Remarks on the education technology initiative in Union City

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 19, 1996

Thank you very much. Mr. Vice President, thank you for that introduction and for your leadership to advance the technological revolution in America and especially to bring its benefits to all of our children. Thank you, Mr. Mayor; Superintendent Highton; Senator Lautenberg; Congressman Menendez; Secretary of Education Klagholz; Bob Fazio, the principal of this fine high school; I'm glad he's not running for President this year. [Laughter]

Jim Cullen, the vice chairman of Bell Atlantic, thank you so much for everything you have done to make this school district a success, and the work you have done throughout this State and throughout your area of service. To the folks at Bergen Academy, and Secretary Riley and to others joining us on the information superhighway, including students from 65 schools in 3 counties, and I believe Congressman Torricelli is out there in cyberspace somewhere. It's nice to have all of you with us. And let me say a special word of thanks to the parents, the teachers, and the students of this school and the Bergen Academy who joined us today to talk about what all this means to our children and our future. And let me ask us all to give a special word of recognition to the two students who just spoke, who must have been somewhat nervous, but did not betray it, Marlon Grenados and Tonya Nagahwatte; they did a great job.

I'm very glad to be back in New Jersey and in Union City. All of you know that the Vice President and I came here today because this school system is undergoing a remarkable transformation. I want the rest of the country to know about it, and I want everybody in the country to be able to emulate it. Let me begin by acknowledging the contributions of Congressman Bob Menendez, who was formerly mayor here, a true native son of Union City, a sponsor of the New Jersey Telecommunications Act in 1991 that set the stage for the remarkable events we are celebrating today.

The rebirth of Union City and your schools reminds us that we do live in an age of great possibility if people are willing to work together to make the most of it. More Americans from all walks of life will have more chances to live up to their dreams than at any time in our Nation's history. New technologies are opening prospects for vast new areas of human activity that will bring prosperity. A growing global marketplace is putting a premium on the kind of ingenuity and skills Americans can contribute to the present and the future.

But let's face it, we also know that this new era is a time of great new challenges, putting new pressures on families that are not particularly well equipped to deal with it. More and more of our citizens are living better, but more and more of our families are working harder and harder just to keep up. They justifiably wonder if they and their children will be winners in this new age, or if they will be left behind in some downsizing or in some job in which they never get a raise.

After what I have seen today, I believe more strongly than ever before the answer to the problems of those who are not yet benefiting from the information age is not to try to put walls up or turn around and go back, it is to keep going forward until every child and every family in every home, in every workplace can see what we are seeing here today.

You know, in the State of the Union Address, I talked about the importance of the budget discussions we have been having in Washington for the last year, the need to finish the work of balancing the budget but to do it in a way that recognizes our obligations to our future through investments in education and environmental protection, and that recognizes our obligations to our families and to our larger American family, including those who through no fault of their own need help from all of us, and that's why we ought to preserve the Medicare and Medicaid programs. But I also said there, and I would like to reiterate here, I believe there is a broad bipartisan consensus in this country to continue the work until we have eliminated this permanent deficit, until we are living within our means, until we are committed, all of us, in living on a balanced budget.

So what we have to do now is look to the future. In that address, I outlined what I believe are the seven great challenges facing America if we want all Americans to have a chance at the American dream, and if we want to grow together, not be driven apart. We must build stronger families and better childhoods. We must have better education.

We must make sure all of our children - every single one of them - has access to the educational opportunities of the present and the future. We must build economic security for every single working family genuinely willing to work for it to hook into that future so that they will not be left behind. We must continue the fight to make our streets safer until crime in America is once again the exception, not the rule. We must work to clean up our environment while we grow our economy and forever dispose of the myth that you cannot have a strong economy unless you are destroying your environment. We cannot afford any more of the luxury of pretending that that is true.