scholarship and teaching in the humanities and to foster greater public appreciation and understanding of the humanities. These plans provide the basis for programs which will -increase the number of outstanding scholars in the humanities through annual fellowship awards to some 350 individuals-both promising and established scholars -heighten public understanding of the humanities through improvements in education in the school, in the home, and in the community -support research in specific fields to expand the range of our knowledge -enable American scholars to make a greater contribution to the exchange of knowledge essential to international understanding. More than 100 outstanding educators and scholars have advised the Endowment in the development of these programs. The views of these and other great humanists will be sought as plans for subsequent years are developed. I am satisfied that the National Endowment for the Humanities has established a firm foundation for extending the boundaries of our understanding. It is with great satisfaction that I now submit to you this record of its achievement. THE WHITE HOUSE, February 15, 1967. EQUAL JUSTICE LYNDON B. JOHNSON. The President's Message to the Congress Setting Forth a Seven-Point Civil Rights Program. February 15, 1967 * Schools In the 1963-1964 school year, ten years after the landmark Brown decision, one percent of the Negro students in the 11 Southern states were in schools also attended by white students. Then came the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its prohibition against the use of Federal funds to support racial bias. In September 1966, 12.5 percent of the Negro students in those same states were enrolled in desegregated schools. We expect this figure to increase significantly next fall. We will proceed with the task of securing the rights of all our children. Education Head Start has given deprived children a chance to learn in later years instead of being merely exposed to school. Through this and other preschool programs, two million children have been offered better education and health care. More than seven million children in seventy percent of all school districts in the United States have participated in programs under Title I of the 1965 Education Act. These programs have a single aim: to improve the education of disadvantaged children. The better libraries, larger professional staffs, advanced instructional equipment and other services they provide are investments in the future of children who need them most. In my Message on America's Children and Youth, I asked the Congress to provide an additional $135 million to strengthen Head Start. With these funds, we will launch a Head Start Follow-Through Program in the early grades of elementary school to maintain the momentum the child has gained and we will extend the Head Start Program downward to cover more three-year-olds. Extraordinary help at the start of life is necessary for all disadvantaged children. It is particularly necessary for the Negro child reared in poverty and encumbered by generations of deprivation. Jobs and Training Thousands of job opportunities for the young have been created by the Neighborhood Youth Corps and the Job Corps. The first, active in both urban and rural areas, has enabled many young people to earn enough to remain in school, and provided employment and remedial education for dropouts. The Job Corps also meant to help those between 16 and 21-has offered other thousands both a change of environment and the opportunity to acquire education and job training. The Manpower Development and Training Act gives men without jobs or skills the chance to acquire both, by combining government planning and resources with private industry. The Work Experience Program offers welfare recipients a means of obtaining the experience they need for gainful employment. Today's strong economy, which last year put almost three million. more Americans on the payrolls, is also of tremendous benefit to needy persons in search of dependable employment. But the long term, and as demand for better qualified workers grows, training and remedial education will be of even greater importance to the disadvantaged. This is particularly true for those who leave the farm and move to urban areas in search of employment, without the skills an urban society requires. During the last three years, our training programs have provided the means of self-sufficiency to almost a million men and women. The value of these programs to the Negro American is especially great. The unemployment rate for Negroes is more than double that for whites. About 650,000 Americans, more than 20 percent of all unemployed, are non-white. About 213,000 of these are between 14 and 19 years of age. Job training is essential to enable them to get off the welfare rolls and to go on the tax rolls. Our economy is also strengthened by these programs. If Negroes today had the same skills as other Americans, and if they were free from discrimination in employment, our Gross National Product could become $30 billion higher. I will shortly submit recommendations to strengthen and expand these training programs. I am asking the Congress for an additional $135 million in appropriations for the Office of Economic Opportunity for a special program to open the doors of opportunity and meaningful employment to our most disadvantaged citizens. I will call for the active assistance of private industry and organized labor to provide skills and jobs to those now confined to the welfare rolls and the slums. VOCATIONAL AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION Statement by the President on the 50th Anniversary of the Signing of the Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act. February 23, 1967 Fifty years ago today-February 23, 1917-President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act-an act which has provided a firm foundation for significant developments in public vocational and technical education in the United States. One of the most important accomplishments of the Smith-Hughes Act was the establishment of cooperative activities between the Federal Government and the States. Financial support is provided to our country's most worthwhile endeavor, the education and development of its youth. Congress has passed a number of other acts to provide for the expansion and further development of vocational and technical education. The Vocational Education Act of 1963 is helping to make possible an effective nationwide system of vocational and technical education programs. Over the 50-year period, approximately $1.7 billion has been made available to the States under Federal vocational education laws. Our goal must be to develop high quality programs of vocational and technical education related to the changing needs of the economy and readily accessible to all youths and adults. EDUCATION AND HEALTH IN AMERICA The President's Message to the Congress Outlining His Recommendations. February 28, 1967 To the Congress of the United States: In Edmonds, Washington, three new evening classes today are helping 150 high school dropouts finish school and gain new job skills. In Detroit, a month ago, 52,000 children were immunized against measles, during a campaign assisted by Federal funds. In 25 states, Federal funds are helping improve medical care for 6.4 million citizens who get public assistance. Over 8 million poor children are now getting a better education because of funds provided under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Nineteen million older citizens enjoy the protection of Medicare. Three years ago, not one of these programs existed. Today, they are flourishing because a concerned people and the creative 89th Congress acted. They are the result of twenty-four new health laws and eighteen new education laws. But even the best new programs are not enough. Today, we face major challenges of organization and evaluation. If our new projects are to be effective, we must have the people to run them, and the facilities. to support them. We must encourage states and localities to plan more effectively and comprehensively for their growing needs and to measure their progress towards meeting those needs. Above all, each community, each state, must generate a spirit of creative change: a willingness to experiment. In this, my fourth message to Congress on Health and Education, I do not recommend more of the same but more that is better: to solve old problems, to create new institutions, to fulfill the potential of each individual in our land. Nothing is more fundamental to all we seek than our programs in health and education: Education because it not only overcomes ignorance, but arms the citizen against the other evils which afflict him. Health-because disease is the cruelest enemy of individual promise and because medical progress makes less and less tolerable that illness still should blight so many lives. I. EDUCATION I believe that future historians, when they point to the extraordinary changes which have marked the 1960's, will identify a major movement forward in American education. This movement, spurred by the laws of the last three years, seeks to provide equality of educational opportunity to all Americans-to give every child education of the highest quality, no matter how poor his family, how great his handicap, what color his skin, or where he lives. We cannot yet fully measure the results of this great movement in American education. Our progress can be traced partially by listing some of the extraordinary bills I have signed into law: -The Higher Education Act of 1965. -The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. -The Vocational Education Act of 1963. The scale of our efforts can be partially measured by the fact that today appropriations for the Office of Education are nearly seven times greater than four years ago. Today we can point to at least one million college students who might not be in college except for government loans, grants and work-study programs, and to more than 17,500 school districts helping disadvantaged children under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This breakthrough is not the work of Washington alone. The ideas for these programs come from educational leaders all over the country. Many different communities must supply the energy to make these programs work. Yet they are national programs, shaped by national needs. Congress has played a vital role in reviewing these needs and setting these priorities. The new Federal role in education is, in reality, a new alliance with America's states and local communities. In this alliance, the Federal Government continues to be a junior partner: -Local school districts will submit, and state governments will approve, the plans for spending more than one billion dollars this year to improve the education of poor children. -Federal funds for vocational education are administered through state plans controlled by state, not Federal, officials. -The recommendations of the states have been sought and followed in more than 95 percent of the projects for centers and services which are funded by the U.S. Office of Education. The education programs I recommend this year have three major aims: -To strengthen the foundations we have laid in recent years, by revising, improving, and consolidating existing programs. -To provide special help to those groups in our society with special needs: the poor, the handicapped, victims of discrimination or neglect. -To build for the future by exploiting the new opportunities presented by science, technology and the world beyond our borders. The budget proposals I am making for 1968 will carry forward our efforts at a new level. The total Federal dollar expenditures for educational purposes, including health training, which I have proposed for fiscal 1968 will amount to $11 billion-an increase of $1 billion, or 10 percent, over 1967 and $7 billion, or 175 percent, over 1963. STRENGTHENING EDUCATION PROGRAMS State and community education leaders have shouldered heavy new burdens as a result of recent increases in Federal programs. If these officials are to develop wise and long-range plans for education, they must have more help. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act has provided funds to strengthen state departments of educatiou. But additional funds are needed-money to improve community, state, and regional educational planning. Nothing can do more to ensure the effective use of Federal dollars. I recommend legislation authorizing $15 million to help state and local governments evaluate their education programs and plan for the future. A Better Education Timetable One condition which severely hampers educational planning is the Congressional schedule for authorizations and appropriations. When Congress enacts and funds programs near the end of a session, the Nation's schools and colleges must plan their programs without knowing what Federal resources will be available to them to meet their needs. As so many Governors have said, the Federal legislative calendar often proves incompatible with the academic calendar. I urge that the Congress enact education appropriations early enough to allow the Nation's schools and colleges to plan effectively. I have directed the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to work with the Congress toward this end. Another way to ease this problem is to seek the earliest practical renewal of authorization for major education measures. I recommend that Congress this year extend three major education measures now scheduled to expire in June 1968: The National Defense Education Act of 1958. The Higher Education Act of 1965. The National Vocational Student Loan Insurance Act of 1965. Improving Program Evaluation Most of our education programs have been operating too short a time to provide conclusive judgments about their effectiveness. But we should be heartened by the evaluations so far. |