Remarks and a question-and-answer session at Kramer Junior High School

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 7, 1994

I came here, more than anything else today, to say I don't want you ever to give up on yourselves. I don't intend to give up on you as long as I am President. I'm going to keep working for better education, safer streets, and a brighter future, but it's for your life. And no matter what I do, I can't live your lives for you. No matter whether we do the right or the wrong things in public life, we can't live your lives for you. You have to do that. Every day you have to decide whether you're going to be here on time with a good attitude, learning as much as you can. Every day you have to decide whether the future is what happens to you 30 minutes from now or what happens to you 10 or 20 years from now. Every day you have to decide what you believe, what you care about, and what kind of person you're going to be.

I'm doing what I can to make the future better for you. Even as we are here today, the United States Congress is debating a bill that the Secretary of Education, Secretary Riley, introduced with my administration called Goals 2000. It embodies some ideas I have been working on for years and years, ever since I was a Governor. And I think it's fair to say that I have probably spent more time in public schools like this one all over America, as well as in my own State, than any person ever elected President. I have listened to teachers, I have listened to principals, and I have listened to students, not for just a year but for more than a decade.

What this legislation that Congress is debating does is to try to establish what kind of education every child needs in every school. It sets out some goals that will guarantee that if we reach them, all of our young people, wherever they are, whether they come from poor families or middle class families or wealthy families, if their schools work right, they'll be prepared to compete and to win in the 21st century.

One of those goals says by the year 2000, every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning. No one should have to go to school afraid, and no school should operate in a way that makes learning impossible. But the truth is that while we have some legislation up there to make our schools safer, you have a lot to do with what goes on in this school and whether the environment is good for learning.

Another goal says that by the year 2000 the high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent. That's the international standard. Another says that every adult should possess the knowledge and the skills needed to get and keep a good job, a job as good as people have in other countries.

When I drive up and down streets in some neighborhoods in this country and I see grown people standing on the street without work, it breaks my heart. And I know a lot of them would like to go to work, and I know a lot of them don't get work in part because they don't have a good education. These goals, all of these goals, are critical to your future. I want to start with the last one. When I was your age, the unemployment rate in this country was 3 percent, more or less. When I graduated from high school, I knew a lot of people who dropped out of high school. I mean, that was a long time ago, lots of folks didn't finish school. But I didn't know a soul, black or white, with or without an education, who wanted a job who didn't have one. That's the literal truth when I was 17. That's the economy we had then. That was the reality then. Everybody I knew who was willing to work could find work.