Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Catholic Education Association in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Your Eminence Cardinal Krol, Mayor Rizzo, all of the distinguished guests on the platform, and all of the distinguished attendees at this National Catholic Education Association conference:

I am most grateful for the very warm reception that you have provided, a reception which I realize is not for just the man but more for the office that I represent. And I am most grateful to His Eminence Cardinal Krol, for his very generous remarks.

In turn, I can say that we have been proud that he has come to the White House to participate in one of our Sunday worship services; in addition to that, that we have talked about other things than simply the problems of nonpublic school education and its support. I value him as one who is, in my view, a great religious leader, but also one who has a deep understanding of philosophy and of government.

I often think, after talking to him about philosophy and government, and what makes the great nations of the world go and what makes them fail, that when he chose to go into the priesthood and, of course, has become one of the princes of the church, what might have happened had he chosen a political career. He probably could have gone all the way.

Now, speaking of politics, of course, I want to say a word about my good personal friend, Mayor Rizzo. My appearance here, of course, is a nonpolitical appearance, and his presence on the platform clearly indicates that, because while he is a personal friend, the Mayor is a member of a party to which I do not happen to belong. But I do know this: That when the security of America is involved, when great principles that transcend any partisan differences are involved, he is a very great American, and that is what really counts. And also, I should add that he is rather unique in his party. He is one of the few prominent members in his party who is not a candidate for President.

I also understand, since reference has been made to the fact that school is to be out tomorrow, I hope the parents will not blame me--they are old enough to vote. And as far as the children are concerned, I understand most of them are not yet 18, so there is nothing political about letting them out of school tomorrow.

Let me begin my remarks by telling you that it is a very great privilege for me to be here in Philadelphia, in this great convention hall, and to speak before this group, because you are a group of Americans who truly hold the future of our country in your hands--you are the educators of the United States.

We meet today in a testing time for American education. We can look back over the last generation and we see that public funding for public education has never been higher in America. And yet, ironically, across the Nation we can also see serious evidence of lack of confidence in our educational systems.

Traditional means of financing public education are destined for fundamental change. Look at some of the indications of the problems that public education faces across the country. Local property taxes, which have long been the mainstay of the public school system, have become an increasingly intolerable burden against which millions of homeowners have begun to rebel, and that has shown itself in local school bond issues being rejected in significant numbers all over the country.

Inner city schools seem less and less capable of providing education for the poor and for the racial minorities who more and more make up their enrollment.

I recognize, as we consider these problems, that among educators, among those here as well as among our people of good will across the Nation, there is an honest difference of opinion with regard to the problem that has been much discussed in recent months: The use of busing to achieve racial balance in our schools. As one who is completely committed, as I know everyone in this audience is, both to school desegregation and to quality education, I would like to state my views on this issue directly and candidly, because it relates, as you will see, to the problem you have of the role of the nonpublic schools.

We have found that where we have heavy reliance on cross-city busing of Schoolchildren, it has failed to meet either of its intended purposes--it has failed to promote quality education for all, it has failed to end the racial isolation which we all agree must be ended. Instead, what it has done in community after community, is disrupt and divide increasing numbers of schools and communities.

Now, let us go to the heart of the problem. Even the strongest proponents of busing recognize this fact: It would be physically impossible to transport pupils on a scale large enough to solve the most pressing problem of all, and here it is-for even the most massive busing imaginable would still leave the vast majority of black and poor children in the inferior schools of the inner city; they would not be affected, and there they would be. They would be a lost generation, deprived of the educational opportunity to which they, like all Americans, are entitled.

It is for these reasons that I have asked the Congress, 3 weeks ago, to declare a temporary national moratorium on new busing decrees, and then to enact new legislation to accomplish these things:

--One, to establish in the law of the land, for the first time, the right of every American child to equal educational opportunity more clearly and strongly than it has ever been established before.

--Two, to curb excessive busing by putting its usefulness into perspective with other more workable school desegregation remedies.

--And three, to redirect billions of dollars in effective aid into the inferior schools of this Nation, many in our central cities where such aid is so urgently needed.

The Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1972, which we have proposed to accomplish these ends, I would not contend is the final answer to quality education for all Americans, but we believe--I believe---it points in the right direction.

You, in this audience, know all too well how limited our public and private funds for education are. That is why I believe it makes compelling sense to use those limited funds to provide better education for all of our children, rather than more transportation for just some of our children.

As we consider all of our children, let me describe the heart of this new legislation. Under the act, the old piecemeal approach to compensatory education would be replaced by a new concentration of resources which experts call the "critical mass" approach. Instead of, in effect, using the shotgun, in which not enough is given to the various areas that need it, we use the approach of the rifle, a "critical mass" approach.

Under title I, from which many of your schools already benefit, about $200 per pupil is now being applied to disadvantaged areas. Our new legislation would increase this average by over 50 percent-on the basis of encouraging experimental evidence that assistance in excess of $300 per pupil constitutes the "critical mass"-the very minimum--which begins to produce the results that smaller amounts have failed to achieve.

Now the question comes: Can I guarantee this new approach will work? If $200 didn't work, will $300 or $350 work in breaking that barrier in producing better education? We can't be sure. But the evidence in our judgment is strong enough to indicate that we ought to try it. What we are sure of is that the old ways have failed and, therefore, we must move to a new way.

Therefore, today, in this effort to redeem the promise of public education, I come to ask you, as educators, to give us your support for this purpose. I have also come for another reason, a reason alluded to by His Eminence in his introduction: If public education in America faces a severe testing time, as it does, nonpublic education confronts what can only be described as a crisis of the first magnitude.

You are familiar with the basic statistics, but let the Nation now hear what this crisis is, because this is the problem not just of those involved here but of the whole Nation. Taken together, the nonpublic schools in this country educate 5,200, 000 children. That is more than the public school system of the whole State of California. That is more than the public school system of the whole State of New York. Eighty-three percent of those children are in Catholic schools.

But while that is a very significant number, 5,200,000, as you all know, the rise in nonpublic school enrollment has crested. In the past 9 years, the Catholic schools alone have lost almost a million pupils. Every day--and this is something that His Eminence Cardinal Krol, told me--every day at least one, and sometimes two, of our parochial schools are forced to close their doors forever.

It would be misleading to suggest that Catholic education and nonpublic schools in general are about to disappear altogether because of that fact. But at the same time, it would be irresponsible to pretend that all is well, because it is not. So let me, therefore, outline hypothetically, not just for this audience but for the whole Nation, the consequences of a total collapse of nonpublic education, since this is perhaps the best way of emphasizing the stake that every American has in preventing any such collapse from taking place.

Let us begin: The disappearance of all nonpublic schools in this country would saddle the American taxpayer with an additional $3 billion annually in school operating costs, plus as much as $10 billion in new school construction. Seventy percent of that burden would fall upon seven States: California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

And the impact would fall most heavily upon our central cities, where in some cases as many as one-third of all children attend nonpublic schools, and where many public school systems are on the verge of bankruptcy today.

Here in Philadelphia, for example, collapse of the nonpublic schools would force 146,000 students into the public schools; in Chicago the figure would be over 200, 000; in New York City over 300,000. In short, if the nonpublic schools were ever permitted to go under in the major cities of America, many public schools might very well go under with them, because they simply couldn't undertake the burden.

I have been speaking of what it would cost in terms of money. The fiscal catastrophe, however, would be far from the only consequence. For many Americans, allegiance to their nonpublic community schools is their strongest and sometimes, perhaps, their only single tie to city life. If their schools should close, many of these families would abandon the city and go to the suburbs. This, in turn, would further worsen the racial isolation of our central cities--a development we must not permit.

At a time when many other urban institutions have been crumbling or leaving the city, Catholic education has courageously stood its ground, continuing the effort to maintain good schools in these poor and racially isolated communities which need them most.

Let me quote from your NCEA charter. It outlines an educational philosophy which "... upholds and encourages a strong and special effort to bring the benefits of good education to all minority groups...to all without regard to economic status .... "

That is what we need in our central cities today. As we look at that philosophy, it has been borne out in the fine examples set by hundreds of schools, your schools, in urban centers across the country. These are schools that now constitute beacons of hope in many neighborhoods where hope is pretty hard to come by. That is one reason why I believe that the future of nonpublic education cannot be divorced from the future of the American city.

So that is one of the reasons I wanted to come here today--to salute you for the service to your country, to reaffirm the commitment I made last August when I said to the Knights of Columbus meeting in New York City, in your fight to save your schools, "You can count on my support."

Now, let me just spend a moment analyzing the problem. Why are the nonpublic schools closing? There have been many articles written, many speeches made. Many of you are more expert in this than I am, but we have been studying the problem.

There are shifting population patterns, changing attitudes and values, steeply rising operating costs forcing higher tuitions. All of these things seem to contribute. To understand this trend, and then to stop it, we need scientific data, we need professional studies, something that has been seriously lacking in the past.

But we finally have begun to assemble the basic tools for intelligent action. Let me tell you some of the things we have done. The President's Commission on School Finance, which I appointed in 1970, has recently made public its findings and recommendations after 2 years of pioneering investigations in this field.¹ My special panel on nonpublic education, chaired by Dr. Walton of Catholic University, will be submitting its report in about 2 weeks.² I intend to give the reports of both these groups the full and serious consideration and action that they deserve.

¹ On March 6, 1972, members of the President's Commission on School Finance met with the President to present the Commission's final report. On the same day, the White House released the transcript of a news briefing on the report by Neil H. McElroy, Chairman, and Norman Karsh, Executive Director, of the Commission.

² On April 20, 1972, members of the President's Panel on Non-Public Education met with the President to present the Panel's final report. On the same day, the White House released the transcript of a news briefing on the report by Clarence Walton, Chairman, and Ivan E. Zylstra and the Most Reverend William E. McManus, members, of the Panel.

I have already requested that certain proposals and alternatives relating to the findings of the Commission on School Finance, as well as to the urgent need for property tax reform, be studied by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Now this is a committee that covers the Federal Government, the State governments, the city governments, and county governments, as well as the private sector, because the solutions we seek must ultimately involve not just the Federal Government, but these other units as well.

When that Advisory Commission-and, incidentally, it is a totally bipartisan commission has completed its study, I shall make specific legislative recommendations to the Congress that deal with three great interrelated national problems:

First, relief of property taxes--the mainstay of public school support--which have now become an intolerable burden upon millions of American homeowners.

Second, development of alternative sources of finance for public schools.

Third, specific measures designed to preserve the nonpublic school system in the United States.

This whole process that I have just described takes time. You know and I know that we do not have much time. The appointing of commissions, the launching of studies is sometimes regarded as a stall, an excuse for inaction. Let me assure you in the strongest possible terms that is not my intent.

I am irrevocably committed to these propositions: America needs her nonpublic schools. Those nonpublic schools need help. Therefore, we must and will find ways to provide that help. Yet, at the same time, I shall not make promises to you which cannot be kept nor raise hopes which will later be disappointed. You are all aware of the grave constitutional questions which have risen in the past, each time the States or the Federal Government has undertaken to provide aid to nonpublic schools.

I was talking to His Eminence and to the Mayor about a case that has just been decided yesterday dealing with one of these problems. We are all aware of the extra difficulties which tax measures encounter in Congress any time, but particularly in an election year. But with these hard realities in mind, I feel the only responsible way to proceed is to take the extra time required to guarantee that the legislative recommendations which we finally submit will be equitable, will be workable, will be constitutional and so held by the Supreme Court.

Too much is at stake for us to act in haste. We share a great obligation--to improve the public school system of this country and also to preserve the nonpublic schools--and in that obligation we shall not fail.

Let me put it now in the broader terms of the Nation at large. What we really seek in America is an educational free market.

Nonpublic schools give parents the opportunity to send their children to institutions that they choose. The reasonable preferences of parents in this matter should be respected by governmental authorities.

As we consider the nonpublic schools-whether they are Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or even nonsectarian--they often add the dimension of spiritual values in the educational process. Children who attend these schools are offered a moral code by which to live. At a time when the trend in education is too often toward impersonal materialism, I believe America needs more, rather than less, emphasis on education which emphasizes moral, religious, and spiritual values.

The American people and their government cannot remain indifferent to the accelerating disappearance of such schools. No single school system, whether public or private, must ever gain an absolute monopoly over the education of our children, because such a system, one that had a total monopoly, would never reflect the diversity and richness of our national heritage and character. It would lack altogether that essential spur of competition to innovate, to grow and reform. It would lead inevitably toward mediocrity and dull uniformity in American education-conditions which this Nation cannot tolerate.

The American public school system, which is the greatest in the world, which today educates nine of every ten children in the United States, has nothing to fear and everything to gain from the presence of a vigorous, diverse, competitive private school system, the kind of system which we still have today, but which we can preserve for tomorrow only by decisive action now.

I think we all have to recognize the fact that too often in the past an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and hostility has divided the public schools from the nonpublic schools in this country. Yet, such an atmosphere can only weaken both school systems and do a disservice to the public interest in quality education. Worst of all, it can only penalize the children whose future is our most sacred trust.

The education of our children is too important for us to be divided over it by party, by religion, by race, or by region in this country.

So I say let all Americans join together in a new recognition of the vital and positive roles which both the public and the nonpublic school systems play.

Let all America follow the example of this city of Philadelphia where the Committee of 31 made up of leaders of all religions, and made up of the nonpublic as well as the public schools, work together to meet the educational needs of a city. That is an example that the Nation can follow.

This new spirit of constructive cooperation and good will can serve our children better, and it can make our country stronger. That is why I say let us do all in our power to make this spirit the keynote of the coming era in American education.

I should like to close my remarks with, if I might, a rather timely, if personal, anecdote. A few weeks ago, on my visit to the People's Republic of China, I visited the Great Wall. Some of you perhaps saw that on television. As I stood there and looked at that Great Wall and thought of when it was built and of the great empire that had built it, I thought how well they had built it materially--it still stood. And yet the empire was gone.

I thought back to other civilizations and other peoples who have had similar experiences. I shall never forget when, as a young Congressman, I walked on the Acropolis in Athens at night and saw those magnificent columns built so well that they still stand as examples of architecture for all the world to see. But the civilization is gone.

And I thought of the Roman Forum. Walking through there one evening 25 years ago for the first time, and many times since, there again you see buildings and columns standing because they were built so well materially. But the civilization is gone.

And there is a pattern that runs through these stories, and the pattern is very simply this: When those civilizations went down, they were rich, they were strong militarily, and yet they were not able to survive,

And, also, it can be said that they went down at a time when, in terms of education, they were better educated in a material sense than they had been at any time in their history up to that time.

I know that it is fashionable in talking to a group of educators--and I have done this myself sometimes in the past--to quote H. G. Wells when he said civilization is "a race between education and catastrophe." Maybe. It depends, however, on the education.

What I am simply saying is this: A nation can be rich, a nation can be powerful, a nation can be well educated, but if its people lack character it will not stand.

So I simply say to all of you today, you, the educators--and to all of the public school educators as well--you do have the future of America and the future of our children in your hands. I hope and I know you will teach them well. I hope you will teach them with all of the new techniques, the new math, the new science, the new technologies. But I hope as those new techniques are taught so well that you will not forget to teach them also and to remind them of the old values of honor, of morality, of love of country, and remind them also that America's religious faith has always kept us strong in times of testing. Let us not lose it now in the years ahead.