Remarks to the National Committee for the 1960 White House Conference on Children and Youth.

I ASSURE YOU first of all it is a privilege and a great honor to welcome you here to this convocation--those who have been appointed to this traditional Committee, started fifty years ago by Theodore Roosevelt and which meets every ten years. It has become something that I believe we can now classify as a permanent part of our educational process, at least so far as youth and children are concerned.

Certainly they had a great effect because President Theodore Roosevelt was gravely concerned about infant mortality and children's health. And now I am informed that the percentage for reaching adult life for a child born today is five times better than it was fifty years ago. If a Committee such as this were responsible even for part of that progress, then indeed it is worthwhile. Such a record as that--and it has been repeated in different forms in 1920, 1930, 1940 and 1950--is always a continuing challenge to your understanding and your energy. As a matter of fact, your dedication to America's welfare is exactly what your concern about children

means.

Before such a group as this I am not going to be bold enough to make any very ponderous statements or any that are by any stretch of the imagination to be interpreted as erudite. But I do like children--I have some grandchildren--and so I think I can talk a little bit before we disperse.

I am concerned about the opportunity that is put before every child from the day of his or her birth until certainly he or she gets through high school. And of course, this starts at the home.

Today there are 22 million working women. Of that 22, million, 7 and a half million are working mothers, and unquestionably a great number of that 7 and a half million are working because they have to help keep the wolf from the door. They work because they have to work. But if there is only a tiny percentage doing this because they prefer a career to an active career of real motherhood and care for the little child, I should think they would have to consider what is the price they are paying in terms of the opportunities that child has been denied. Certainly no one can do quite as much in molding the child's habit of thinking and implanting certain standards as can the mother.

And next, I should put before the school, the Church. There is no one in the United States who needs to be told or reminded that all free civilization rests upon a base of religious faith. You can find this statement repeated in our own founding documents, in the Declaration of Independence. Recognizing that spiritual foundation of our civilization, if we are going to make America better because its children are better trained and better educated, certainly we must start with the very basis on which our whole civilization is founded, and that is a deeply-felt religious faith.

Now, as to the school. One day someone calculated for me the waking hours of a child that are spent in the presence of his teacher during his school years as compared to those hours in his home. It is a figure which gives you a great feeling of respect for the good teacher and the hope that every teacher we have can still be better. And in their dedication, in their devotion to this ideal of a better America through better children is, I think, one of our greatest hopes for the future.

Let's remember that the teacher needs facilities--facilities of every kind that make it possible to make his influence felt as he gives to these children real leadership. I hasten to add that I believe this is very largely, certainly through the high school years, the responsibility of the locality. Our federal Government is not a highly-centralized form of Government. Certainly this was not in the vision of our founders. The responsibility of education rests upon you, and upon me, as citizens and as active members of our community in the city, district and state. It is only remotely, or at least indirectly, the responsibility of the federal Government to concern itself with these things. And yet, it is a national need. So we do have to have a national kind of coordination that you people are here to achieve, leadership given by such a body as this, and where necessary and where some kind of emergency or unexpected need demands, then I should think there are many forms of help that can be given when the locality simply cannot meet it.

Now I have only one other idea or belief that some of you might find worthy of a little consideration. I think that we have to put at least one or two more years in our educational system before we say a man has graduated from high school, or at least from his local free system. As I understand it, and as educators explained it to me once, the high school itself came about--and was established by localities, the school districts or city or town--because it was felt that it was the very minimum of education that every citizen of the United States should have in order to discharge his local responsibilities.

Now, if he wanted to qualify for broader responsibilities in the educational field, getting that qualification through education, then he ought to go to a college, university or undergraduate school, and so on. But the high school ought to give him a good comprehension of the world in which he lives--his relationship to the community, to the rest of the world and certainly to the rest of the United States. And that was to be the limit of his education.

I submit, first of all, life has become too complicated. If that was the standard then, the standard now is too low. Life is too complicated to be satisfied with that kind of education just for local understanding of local responsibilities. Secondly, I think that our youngsters are so much more sophisticated than we were, so much more ready to meet complicated small problems that I really believe we could do well by including what we call junior college, or certainly something near it, so that they can enlarge themselves to the extent of their capability in a good high school system even if they never have the urge or opportunity to go to college.

Talking about the precociousness of these children, my birthday was a couple of months ago. One of my grandchildren came and presented me with a Nike missile made up from the pieces in a box, and I thought maybe that wasn't too smart. The pieces had been glued together, and it really looked like a Nike. But when they began to inform me about the range of it, its usefulness and what it was all about, and what it could do and couldn't do, I realized I was learning some things from out of the mouths of babes which I should have known from my own professional standing over a good many years.

So I say to you this is the business of giving the opportunity for education in the local free area where I really believe we should give a greater opportunity for education--the area right there where the child is close to his parents, to his own Church, all his own neighborhood in which he feels a little familiar--before he tackles these higher realms of education. And as I understand it, that is not today our responsibility.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a very great privilege to welcome you here, and I certainly do thank you from the bottom of my heart for the time and intellectual effort you are giving to make this whole thing a real possibility of developing the kind of plan that you believe the 1960 meeting must follow, if it is to be successful.

Goodbye and good luck.