But we have only just begun to exploit fully the possibilities that modern technology opens to us.

I can see no reason in the world why modern technology cannot, for example, permit the best professor in the world to teach students all over the world in a field where the vocabulary and the concepts and the standards are uniform; and this is true of many fields, I thinkscience, natural and social.

Moreover, our capacity to produce microfilm and distribute information should make it possible for a young scholar or researcher at any place in the world to have the same basic library facilities that are available in the British Museum, or the Library of Congress, or at one of the great university libraries.

Therefore, I would like to suggest to you this evening some consideration be given to some of these challenges: How can we use what we already know about educational television to accelerate the pace of basic education for all the children of the world? How can we use modern technology to economize on that most essential and that most needed educational resource: the good teacher?

How can we make the good teacher available to the maximum number of students in the world through television?

How can we make the best scholars and teachers in the world available to all universities-wherever they may be-through satellite communications?

So often have I thought of the wonders that could have been brought to those young, struggling minds with warped bodies that I taught back when I was in that little rural school on the United StatesMexican border if we had had satellite communications, and the best scholars and best teachers had been able to invade those classrooms and expose those Mexican children to the English language?

How can we use, too, the latest methods of communications and microfilming to provide those who are doing scholarship and research everywhere the best library facilities that are anywhere?

We seem to need more facts. We seem to need to put a program together.

I was quite impressed with a statement in your conference document which said: "If the world's financial systems were forced to function with no better facts than those which educational systems live by, a financial panic would swiftly seize all capitals of the world." We could have that in the offing anyway.

That is one of the reasons I thought it would be very desirable that we have this conference this year. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction, as Dr. Perkins observed, to know that you have come here upon our invitation, and that you have come here to chart an education strategy for the future.

I should not be presumptuous enough to try to outline that strategy. I content myself with observing a contribution here and there.

If I may suggest another idea, you might consider calling on the United Nations to set a target time for reviewing our goals and planning new progress, and make an international education year for the world.

Don't limit your efforts. Here, and when you leave this place, I hope that you will take these plans and really face up to the tough questions. The real tough question of all is, how can we persuade the governments of 131 other nations to make it their primary objective to give

every boy and girl born in the world-anywhere all the education he or she can take?

How can we get the world's leaders to convert man's tragic will to destroy into a determination to build?

How can we shape a world in which men employ their minds in projects of peace instead of sacrificing their all, their bodies, their lives, on a field of battle?

Can we train a young man's eyes to absorb learning-as eagerly as we train his finger to pull a trigger?

No gathering that has ever assembled has a subject that I think is more urgent than yours-more compelling, more necessary, and more productive.

Here tonight you leaders of educational thought from more than 50 nations-almost half of all the nations of the world-must realize that you are dealing with the dynamite of our times.

Thomas Jefferson said that we should spread the disease of liberty around the world when this Nation was very young. The men of Jefferson's day associated this place where you are meeting tonight with liberty, and also with learning.

Tonight in Williamsburg, I am pleased to observe that you apparently have the same concern. I hope our commitment will be as great as theirs and I hope that your achievements will be as worthy of remembering.

One more word, if I may be personal.

A President must call upon many persons-some to man the ramparts and to watch the faraway, distant posts; others to lead us in science, medicine, education, and social progress here at home.

I especially want to commend this great educational leader-Dr. Perkins for having answered every call that his country has made, and having apparently done it quite well here.

Thank you.

Statement by the President on Announcing Plans To Provide Medically Trained Military Veterans With Job Opportunities in Civilian Health Occupations. October 16, 1967

President Johnson today announced plans to give discharged military medical men and women an opportunity to fill critical shortages in the health manpower field.

The proposal is a part of the broader effort, first announced in August, to help recently separated military service veterans make a smooth transition into civilian life. State employment service agencies are now intensifying employment services toward this end.

Under the medical occupations phase of the nationwide program, discharged veterans will be offered either job opportunities in the health field or training and education to upgrade their abilities. Project Remed, to recruit, retrain, or reemploy medics in civilian health occupations, was launched this month.

It is based on two facts:

-Some 60,000 medically trained men and women are discharged from military service every year.

-There is a need for an estimated 300,000 additional health workers now to provide optimum patient care and, unless steps are taken to counter the trend, population increase alone will enlarge the shortage.

"We must not waste this valuable manpower resource when the need for trained workers in our hospitals, nursing homes, and other health facilities is so great," the President said.

"The benefits of this program are twofold: We offer civilian job opportunities or training to these service men and women and we help to meet the demand for the best in medical care and service," he said.

The program was developed in cooperation with State and local agencies by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Department of Labor, the Department of Defense, and the Veterans Administration.

The program operates in this way:

-At separation centers, each veteran fills out a form developed by the Veterans Employment Service of the U.S. Employment Service asking his military occupation and skill.

-A copy is sent to the State employment office closest to the veteran's home.

--The local State employment office contacts all veterans, identifies those with a military health occupation and offers a personal interview.

The local employment office attempts to locate a job in the health field or offers opportunities for training and educational programs.

The employment counselor will have a list of regional health occupation vacancies and vocational and educational programs which offer courses in these occupations.

The President's Remarks at a Ceremony for the Awarding of Honorary Degrees to President Johnson and to President Diaz Ordaz. October 26, 1967

Mr. President, Mr. Chairman, President Diaz Ordaz, Chairman Mahon, and members of the board:

This has been a very rich and satisfying experience for me today to spend with my friend from across the border.

We talked about how we would continue our efforts developed in the laboratory to rid our cattle of the screw-worm pest. We talked about how we could profitably utilize peaceful uses of atomic energy and the very great desalting experiment that our technicians are carrying on together. We exchanged views about the improvement of our plant life and our food supply.

I thanked the distinguished President for leading the world in developing a new strain of wheat that is now being used in underdeveloped nations in many continents because of the vision and the foresight of the people of Mexico.

I think it is quite appropriate that a technological institution like Texas Tech-agricultural, scientific, one interested in the future of all humanity should confer the doctorate degree on my distinguished friend, President Diaz Ordaz. I should like also to express my sincere appreciation to you for the high honor that you have conferred upon

me.

Texas Tech received its first students in the small west Texas town of Lubbock 40 years ago. Four decades have seen rapid change and growth for that school.

As we know, every advance in technology has opened the door to greater advances. One of the most important goals of my administration has been to make certain that our educational institutions are prepared for what some have called the knowledge crisis. So preparing young people for the world that they will live in is a harder task than ever before.

Two teachers talked about it at some length this afternoon in the Oval Room.

I know if President Diaz Ordaz and I had our wish tonight, certainly high on that priority would be that we would like to see the four persons out of every ten in the world who cannot recognize cat or dog, or spell, or read or write, have the opportunity for all the education that they could take.

President Diaz Ordaz, as you know, spent some of his rather remarkable career in the classroom. I think that Texas Tech does itself a great honor in recognizing that here this evening.

Chairman Mahon is here with us. Education has a/good friend in the man who invited us to have this ceremony here this evening. I don't know that all of you international guests recognize it or not, but George Mahon is Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

He is a friend of education. We are spending about $12 billion a year on education. That is about three times as much as we were spending 3 years ago.

After he invited me to this very unique and unusual procedure of conferring a degree on two Presidents in the Rose Garden of the White House, I considered it very carefully. I recognized the precedents that might be involved. But it occurred to me that maybe Chairman Mahon might become an even better friend of education, if I accepted his invitation. So here we are.

President Diaz Ordaz will recall that at Punta del Este we agreed to join the efforts of all nations in this hemisphere in advancing science and technology. We know that we must give these liberators of mankind unprecedented encouragement and impetus.

I trust that President Diaz Ordaz will view this degree this evening from Texas Tech as a token of America's very high regard for him and for all of his people and as a symbol of the willingness of our schools and our universities to join with those of Mexico in a common effort to advance the cause of learning throughout our hemisphere, because there could be no more worthy objective or goal than for us to have a hemispheric goal of defeating the ancient enemies of illiteracy, ignorance, and disease in this hemisphere.

And at Punta del Este one of the most eloquent voices was that of the great President of Mexico.

We believe, as a result of our meeting here for these 3 days together, that we will not only resolve many matters of mutual interest, but that we will undertake some new goals that could truly benefit not only all the people of the hemisphere, but all humankind.

This week I spoke with two prime ministers from Southeast Asia. And oddly enough both of them talked to me about the food supply of the world and the problems that they had. Both of them talked about the great experiment that we had cooperated with the Philippine Government in making and developing a new strain of rice.

Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma of Laos told me in an 800-acre experimental plot where they once grew 1,200 pounds of rice per acre, they now are growing 7,000 pounds of rice. To a starving world, that means a great deal.

As a result of what the people of Mexico have done under the distinguished leadership of the Mexican Government, the cooperation of one of our great benefactors of this country, the Rockefeller Foundation, we now have what is referred to the world over as a Mexican strain of wheat-Mexican wheat.

It produces two and three times as much yield per acre as the old strain.

So, we hope that in the days to come we can have more new rice strains and more new wheat strains; and more efforts in the field of educating our children and healing our sick because those are really the only goals that count. If we can spend trillions on armaments, as we have in this century, a few billions in education might teach us enough to love our fellow man instead of fight him.

To the board of directors, the distinguished president of Texas Tech, and all those involved in this invitation, we say thank you very much.

*

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF NEGROES IN THE UNITED

STATES

Statement by the President on a Report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. November 2, 1967

The Negro progress made over the past 6 years was earned by millions of Negro Americans going to school, getting better jobs, making higher wages-motivated by the same drive for a better tomorrow that motivated white Americans during this period of economic expansion. Government helped by opening doors of opportunity. Our civil rights laws have opened doors to jobs, schools, housing, public accommodations, and voter participation that were once closed to Negroes. Manpower training programs have opened doors for skill improvement. Aid to education is providing better schools with better teachers and better facilities. Medicare and Medicaid and other programs are opening the way to better health.