We passed the Vocational and Technical Education Act. We passed the poverty measure the Economic Opportunity Act, appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars requested, a billion-two this year, offering millions of young people the necessary training to help them escape from poverty. We passed the $1,200 million Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965-the broadest, most meaningful, and the most sweeping Federal commitment to education that this Nation has ever made. And this is the first week, of the first fiscal year, in which funds, under this act, will begin to flow to States and communities in every part of this land, in every State in this country. We are going to pass the Higher Education Bill to provide help to colleges and students this summer. We are going to pass the Federal Arts and Humanities Foundation Bill to help those engaged in the study of the humanities and in the practice of the arts, and we are going to pass it this year. And next year-in my next State of the Union message-I intend to offer more new proposals to improve the education of all Americans. And I am here to tell you today that we are not going to stop until every child in this great and beautiful land of ours can have all of the education, of the highest quality, which his or her ambition demands and his or her mind can absorb. So, I come here this afternoon to speak to you not of our triumphs, but of our tasks; not of the success that we have had, but the sacrifices that are to be made; not of the achievements of yesterday, but the aspirations of tomorraw. For this is not an occasion for self-congratulations. It is rather a time to reflect on our mounting needs and on our present deficiencies. More than one million students-who are not here to speak for themselves this afternoon-drop out of school, their talents wasted, their intelligence lost to the Nation, their futures shattered by their failure and by our failure. In the next 5 years, attendance in elementary and secondary schools at 48.1 million now, in the fall of 1964-will increase by more than 4 million-almost 1 million students per year. We will need 400,000 new classrooms to meet this growth-while a half million of our present classrooms are already more than 30 years old. And beyond 1970 the demand for education-at every level-will continue to increase. We will need more classrooms, we will need more books, we will need more teachers, we will need more schools on a scale that we have never dreamed of even a decade ago. Nor is it enough to give a student a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. We must make sure that the quality of that education is equal to his capacity to learn. We must make certain that it stimulates creativity rather than stifling it. We must make sure that it enlarges the mind rather than narrowing it-that he receives not merely a diploma but learning, in its real, broadest and most meaningful and most hu mane sense. In pursuit of these goals, I have asked the White House to send out invitations to the White House Conference on Education. That Con ference I hope it is the largest and best of its kind ever held in this Nation-will take place on July the 20th and 21st of this year at the White House in Washington. It will bring together educators and informed citizens from every State in this Nation. It will seek the answer to the immense question: How can a growing nation in an increasingly complex world provide education of the highest quality for all of its people? The search for this answer radiates into every corner of American life. It must deal with educational opportunity and techniques from preschool age to the most advanced of studies. It must look beyond the classroom to the surroundings and the environment of the student. For the process of learning is not a carefully defined and isolated segment of a person's life. It is a part of an organic whole, embracing all the forces which shape the man. And if we ignore these forces we do so at the peril of learning itself. Nothing is more dangerous than the easy assumption that by simply putting more money into more schools we will emerge with an educated and trained and enlightened nation. And it is this kind of assumption that I came here to challenge today. I want you to bring all the tools of modern knowledge-from physics to psychology-to bear on the increase of learning. And if these tools are still inadequate then it is our job to fashion new ones and better ones. To guide the discussion at this Conference we are formulating a series of questions. And I hope you will give these questions your most careful thought and your boldest imagination in the weeks between now and the Conference. They include: How can we bring first-class education to the city slum and to the impoverished rural areas? Today the children of 5 million families are now denied it. How can we stimulate every child to catch the love of learning so he wants to stay in school? One million children now drop out of school each year. How do we guarantee that new funds will bring new ideas and new techniques to our school system-not just simply expand the old and the outmoded? How can local, and State, and Federal Government best cooperate to make education the first-the first among all of this Nation's goals? These are a few of the important questions which I hope the White House Conference examines. And I would like to mention one other-our country today is among the leaders in the community of nations of the world. Then: How well is our education system preparing our citizens of this one nation for their responsibility to some 120 other nations in the world? But even as we prepare for this Conference, your Government is acting. We are now completing a thorough overhaul and reorganization of the Office of Education. We are equipping it to deal with its new and its future responsibilities of the 20th century. We have also established a national center for educational statistics; an office of programs for educating the disadvantaged; an Office of Equal Educational Opportunity so people of all races, of all creeds, of all sections, are given equal treatment. And we are, at this moment, in the process of preparing more and exciting new programs that our task force is working on this week to present next year when the Congress comes back. In the next few days I will propose a National Teacher Corps to enlist thousands of dedicated teachers to work alongside of local teachers in city slums and in areas of rural poverty where they can really serve their nation. They'll be young people, preparing for teaching careers. They'll be experienced teachers willing to give a year to the places in their country that need them the most. They can bring the best in our Nation to the help of the poorest of our children. And I announce today that your President will submit to the Congress and will support a program of fellowships for elementary and secondary school teachers so that they can replenish their knowledge and improve their abilities. And this program will assist teachers— displaced by the process of school integration-to acquire the skills that are necessary to permit them to perform new and challenging jobs in a new environment, in a new century. For you and I are both concerned about the problem of the dismissal of Negro teachers as we move forward-as we move forward with the desegregation of the schools of America. I applaud the action that you have already taken. For my part, I have directed the Commissioner of Education to pay very special attention, in reviewing the desegregation plans, to guard against any pattern of teacher dismissal based on race or national origin. When the upgrading of the teaching staff is required in newly integrated districts, I have instructed educational officials to provide funds for teacher institutes and to assist the school districts through title IV of the Civil Rights Act. And where an integrated school system requires fewer teachers than those required to operate two segregated school systems, I have directed Federal officials to provide special Federal reemployment services through a national program carried out by the U.S. Employment Service. And when unemployed teachers need and when they desire refresher training, I have ordered Federal officials to provide this training, with full allowances, under the Manpower Development and Training Act that we have already passed. And such a training program, I think you know, has already proven its great value in this city. It is being sponsored by the Urban League at Yeshiva University. Now, in these and many other ways, we continue to pursue this—the central goal of this administration. But the basic thought, and the programs of the future action, must come from you teachers. And the deeds which give meaning to the law must also come from you teachers. For a Federal law is not an education. A national program is not a developing child. A Presidential speech is not a trained nation. But as a teacher-I'm still on leave of absence from Houston Public School-who has labored with you through the years, in the ele mentary, high schools, and some short while in the colleges, I remind you that we have talked together, and dreamed together, and philoso phized together about the need-the great need---for all of these things for 30 years or more since I finished college. We have even urged since then, that they be put in the annual party platforms of both the Republican and Democratic Party for your consideration on election day. Well, I'm here to tell you this afternoon that this is a different day, a different hour, and a different month. The time for talking and dreaming and philosophizing and writing platforms is gone, and the time for doing things instead of talking about them is here. All these things are empty and they are sterile without the will and without the effort at every level of our national life that is needed to transform intention into reality-the mandate of the law into the fulfillment of life. And in this, too, the hopes of our Nation are resting on you. I do not need to talk to this audience about the importance of education. It's been your life work. No strain in our national life is more deeply rooted or more enduring than this faith in learning. It is the pathway to opportunity and the good life. It is the key to wise and satisfying use of our leisure time. It is the door to each man's highest use of his highest powers-which is happiness. It can bring fulfillment to the many; and, to the happy few, those transcendent achievements which really enrich the human race. And if these things are true for every society, how much more important they are to our free society. In every corner of this world in which we live, not only our democracy but the idea of democracy itself is today being challenged. As the world grows in danger and as it grows in complexity, and as humanity seems dwarfed by the forces it has loosed, man's ability to govern himself is again being questioned. We will not prove democracy's strength by faith or even by the experience of our past. We will prove it by the works of the future. I am not concerned with all the promises that have been made to you all through the years. I am not concerned with the times you have been taken up on the mountain and asked to look out at the future beyond. I am not concerned with your hopes, or your plans, or your dreams of the past when you went out as the pioneers did with their gun on their shoulder in search of food for their families. What I am concerned with, and what I want you to be concerned with, is results the coonskins that they bring back and put on the wall. And, as I said earlier, together we are not just going to talk and dream. We are going to do. The day of the talkers is done. The day of the doers is here. And with that kind of a comment I better come to a speedy conclusion and go on and get on with the job. That future, hopeful but still unknown, is today struggling to be born in millions of young and waiting minds in thousands of classrooms in this restless continent. So, when you go back from this great convention, in this first city of our land, I hope that you will remember the words of a great leader of government and a great educator, who, in the early days of our Republic, warned us that an educated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free men recognize, and the only ruler that free men desire. Today we are faced with many trying and complex and difficult decisions. But I can tell you here this afternoon that I have never been prouder of my country than I am now. And the pride that I have in my country is largely due to the years of toil and dedication and satisfaction of the teachers who made it so. FF. REMARKS AT THE SIGNING OF THE OLDER AMERICANS ACT, JULY 14, 1965 (Excerpts) This Congress has already done more for the youth of America in terms of education than any Congress of this century. And Senator Morse who doesn't always endorse everything I do abroad, does endorse practically everything we do at home and helps us to do it, and I want to salute him and all the other legislators for what they done in making this the greatest education Congress in the history; and before this session is concluded, I am confident we may be able to say the same of the record of this Congress as far as older people are concerned that we are able to say about education. * This is really a bright spot in my public career, and the only thing I regret is that so many of the older Americans, including my college president, including my mother who inspired me many years ago to take an interest in this field, are not here to see the results of the Fogarty-McNamara legislation, and the legislators, each of whom made a major contribution in this field. I asked Senator Douglas when he got out of the Senate some day if he wanted to be my Comptroller General because he is always finding ways to save money that I can use on good things like education, health, and older Americans, and if we can find ways in these departments that stop part of the waste, we will have much resources to use in fields of this kind. * GG. COMMUNICATION REGARDING ESTABLISHMENT OF A NATIONAL TEACHER CORPS, JULY 17, 1965 * (Excerpt) As I announced in my remarks before the National Education Association on July 2, I am proposing legislation to bring the best of our Nation's talent to its schools. This legislation-the Teaching Professions Act of 1965-will create a National Teacher Corps to serve in city slums and areas of rural poverty; establish a program of fellowships to prepare students for teaching careers in elementary and secondary education and to help experienced teachers enhance their qualifications; and |