Remarks Before the National Conference on Educational Legislation.

Commissioner Keppel, President Edinger, Dr. Carr, Dr. McKay, my fellow educators:

"Human history," H. G. Wells once wrote, "becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." You and I cannot be indifferent to the outcome of that race. We care deeply about the winner. Because we do care so deeply about the winner, that is why we are all in the East Room of the White House today.

I don't think that I need to tell you how important to the outcome of that race is the education legislation that is now before the Congress. I hope that it is important enough that most of you have studied it in detail. I hope that you understand that it represents the very best thinking that the leading educators of this country can produce.

Way back last summer I asked some of the most outstanding educational minds in this Nation to tackle this problem. I gave them a single instruction: find out how we can best invest each education dollar so that it will do the most good. Your support and the support of every leading education group proves that they did their job better than I had hoped, because for the first time we have succeeded in finding goals which unite us rather than divide us.

The experts spent a great deal of time and study working out a formula which would be fair to every State and fair to every county and fair to every child, and would put the education dollar where that dollar is needed most, now.

We decided that our first job was to help the schools serving the children from the very lowest income groups. Those families constitute the number one burden, the number one burden in this Nation on the school systems.

We know that they cannot bear their share of the taxes to help pay for their education. And unless those children get a good education we know that they become dropouts and they become delinquents and they become taxeaters instead of taxpayers. We know that they will join the unemployed. That is why we put top priority on breaking the vicious cycle that today threatens the future of 5 million children in this great land of opportunity which we talk about so much.

The Johnson administration's continuing concern is for improved educational opportunity for all children in this land.

Now you can keep your blood pressure down if you want to. You can sit in your rocking chair and talk about the days that have gone by if you choose. But as far as I am concerned, I am going to use every rostrum and every forum and every searchlight that I can to tell the people of this country and their elected representatives that we can no longer afford overcrowded classrooms and half-day sessions. We just must not, we just cannot afford the great waste that comes from the neglect of a single child.

We have made an important beginning, but we must not waiver now that the prospect of success is so close. As I said in my educational message to the Congress--and I hope you will bear with me if I quote a bit of it:

"Nothing matters more to the future of our country. Not our military preparedness--we spend over 50 billion a year for that; armed power is worthless if we lack the brain power to build a world of peace. Not our productive economy, for we cannot sustain growth without trained manpower. Not our democratic system of government, for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant."

I don't know how the final record will look. But I do know that I am proud of this democracy and I do genuinely believe that education is its guardian and is its steward, and that a trained mind is the best possible insurance premium we can buy to preserve our freedoms and our liberties and to keep us from being slaves.

I have said this before and I am not going to bore those of you that may have read it or heard it by any long statements on it, but I came from a family that is interested in public life and in education. My mother was a teacher and my father was a teacher. My great grandfather, my mother's grandfather, was the second president of Baylor University when it was located down at Washington on the Brazos. In 1857 he brought General Houston--Sam Houston-into the Baptist Church and General Houston made him a loan of $300 at 8 percent interest. And so 4 or 5 years later he sent him the note and asked him to renew it because there hadn't been anything paid on it. That's the problem teachers had in those days.

I left college as a sophomore to become the principal of a six-teacher school and I drew the magnificent, munificent salary of $125 a month!

Now we are entrusting the future of the world to people who are prepared and trained and capable of earning $125 a month--at least we were then. We have improved the situation some now.

I don't know what will be written about my administration--nothing really seems to go right from early in the morning till late at night. And if they do and something someone approves of almost accidentally, they say--but don't expect me to tell you. I may have to say something about Secretary McNamara or Secretary Rusk some day on the floor.

On the other hand, I rather think that there is less to divide us now than there has been at any time since I have been in Washington, and I have been here 34 years. I believe there is really more to unite us now. Whether we are Republicans or Democrats or what-nots, independents, we all love what that flag stands for and we love the system that is provided for us.

We may become slightly intemperate at times and intolerant of others that may not agree with us. I try never to be. I don't know of anything that I have said about an individual since I have been President. Sometimes late at night when I am tired and I read what someone has said about me during the day, I am inclined to respond.

But I would hope that it would be said of this decade, if not of this administration, so far as the ancient enemies of mankind are concerned--and those ancient enemies are ignorance, illiteracy, ill health, and disease-I hope you will help me. I hope you will pledge me. I hope you will get up out of that chair and go do something about it in your own way. I hope that you will have it written for your children and your grandchildren to see, when they take the roster that is here today: so far as those ancient enemies are concerned--ignorance--we came, we saw, we conquered!

The education bill we picked out can be improved. The T-Model Ford could be improved and has been. The first train that ran from Fredericksburg, a little town I lived close to, went to San Antonio--it has been improved a great deal. But I remember the story that they told about it the day it took off--from one of the founding fathers. He said, "Well, they will never get her started, and if they do they will never get her stopped."

Now we have people that could improve this or that. When I was a boy growing up we never had these issues of our relations with other nations so much. We didn't wake up with Viet-Nam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner. All we knew, because the folks that kind of molded the opinion and contributed to the political atmosphere, they kept us debating whether we were wet or dry, whether we were prohibitionists or anti-prohibitionists! And the fact that one teacher had seven grades to teach in a school that was falling down and a lady that was underpaid--I had my teacher. I sent her money to come here from California the other day for my inauguration, because she held me in her lap when I was 4 years old, and she taught seven grades (we have baby sitters to do that now). But we debated whether we were wet or dry! Later when I was in high school and college we talked about whether we were Klan or anti-Klan-and we chased them all around the country back and forth.

I am glad in our time we are talking about how to improve the soul and improve the mind and improve the body and to live and learn and expand and wipe away all of these ancient curses. Why, if we could find the answer to heart disease and to strokes and to cancer we'd save 32 billion a year and this whole education bill hasn't got but a billion two hundred million.

Now some of them are going to say if it is a billion two hundred million this year, it will be more next year. Well, it will be! Because I am not going to be proud to be President of the richest nation in the world when there are hundreds of thousands and millions of children that can't read and write. I am not going to be proud of a nation where disease is still rampant and many children live out a crippled life because they don't have adequate medical care in time.

We are going to improve our education. We are going to improve our medicine and our medical care. We are going to improve the economic condition of our people. We are going to live under the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And if you go take a trip with me to the slums of this city, or if you go to my hometown and walk 6 blocks from the capitol of the State of Texas, you will see what I am talking about.

I went there one day--on Christmas when my wife and children were away and I couldn't be with them--and I saw 119 people using a single outdoor toilet in the center of a metropolitan area. I saw 119 people drinking water from a hydrant that was located centrally. I walked into their little hovels and I saw a father dying with tuberculosis and three or four little children there around him that were out of school because they didn't have clothes to wear and food to eat and taking the tuberculosis very likely that their daddy had.

That is something we can't be proud of and that is something your teachers can't be proud of.

I remember I asked my teachers, in my first year of teaching, to get out and have supervised play activity. I had a little Mexican school. And what they'd all do was go to the bathroom and smoke during recess. And I said: "You take the north corner. And you take the south one. And you take the east one. And you take the west one. And let's have volleyball!" And I took my own first pay check and bought a volleyball for them and bought a playground softball for them and had some dancing for them out there and some musical instruments to entertain them during recess--these poor people that lived down on the border of Texas. I never have understood it, but the Mexican people have been voting for me ever since. They understand!

Finally one day after I came in one Saturday morning, the school superintendent (he was a Mr. Donaho, he lives down in Floresville, Texas, now; he's retired) he came to me and said I am in trouble. He said, "Every one of your teachers struck on you." And I said, "What is the matter? .... Well," he said, "they don't like that supervised play activity." (One of them was the sister of the mayor, another one was the sister of the postmaster and they kind of had it pretty good--very influential friends around town. One of them was the daughter of one of the important men, one of the bankers.) And he said, "They called on me while you were off supervising the football team for the high school yesterday. They called on me and they said they had struck." I said, "What did they say?" And he said, "The leading lady that was spokesman for them said 'Our traces are down and we have balked.'"

Well, there was a lady in town who was on the school board that had been to Randolph Macon; she was a graduate and she had married one of the local fellows (he had gone up east a little way from Texas a little while and they met and married) and she was on the school board. And she said, "Well, they don't like to go through these recess and hot lunch hours supervising these children. They just let them fight all the time. They have had nothing to play with and they just let them fight." "But," she said, "you just accept every one of their resignations and go back to that teachers college you came from and hire you five more that will come here and supervise." So she made a motion to that effect and the board voted with me. And the teachers were called in and they said, well, we misunderstood what they said to begin with!

But we taught them to sing and we organized a band and I had a debating team (although I couldn't quite understand them, they couldn't talk English and I couldn't talk Spanish)--we debated whether the jury system would be allowed to stand in this country. And we had the best baseball team; we beat the other school. And as a result that whole area there, I think I was a--I saw a television show the other night. One of my pupils was on it (What's My Line? or something) and he was a prominent Mexican merchant that was up in New York who was there. I saw one the other day that was an engineer out here in the Army--little children that came from the poorest families, their daddy didn't earn $30 a month.

Now we've got poverty to do something about, and we're doing something about its billion two this year. We got education to do something about, and we're doing something about it in this new bill--a billion two this year. We got disease and we are doing something about it. And we are taking some of that money that we have been putting into tanks and bombs and putting it into minds and stomachs and hearts-and of course "they" are going to find something wrong with the formula! And "they" are going to try to bring up the old wet and dry fight, or the old church and state fight or some other old fight that will prejudice you until your children grow up in ignorance.

Well, the time has come when we no longer are going to listen to those who oppose for opposition sake. We are living in the 20th century. And don't ask a fellow about his own plan--they all got these excuses they will produce another plan and they will offer another amendment and they will try to defeat it this way or defeat it that way. I guess they will be like the old man, "You'll never get her started or if you do, you'll never get her stopped."

But we have television in this country. We have an informed press in this country. We have an informed citizenship in this country and most of the representatives of those people want informed minds in this country and want to train those minds while they can. And they are going to get a chance tomorrow when they vote that bill out of the Committee and I hope next week when they pass it.

Now I am going along back to some more problems--but I want to say this to you, Some of you have very distinguished careers. No man has contributed more to the advancement of his country than this man Keppel over here who came down here and took a tough, mean, thankless job where he just gets booted all day long. But he has got something that all the gold in the world won't buy: When he goes home at night to see his little children he has got the satisfaction of knowing that he has moved an inch or two forward that day and he's prepared his country a little better and he's got a program they may adopt.

And when you go back home, those of you that have families, children (those of you that don't you have mothers and fathers, those of you that don't have either have kinfolks). And I think that you can truly say in the years to come, that on this day of February (the 29th, is it? March the 1st? On this day, March the 1st, Monday, is it?), on this day March the 1st, I sat in the White House at 6:10 and along with my colleagues from all over the Nation, I participated in the meeting and in the conference that gave America leadership in preparing the minds of her little ones. And we inaugurated, we were there to see this first train run that would never get started, and if it did we'd never get it stopped.

Well, we are going to get it started, but we are not ever going to stop it.