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Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, April 21, 1997

We certainly can't learn to live together as one America, with all this rich diversity we have, without being educated to it. Because for thousands of years, people have lived in tribal patterns that taught them to be suspicious of those that were different from themselves. Among the Teachers of the Year here today, we have an immigrant from Taiwan making a great contribution to the United States. Among the Teachers of the Year today we have a Japanese-American whose parents were interned during World War II. My State had one of those internment camps. I've been down there to see it, and I still can't believe my country ever did that. We have African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. We have people from different religious backgrounds.

You know that what unites us is more important than what divides us, and, once having recognized that, you know that what divides us makes us more interesting and far better positioned to do well in the world of tomorrow than countries that are less diverse than we are. But we can't learn to do this right unless we cannot only feel our way out of this but think our way out of this. We have to know more than we now know.

And we certainly - we certainly - cannot take advantage of the opportunities that are there for us at the end of the cold war to create a whole new order of peace and freedom and prosperity without much higher levels of understanding.

Or let me put it in another way. The American Society of Newspaper Editors were here the other day, and one of the editors from out in the country stood up and I thought, you know, I'm going to get a question on whatever is going on in Washington. He said, "I got a 10-year-old son in the fifth grade, and he wants to know what your advice is for him for the future." And it was the hardest question I got asked all day.

And I said, he should study hard, he should stay out of trouble and not defile his body with drugs or anything else. He should seek out people who were of different racial and religious backgrounds and get to know them and understand them. He should try to learn more about the rest of the world as early as possible, as soon as possible. And he should begin right now taking some time to serve in his community to help people who needed help. Those are the five things I said. Why? Because I think that will give him a good education and give him opportunity, help us to come together as one America and appreciate our differences, and help us to maintain our leadership in the world. And you're doing that every day. The kindergarten teachers here are doing that.

Now, that's why I look so forward to this every year. Because most of the time, frankly, we just sort of take you for granted, unless we get mad because we don't like the way the test scores come out or the comparative test scores or whatever else. And I think it is very important that we not lose the enormous significance of your collective impact. And I thought I'd stand up here today and try - and I didn't know if I could do it, but I thought I could - just remember all my teachers, just to show you the personal impact you have. See, I'll bet you a lot of you could do the same thing I just did, and that's probably why you're doing what you're doing today.