Remarks to a Group of Visiting Foreign Educators.

Ladies and gentlemen:

I want to say how proud we have been that you chose to come to this country to examine our educational system, and I am sure that you taught us during your visit here more than you learned.

There is, I know, a great tendency in every country, including my own, to consider education important but perhaps not so vital. We are so concerned in so many parts of the world with the problems that are coming today, next year, and the year after--and it does take 5 or 10 or 15 years to educate a boy or girl--and therefore there is a tendency to concentrate available resources on the problems we face now, and perhaps ignore what the potentialities and capabilities will be of our people 10 or 15 years from now.

Thomas Jefferson once said that if you expect a people to be ignorant and free you expect what never was and never will be. And from the beginning of this country, in order to maintain a very difficult discipline which is self-government, we have placed a major emphasis on education.

My own feeling is, we have to do better-not only in quantity but also in quality, and I am hopeful that we can develop in this country a cult of excellence in regard to education and intellectual development, which will make this country more equipped to meet its problems. What is true of us I'm sure is true of you. In some of your countries your problems are entirely different, and that is, making it possible for, in the mass, to educate great numbers of your people who today do not have that advantage, and also making sure that at the higher level we can train and then usefully employ men and women to serve not only their own interests but that of their country.

I want you to know we are very proud to have you here. Our educational system has represented the devoted efforts of our citizenry, but I think we can always do better. And perhaps by your presence here, and your questions, and your concerns, you have been able to stimulate us to move more forward along what I consider to be the most vital function of society: educating our people-making it possible for them to realize their potentials, and by serving their own personalities and development, serving the national interest.

So we're glad to see you and we hope that when you go home you will be able to communicate to them not only things that you may have liked here, or disliked, but also the sense of a people desiring to improve themselves and their country.

Thank you.