Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks on Signing Supplemental Appropriations Bills Providing Funds for the National Teacher Corps and the Rent Supplement Program

May 13, 1966

Mr. Vice President, Secretary Gardner and Secretary Weaver, Senator Mansfield, and Members of the Senate and the House, my friends:

On January 20, 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt mounted the steps of the Capitol for his Second Inaugural. That day, he reaffirmed for his people one true measurement of our advancement as a nation:

"The test of our progress," he said, "is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little."

Franklin Roosevelt--and the men of Congress-won enduring honor because they made this century a century of hope: Hope for the dispossessed people of the earth, hope for all the poor and the forgotten.

Today as we meet here with the signing of this act, we mark a new beginning, a beginning of two bold programs--the National Teacher Corps and the Rent Supplement Program.

It has been many months since Congress authorized both of these programs. But the appropriations needed to translate idea into reality were slow in coming.

Today, however, we mark the end of hope and struggle for these legislative programs. And today we can be proud that this is still the century of hope; that a great nation is still meeting the challenge to "provide enough for those who have little."

For the first time, Congress is enabling private enterprise to take a direct hand in meeting the housing needs of poor families. At an average cost of $600 per housing unit, we will help low-income families have decent housing. Thus we are being not only compassionate, but cost-conscious. Because our present cost-per-unit for public housing averages in excess of $1,000.

This program is very modest, but it is flexible and imaginative, and it is experimental. It puts a new tool in the hands of those who are helping to build better housing for all Americans. While every man's house cannot be a castle, it need not be a hovel.

Among those who have little, there are also those who have little learning, and they have little opportunity for it.

For these, the schoolchildren of our city slums and our rural pockets, the National Teacher Corps will mean a great deal.

There are those who would have us wait before launching the Teacher Corps--wait until there are more funds, wait until things are settled in Vietnam, wait until education programs are on a firmer footing. Wait until we--oh, just wait, wait, wait!

To them I must this morning reply: This is no time to wait. The men and women who have volunteered for service in the Teacher Corps have already waited long enough. The slum schools which urgently need our attention and need our assistance have waited long enough. And the poor children of this Nation who desperately require attention now must not wait any longer for this help.

That is why I have instructed Secretary Gardner and Commissioner Howe to take steps immediately to launch the Teacher Corps, to recruit and to train the maximum number that this very small appropriation will allow. By next fall, those teachers will be on duty.

We will seek high quality and deep commitment among all those who serve. They must be like the young volunteer from Macon, Georgia, who wrote, "I don't particularly get pleasure out of being in the slums, but I want to do something about them. The Teacher Corps will prepare me to work in any area at any time, and it is the opportunity of a lifetime."

They must be like JoAnn Navorr and Frances Nichols and Alberto Huerta--three of the first Teacher Corps volunteers whom you see here on the platform with me today. JoAnn, who comes from Los Angeles, is a returned Peace Corps volunteer and a qualified language instructor. Frances, a student at Berea College in Kentucky, helped organize the Appalachia volunteers and worked with the poor children in Kentucky for more than 2 1/2 years. Alberto, who comes from Laredo, Texas, and is fluent in Spanish, wants to be a teacher of Mexican-American children.

There was a period when I was a teacher of Mexican-American children. It gave me the greatest satisfaction of my life.

We need more volunteers like these three. I don't know, Alberto, where you will go. You may not follow the route I did after I left that Mexican-American school. But you can't ever tell. They will do a lot for you while you are trying to help them.

The other night after Ray Scherer's television broadcast, one of Mike Mansfield's colleagues and one of my Senate friends, said to me, "Well, all my life I heard that any boy born in America had a chance to grow up and be President, and now I believe it."

So the hour is already late. Many June graduates who were considering the Teacher Corps have begun already, because it is late, to look elsewhere for the year ahead.

I appeal to them all over this Nation this morning to reconsider that decision. I call on them to think again about coming and helping us and helping those more unfortunate. No service at this time could be more valuable to your country.

I also call on the Congress to reconsider-to make available the funds that we need, and we desperately need, for a Teacher Corps in fiscal 1967. I hope that Congress, which has already done so much for so many, will do just a little more, and give the Teacher Corps a chance to help others.

I know from personal experience how bitter is the want and how great the need of poverty's prisoners. I know, too, what a decent house and what a decent education can really do to end that want and to help fill that need.

It was years ago that Justice Holmes told a reunion of his Harvard classmates that they were fortunate because, as he said, and I quote, "In our youth our hearts were touched with fire."

Today it is not enough to touch with fire the hearts of just a few in this country. We must take the light to all the dark places in this Nation, and here this morning, in your presence, with God as our witness, we make that start.

Note: The President spoke shortly after 11 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John W. Gardner, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert C. Weaver, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana.

As enacted, the Second Supplemental Appropriation Act, 1966, is Public Law 89-426 (80 Stat. 141).

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks on Signing Supplemental Appropriations Bills Providing Funds for the National Teacher Corps and the Rent Supplement Program Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/239044

Filed Under

Categories

Attributes

Location

Washington, DC

Simple Search of Our Archives