Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks to a Group of Benito Juarez Scholars.

February 09, 1968

Secretary Oliver, distinguished students:

I welcome all of you to the White House, especially the young lady in the corner representing Panama among the 23 scholars.

It was nearly 2 years ago, in April 1966, that I spent a memorable day with President Diaz Ordaz in Mexico City.

One idea which emerged from our long conversations was a program for scholarships for students in our own hemisphere, the Abraham Lincoln Scholarships offered by Mexico to students from the United States and other Latin American countries, and the Benito Juarez Scholarships offered by the United States to students from Latin America.

A year later, in April 1967, we met with the Presidents of the Americas at the summit in Punta del Este. It was there that we pledged that we would give education a new priority in this hemisphere.

We said in our declaration at Punta del Este: "We will vigorously promote education for development. Education at all levels will be greatly expanded."

Our meeting here today, then, is part of that effort--a sign that the work we began in Mexico City and Punta del Este is beginning now to bear fruit.

Here in our own country, from fiscal year 1961 when we spent $19.3 billion for health, education, welfare, and social security, and from the fiscal year 1964 when I became President, when we spent $23 billion 200 million for these subjects, this year the budget contains $46 billion 700 million--more than twice what we were spending in 1964, and considerably more than twice what we were spending in 1961.

This is what we are doing here in this country.

We must carry on this work to the other countries in the hemisphere if we are. to conquer the enemies of the hemisphere--ignorance, illiteracy, and disease. While we may not be more than doubling our expenditures for health, education, welfare, and social security in the hemisphere as yet, you Benito Juarez Scholars are proof that we recognize the importance of education.

You are among the many who will study at universities here and then return home as teachers and as leaders to bring forth the effort in your country that we have brought forth in ours in the last 4 years.

Next week in Venezuela the Inter-American Cultural Council will meet to discuss the work that we began in Punta del Este.

A great educator and a great friend of Latin America will head the United States delegation to that meeting--Dr. Milton Eisenhower, former president of Johns Hopkins University.

The delegates to that meeting will discuss some urgent and difficult questions. Some of these questions will be:

--How can we stamp out illiteracy once and for all?

--How can we make our universities more efficient and more responsive to their societies?

--How can we enlist the blessings of science and technology, especially television and the satellites, in the cause of educating our people?

Those questions will occupy us for years to come. Statesmen and education ministers can meet and talk and begin to answer them. But the real answers are in the hands of you who will be teachers.

As Henry Adams wrote: "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

The real hope of expanding democracy, of spreading knowledge, of achieving economic progress, is the hope that you bring to your hemisphere.

I wish all of you well in your studies and in your work back home. I pledge to you the enduring friendship, the encouragement and the support of the people of the United States. For we believe, as you believe, that men must have freedom to learn, and they must have learning to be free.

What we want for our own country we want for all of our friends in the Americas. We hope for it and we will work for it every place in the world. Good luck and God bless all of you.

[At this point, Mario Blacutt Mendoza of Bolivia spoke, thanking the President on behalf of the scholars. The President then resumed speaking.]

Just a few years ago I was teaching in a school a few miles from where Secretary Oliver lived. I started looking for him after I became President. I found he had moved out and had wound up here at the University of Pennsylvania. So today you are in a room with two former teachers. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to you that happened to us. [Laughter]

Note: The President spoke at 1:32 p.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Covey T. Oliver, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, who accompanied the scholars.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks to a Group of Benito Juarez Scholars. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/236248

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