Remarks in a roundtable discussion on the School-to-Work program in Nashua, New Hampshire

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 12, 1996

The President. Thank you very much for that testimonial. [Laughter] He was great, wasn't he? You know, I was just sitting here trying to - one of the things that I have to concentrate on all the time is how to explain things in simple, fairly quick terms, because usually I don't get to communicate with all of you like this. Usually I get eight or nine seconds through them. So if someone were to ask me, say in a sentence what does all this amount to? You just sort of said it.

Let me just - because I think it's important - for 50 years, more or less, after World War II, for most of that time, there was a clear distinction between the school and the workplace. And within schooling there was a clear distinction between academic programs and vocational programs. What this is really about is erasing those distinctions, merging the school and the workplace, and merging the academic and the vocational.

For one thing we have no choice, because a lot of these vo-tech programs require now - a vocational program - a high level of technical sophistication, and they are academic in the best sense. And for another we now know that there are a lot of people who learn by doing, not because they have a lower IQ, but because that's the way their minds work. And there are a lot of people who just learn by doing better than they learn by reading, hearing, and speaking.

And I couldn't help but be moved by what Josh said here when he was describing his own experience, that through a series of work experiences he came to think of going to college. It used to be always the other way around. No telling how many people we deprived of the opportunity to develop themselves because we had this artificial barrier between school and work, and an artificial barrier between what was academic and what was vocational.

And really that's what this school-to-work program is designed to give every State a chance to set up this kind of network to get rid of those barriers. And you said it very well, sir, and I thank you.

[A teacher advocated more in the way of communication between the companies and schools and advocated tailoring the curriculum to advance those goals in the classroom.]

The President. Let me just echo that. I wanted to say a special word of thanks to Mr. Ahearn and the other companies who are doing this who don't have hundreds and hundreds of employees. Most new jobs in America are being created by people like you. The Fortune 500 companies have reduced employment in every year - aggregate employment in every year since 1980, every year. But to give you an idea - this is another role model issue - last year there were more new jobs created by businesses owned by women alone than were reduced by the Fortune 500 companies.

So people like you, we can grow our economy on small- and medium-size businesses and on doing work to support bigger operations like this one. But that means that, for this program to work, we can't depend only on the Sanders and only on the big medical centers and only on the large employers to participate. We have to have the city police departments and the other - the more moderate-size and small-size employers participating too.