and basic technology, you won't be able to take full 
advantage of it. On the other hand, if you do have a good education, 
this technological revolution is going to take more people out of 
poverty more quickly and enable more poor neighborhoods in America and 
poor villages in remote countries around the world to develop their 
capacities than anything that has ever happened in all of human history.
    So I might see, as you grow up, the poor parts of my native State in 
the Mississippi Delta flourishing, because it won't matter that they're 
way out in the country anymore because they're connected to the 
Internet. I'll be able to see poor neighborhoods in Philadelphia and New 
York City and other urban areas able to get the same kind of investment 
and start the same kind of businesses and do the same kind of things 
anybody anywhere else can--if we have a good education.
    You know, there are places in America--you kids might be surprised 
about this--there are Indian reservations in America where 70 percent of 
the people still don't have telephones--70 percent--where over half the 
people don't have jobs. But they, too, can be helped but only if they 
have education.
    So I wanted to come here today because I think kids in poor 
neighborhoods and poor places like I grew up are just as smart as kids 
anywhere else. I think the good Lord has made education equal. But I 
think you've got to gear up. [Laughter] Otherwise, I don't care how 
smart you are--Ben Franklin was right, your silver might as well be down 
in the mine.
    I was the first person in my family ever to go to college. I had a 
grandmother who got a correspondent's degree in nursing, lived in a 
little old place with about 50 people until she was old enough to move 
to the biggest city around, which had 6,000 people in it. But from the 
time I was a kid, for whatever reason, my mother and my grandmother and 
my step-father, who didn't have a high school diploma, they told me I 
was going to college. From the time I was 8 or 9, I believed them. They 
said it, and I just decided I was.
    We've done everything we could to remove the financial barriers. 
We've done everything we could to give your schools support, to identify 
problems and turn them around and increase the quality of education. But 
the children have to live in an environment where excellence is expected 
and people know it will be rewarded. So the idea behind GEAR UP is, get 
children when they're young and stay with them until they actually go to 
college.
    Every one of you who's been a part of it, I thank you. I thank the 
leaders from the schools, the universities, the businesses, the 
community organizations for mentoring our young people, for taking them 
around college campuses, for letting people see colleges and imagine it. 
I never went on a college campus when I was 9 or 10 years old, I think, 
until my music took me there. One of the things I learned from the time 
I was your age is, if you want to do something big with your life, first 
you have to imagine that you can do it. You have to know how to put a 
picture in your mind of what you want to be.

[[Page 1161]]

    So Toya says, ``I want to be a teacher.'' How does she know she 
wants to be a teacher? Because she's seen people teaching and doing good 
things and lighting fires of excitement in children's minds. And so she 
can imagine what a wonderful thing it would be to be a good teacher.
    The Bible says, ``Where there is no vision, the people perish.'' I 
wish it were written in positive terms: Where there is vision, the 
people flourish. I want you to be able to imagine your dreams. And 
that's another big part of this program.
    I want to thank all the educators for getting the young people 
excited about academic achievement and helping to improve their study 
skills and strengthening the curriculum and getting kids to take courses 
like algebra they might otherwise just as soon not take, but it will 
help you go to college. And take the hard courses. Challenge yourself. 
Your mind is just like any other muscle in your body. If you want it to 
work better, you've got to work at it. Don't be afraid.
    Do you know that over 90 percent of the people--really about 99 
percent of the people--are capable of learning 100 percent of what they 
need to know to do nearly anything. Most of us never use more than a 
modest percentage of our brain power. You should be brave. You can do 
it.
    I believe that intelligence is equally distributed in the world, but 
opportunity isn't. What we're trying to do is to make opportunity as 
equally distributed as intelligence is. But effort is not equally 
distributed either.
    I remember when--I'm going to Chicago when I leave you, and since 
Philadelphia is in the basketball playoffs and Chicago isn't, I can now 
say this. [Laughter] Back in the years when the Bulls were doing so 
well--you know, my wife grew up in Chicago--so we were out there, and we 
knew a lot of people that were associated with them. And everybody was 
talking about how 
Michael Jordan was the greatest natural basketball player they had ever 
seen. And this friend of mine who was associated with the Bulls said, 
``Yes, he certainly is, and you'd be amazed, because he's also the first 
person that comes to practice, the last person that leaves. He still 
shoots more free throws in practice than anybody on the team. You'd be 
amazed how much more of a natural athlete he is because he works harder 
than everybody else.''
    I like to play golf. But once I heard a commentator say to a great 
golfer that all the people who played with him said it was astonishing 
that he was also a lucky golfer. And he said, ``Yes, I've been real 
lucky, but I've noticed that the harder I work, the luckier I get.'' 
[Laughter]
    So we're dealing with three things here: What you've got inside you, 
the silver in the mine; whether you have opportunities and you know it, 
your vision; and then your effort, which only you can supply. But we 
believe in you, and you must believe in yourself. You've got to stay in 
school and aim high and go to college, because you can afford it and 
there will be a place for you. And there is only going to be more 
emphasis on that.
    And I understand that the Sulzberger School already has 300 students 
enrolled. And I understand that the reading and math scores have already 
gone up. So I want to tell you--I'm just going to make one announcement 
today, because I believe in this. Today we're going to give out $185 
million in new grants for summer school and after-school programs, to 
support 48 States in setting up learning centers, to try to help more 
people do what you're doing in this GEAR UP program and in other 
programs that work. Everybody needs an education in America, and we've 
got to provide it.
    Now, guess what? We had 1,000 good applications we can't fund with 
that $185 million. And one of the things that I want to do to support 
GEAR UP here is to get enough money into our budget so that every school 
in the country will be able to offer after-school programs to every 
child who needs it. That's in our budget this year. And we're going to 
fight for it, and I hope you'll help us.
    And so far, we haven't persuaded the Congress to adopt this or to 
fully fund Representative Fattah's GEAR UP program so that more kids can 
be in it. But I think that my coming here and showing you and having 
Toya speak to the country through the press corps here, ought to give a 
little more impetus behind the GEAR UP program. We need more support for 
it.

[[Page 1162]]

    Out here in this audience today, there may be another future great 
President; there may be another future great business leader; there may 
be another future great minister; there may be someone who will discover 
an absolute cure for AIDS; there may be someone who will design a car 
that will get 500 or 600 miles a gallon. All of you think about that. 
One of you could do that. And every one of you can have a good life and 
do something that makes a difference and have children of your own that 
will have even better lives. That's what GEAR UP is all about. We 
believe in you. And we want you to believe in yourselves.
    Good luck, and God bless you.
    Now, symbolizing what every student who completes this program will 
do, Congressman Fattah and I are going to give Toya Doe, representing 
all of you, her 21st Century Scholars Certificate. I hope that all of 
you will have these, go through this program, and finish it. This is a 
ticket to the future. And remember, if you gear up, you'll get to 
college. And after that, there's no stopping you.
    So let's give Toya another big hand. [Applause]

Note: The President spoke at 2:40 p.m. in the auditorium. In his 
remarks, he referred to Toya Doe, student, who introduced the President; 
Janet C. Samuels, University City Cluster Leader; Armita B. Sims, 
Overbrook Cluster Leader; and Pedro Ramos, president, Philadelphia Board 
of Education.