Proclamation 3935—American Education Week, 1969

There are times in the lives of men and in the lives of institutions when basic questions must be asked. Such a time has come for the institution of which many Americans have been most proud: our system of education.

We have reached a point at which we must take a close, long, hard look at what is good and what is bad about our schools, at what should be strengthened and what should be eliminated.

Yet even as we make such an examination we must all agree on one basic principle: we must not allow our schools to be captured by violence or dominated by ideological dogmatists. Our schools are not perfect, but this lack of perfection is no excuse for lawbreaking or a lack of civility and decency on the part of any critic, no matter how deeply he feels or how little he thinks

Those of us who have attended public, private and religiously affiliated schools and colleges realize that no single act can ever repay the institutions and the men and women who serve them for what they did for us. The overwhelming majority of students today feels the same way. A good education is a form of rebirth, a way toward economic and intellectual achievement, an affirmation that an individual human being's thoughts are important, that his emotions can find creative direction, that he is a man and not a thing.

This is what education can do at its best. This is what all Americans, young and old, black and white, must preserve, expand and protect.

Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the period of November 9 through November 15, 1969, as American Education Week.

I urge all Americans to join with me during this week in a thoughtful examination of our education system and in formulating ways in which education in America can be improved where needed, by the traditional American way of reason and open discussion.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fourth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred sixty-nine and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-fourth.

RICHARD NIXON