March 12, 1983
My fellow Americans:
I'd like to talk to you today about one of the most important issues that touches our lives and shapes our future: the education of America's children. We've always had a love affair with learning in this country. America is a melting pot, and education has been a mainspring for our democracy and freedom, a means of providing gifts of knowledge and opportunity to all citizens, no matter how humble their background, so they could climb higher, help build the American dream, and leave a better life for those who follow.
Broad educational opportunity not only secured our role as the pathbreaker to progress, it also protected and strengthened our freedom. We were wise enough to heed Thomas Jefferson's warning that "any nation which expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was and never will be.''
But in recent years, our traditions of opportunity and excellence in education have been under siege. We've witnessed the growth of a huge education bureaucracy. Parents have often been reduced to the role of outsiders. Government-manufactured inflation made private schools and higher education too expensive for too many families. Even God, source of all knowledge, was expelled from classrooms.
It's time to face the truth. Advocates of more and more government interference in education have had ample time to make their case, and they've failed. Look at the record. Federal spending on education soared eightfold in the last 20 years, rising much faster than inflation. But during the same period, scholastic aptitude test scores went down, down, and down.
The classroom should be an entrance to life, not an escape from it.
As the leader of the free world, the United States must strengthen its defenses, modernize its industries, and move confidently into a new era of high technology. To do this, we need a smart and highly skilled work force. Yet, only one-sixth of our high school graduates have taken junior and senior level courses in science and math. And many U.S. high schools do not offer sufficient math to prepare graduates for engineering schools.
America can do better. We must move forward again by returning to the sound principles that never failed us when we lived up to them. Can we not begin by welcoming God back in our schools and by setting an example for children by striving to abide by His Ten Commandments? We've sent an amendment to the Congress that will permit voluntary prayer in school again.
But better education doesn't mean a bigger Department of Education. In fact, that Department should be abolished. Instead, we must do a better job teaching the basics, insisting on discipline and results, encouraging competition and, above all, remembering that education does not begin with Washington officials or even State and local officials. It begins in the home, where it is the right and responsibility of every American.
Parents and teachers have the toughest, sometimes the most thankless, but always the most important jobs in America. They need our help and support.
Note: The President spoke at 12:06 p.m. from Camp David, Md.
