Equally important to our strength is the quality of our education. Eight
million adult Americans are classified as functionally illiterate. This is
a disturbing figure--reflected in Selective Service rejection
rates--reflected in welfare rolls and crime rates. And I shall recommend
plans for a massive attack to end this adult illiteracy.
I shall also recommend bills to improve educational quality, to stimulate
the arts, and, at the college level, to provide Federal loans for the
construction of academic facilities and Federally financed scholarships.
If this Nation is to grow in wisdom and strength, then every able high
school graduate should have the opportunity to develop his talents. Yet
nearly half lack either the funds or the facilities to attend college.
Enrollments are going to double in our colleges in the short space of 10
years. The annual cost per student is skyrocketing to astronomical
levels--now averaging $1,650 a year, although almost half of our families
earn less than $5,000. They cannot afford such costs--but this Nation
cannot afford to maintain its military power and neglect its brainpower.
But excellence in education must begin at the elementary level. I sent to
the Congress last year a proposal for Federal aid to public school
construction and teachers' salaries. I believe that bill, which passed the
Senate and received House Committee approval, offered the minimum amount
required by our needs and--in terms of across-the-board aid--the maximum
scope permitted by our Constitution. I therefore see no reason to weaken or
withdraw that bill: and I urge its passage at this session.
"Civilization," said H. G. Wells, "is a race between education and
catastrophe." It is up to you in this Congress to determine the winner of
that race.
These are not unrelated measures addressed to specific gaps or grievances
in our national life. They are the pattern of our intentions and the
foundation of our hopes. "I believe in democracy," said Woodrow Wilson,
"because it releases the energy of every human being." The dynamic of
democracy is the power and the purpose of the individual, and the policy of
this administration is to give to the individual the opportunity to realize
his own highest possibilities.
Our program is to open to all the opportunity for steady and productive
employment, to remove from all the handicap of arbitrary or irrational
exclusion, to offer to all the facilities for education and health and
welfare, to make society the servant of the individual and the individual
the source of progress, and thus to realize for all the full promise of
American life.