Remarks at Frank W. Ballou Senior High School

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 7, 2000 by Bill Clinton

February 2, 2000

Thank you. Now, all of you sitting out here in this audience, you know, some of us speak in public for a living; others don't I thought Darnell was terrific. Didn't you think he did a good job?

I am so glad to be here today with all of you at Ballou Senior High School. I thank the band for playing for us earlier today. I thought you all did a great job. And I thank Dr. Durham and Dr. Bridges for welcoming me here and for giving me a track-and-field jacket, which I will wear happily. I thank the students who met me.

I want to say a special word of thanks to the chairman and CEO of America Online, Steve Case, and for Epic Learning's president, David Sterling. I thank them for what they said here today and for the commitment they have to giving you and young people like you all over this country a chance to live your dreams by making sure you have access to the technological future that ought to be within reach of every American. They don't have to do this; they're doing this because they know it is the right thing to do. And I thank them for being here.

I want to talk a little today about what our job is in the Government, what my job as President is, what Washington's job should be to make sure that we can have more stories like the ones I saw from the students today that Darnell introduced me to. And I want to thank all the students that showed me what they were doing to either repair or to work with computers. But nothing that the President proposes that costs any money can be done unless the Congress goes along. And there is an enormous amount of interest in the United States Congress today in both parties, in both the Senate and the House, to do something about this.

And there is a big delegation from Congress here, so I want to introduce them. I'd like to ask them to stand, and I hope you will express your appreciation to them: First of all, Senator Bob Bennett, from Utah, who headed our Y2K efforts in Congress--thank you, sir; Congresswoman Maxine Waters from California; Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas; Congressman Bill Jefferson from Louisiana; Congressman Adam Smith from Washington; Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher from California; Congressman David Wu from Oregon; and your Representative in Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton. Thank you.

Did I miss anybody? And I want to thank your wonderful Mayor, who was once a member of our administration, Mayor Anthony Williams. Stand up, there. Thank you very much.

I want to just mention a couple of other people. First of all, thank you, Superintendent Ackerman, for welcoming me. I want to thank Harris Wofford, who is the head of the AmeriCorps program and VISTA. The AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers are working to help solve this problem of the digital divide all over America. They're young people who are going back into our schools, going back into our community, helping people who otherwise wouldn't have a chance, and earning some money themselves for college. Some of you might want to consider joining AmeriCorps when you get out of high school.

Stand up, Senator Wofford. Thank you very much.

I want to thank Angela Lee from AT&T and Julie Evans from NetDay for the work they have done to help connect all of our schools to the Internet. I want to thank three people in our administration: Gene Sperling, my National Economic Adviser, who has worked so hard on this; Secretary Daley, who is speaking in Harlem on this issue today; and I want to thank Vice President Gore for reasons I'll say in a moment, but he had a great deal to do with what we have been able to accomplish over the last 6 years.

I just got a wonderful tour from Darnell and a chance to learn how technology is enhancing your educational mission. And as Steve Case said, it will only increase when you become one of these power-up sites. I learned every freshman is taking a computer literacy class. I learned students are going on-line to get help with their homework and learn what they need to do to prepare for college. I learned that you can chat in foreign languages with people around the world and work on projects with scientists from our Naval Research Lab.

I was particularly pleased to learn about Epic Learning's long-term commitment to help students toward certificates in high-tech careers, and about the way companies like 3M, AT&T, and Cisco, along with the AFLCIO, are working to give you additional hardware, software, and teacher training.

One thing that I think may be a downside from the students' point of view -- it occurred to me when I was driving through the snow today--is that once we get everybody wired, you'll still have to go to school even when you can't get here, because you can just go on the Internet. [Laughter] But I think it's worth the sacrifice to give you a better future.

I wanted to say to you--to give you some examples. When we talk about bridging the digital divide, what do we mean? We mean that everybody ought to have access to a computer; everybody ought to have access to the Internet; everybody ought to know how to use it; and then we ought to make it possible for people to make the maximum use of it. I want to just give you some examples of what this incredibly profound change in our society has wrought in individual lives.