Remarks to a Group of Foreign Educators Participating in the International Teacher Development Program.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

First of all, welcome to Washington, our Nation's capital. Now ordinarily, with such a group like this meeting in the Rose Garden, I should content myself with a few words of greeting and a few off-the-cuff remarks. But because of the importance of this group--representing as you do the teaching profession in so many different countries, and because of your tremendous interest in promoting understanding by coming to this country to see what you can bring to us and what you can take away from here--I decided to put my few simple thoughts, such as they are, on paper. So you will this morning get from me a bit of a precedent. I think never before in this Rose Garden have I read a speech--which is probably self-flattery. I don't mean to call it a speech; it's just an expression of some simple thoughts.

Dr. Hauck, Teachers and School Administrators:

I am happy to join with Dr. Hauck and others in his group in extending to you this welcome to our country. I hope in the coming months you will all have abundant opportunity to meet and talk with Americans in every walk of life. We of course want to show you our schools and colleges and our universities; our cultural institutions, farms, factories, and playgrounds. But most of all we want you to come to know our people; and what they think, and how they live, and what their aspirations for the future are. And I speak for all Americans when I say that we are tremendously interested in you and your ideas. We want to know better what you think, how you live and to what you aspire.

A little more than 30 years ago, I made my first trans-Atlantic crossing--it took 7 days. My latest crossing--early this month--took a little less than 7 hours. In the three decades between these trips, the world has experienced awesome changes. One of these is that 25 nations, with a population of nearly one billion, have achieved political independence. Each is struggling for stability, for a respected place in the family of nations, and for advancement in the well-being of its people. But to me the greatest change of all is the development of an exacting interdependence between free nations--an interdependence that involves the oldest and the youngest nations, the largest and the smallest, the most prosperous and the least developed of nations.

This interdependence calls for new thinking, new institutions, new vision. Above all, it calls for greater understanding among peoples--the genuine understanding of truth, which can dispel unfounded fears and suspicions, bars to true and lasting peace. People of good will everywhere have a tremendous job of communicating such understanding--and little enough time to do it. We need to pursue every possible avenue that can bring people together as friends and co-workers seeking solutions to their common problems.

As teachers and school administrators you enjoy an extraordinary advantage in this great task. You are the multipliers of knowledge; you serve to develop and disseminate thoughts and ideas, and to stimulate critical, creative thinking, and understanding in others. The educational institutions in which you work are the seedbeds of learning--and not merely of your own countries, but of all mankind.

Knowledge is or should be universal; it was meant to be shared; and it has the peculiar quality about it that when its parts are brought together, the result is a multiplication, rather than a mere addition of those values.

One of the powerful effects of teacher exchange is that the benefits are multiplied a thousandfold. A good teacher, given the opportunity to comprehend other cultures, is not just a transmitter of important facts about the language, economy, politics, science of the country he has visited. He becomes far more--a sort of ambassador-at-large, who brings to each one with whom he comes in contact, greater depth of understanding and greater toleration.

All of us surely agree that the exchange of students is valuable. Indeed, I would like to see a substantial increase in the almost fifty thousand foreign students now studying in the United States. But I emphasize that through teacher exchange we can open intellectual windows faster and in greater number, and thus more rapidly progress toward the greater understanding so desperately needed by our quarrelsome and shrinking world. A world of understanding will be a world of true freedom and peace.

We shall not be serving mankind well if we become obsessed with just the business of putting new satellites into orbit--so obsessed that we overlook the fact that we have some real problems left right here on earth.

We need to put new ideas--and more of them--into orbit. And we must use every resource at our command to see that people everywhere achieve greater understanding of each other before it is too late.

In this respect you of the teaching profession compose one of our most precious resources. As always with sound and enthusiastic teaching, we do not look for spectacular break-throughs. There are no easy solutions for the complexities that surround us. I confidently expect the teaching profession to write a new and one of the finest chapters in human history by developing the priceless commodity of genuine understanding. Only thus shall we ever achieve the kind of world we want.

I hope all of you will take home much of America in your minds and in your hearts. We certainly expect to get much from you.

Thank you very much. Goodbye.