WORK EXPERIENCE AND TRAINING PROJECTS Announcement of Report to the President by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, on Job Training Programs of Public Welfare Agencies. September 28, 1966 President Johnson received a report today from Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare John W. Gardner that over 29,000 men and women who were formerly unemployable are now working and supporting themselves and their families as the result of federally aided job-training programs carried out by State and local public welfare agencies. Before obtaining jobs, the participants and their 105,000 dependents a total of 134,000 persons were receiving about $4.5 million a month in public assistance payments. The resulting savings are enabling the States to provide more services to more people who need them, Secretary Gardner reported. The report covers the 18-month period from January 1965 through June 1966. Because of the time-lag involved in receiving reports from the States on some projects, the final total for the period will actually be somewhat higher. "The work experience and training projects are designed to help extremely deprived people, primarily parents with dependent children," Secretary Gardner stated. "Before entering a work experience project, most of the participants had so many problems-lack of basic education and skills, health problems, family problems-that they had no chance of getting jobs or enrolling in other types of training programs. Many had been living for years at a bare subsistence level. "Thus the accomplishments of this program represent a real gain for the men and women who have become self-supporting, for their children, and for our country." The work experience and training projects are being carried out with Federal assistance provided under the 1962 public welfare amendments to the Social Security Act and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The program is administered by the Welfare Administration of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Since federally aided job-training projects under public welfare auspices first got underway in a few States in October 1963, following enactment of the 1962 amendments, they have enabled a total of more than 40,000 men and women to begin supporting themselves and their approximately 150,000 dependents. Both the 1962 legislation and the Economic Opportunity Act place heavy emphasis on preventing dependency and rehabilitating impoverished people. Therefore, in addition to job training, the projects also provide adult basic education and a variety of services to help solve health and other problems which stand in the way of a person's becoming employed or affect the well-being of his family. Projects are now located in 49 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. They are currently benefiting some 76,000 unemployed and their needy families. HEALTH MANPOWER SHORTAGE Statement by the President Urging Program Adjustments To Meet Needs. September 29, 1966 We have made great progress in this country in bringing medical services to all our people. Advances in medical science and our increasing capacity to give better medical care impose a heavy demand for trained people to provide these services. Our examination of the Nation's health problem makes clear that the most critical need is in the manpower field. I am very hopeful that the National Advisory Commission on Health Manpower, chaired by J. Irwin Miller, will produce plans for increasing the supply of health manpower and improving the ways in which we use that supply. Congress has passed major legislation to improve and expand our resources in health manpower. These include: -The Manpower Development and Training Act -The Health Professions Educational Assistance Act -The Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke Amendments * FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF BROOKINGS INSTITUTION The President's Remarks at a Dinner in Observance of the Occasion. September 29, 1966 Now, in 1966, after 50 years of telling the Government what to do, you are more than a private institution on Massachusetts Avenue. You are a national institution, so important to, at least, the executive branch, and, I think, the Congress, and the country, that if you did not exist we would have to ask someone to create you. Of course you are not alone now. Other institutions, many of them specialized, have come into being since the Second War. Some of them are supported by the Government itself, in an effort to find better answers to problems of national security in the nuclear age. Moremany more have appeared on university campuses, sponsoring research in such subjects as mental health, African affairs, urban renewal, in a hundred or more fields where scholars had heretofore never ventured. This has not happened just because wealthy benefactors needed monuments to their generosity. It has happened because the enormous complexity of modern living demanded something better than a visceral emotional response. And as one who has examined a thousand new ideas from the universities and research centers of America in the past 34 months, I can testify that in fact we got something better. There is hardly an aspect of the Great Society's program that has not been molded, or remolded, or in some way influenced by the communities of scholars and thinkers. The flow of ideas continues-because the problems continue. Some ideas are good enough to stimu 72-954 0-67-pt. 1—27 late whole departments of Government into fresh appraisals of their programs. Some are ingenious; some are impractical; some are both. But without the tide of new proposals that periodically sweeps into this city, the climate of our Government would be very arid indeed. There has been another-and equally welcome-development during the last few years. A number of those who helped to create the new programs decided, after they had been created, to follow their children down here to Washington. So men like John Gardner, and Bob Wood, and Charlie Haar, came down to look after the education program, and what we hope next week may be the demonstration cities program. If the old bromide still had currency-that intellectuals are absentminded, unable to keep with the harsh practicalities of administration-these men, and many like them, should have dispelled it. * CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill and Executive Orders to Encourage the International Movement of Such Materials. October 14, 1966 A little over a year ago in my speech at the Smithsonian Bicentennial Celebration, I pledged that we would embark on a new and noble adventure: the adventure of international education. One of the five central tasks of this adventure will be "to increase the free flow of books and ideas, works of art, of science and imagination." Today I am happy, with the full support of Congress, to announce that we are taking three major steps forward in fulfilling this task. I am today signing a proclamation that announces our formal acceptance of the audio-visual Agreement of Beirut. This final step is now possible because last Saturday, October the 8th, I signed a joint resolution to Congress to bring our tariff laws into conformity with this treaty. Today I am issuing an Executive order that designates the United States Information Agency to carry out the Beirut Agreement for this Government. The Beirut Agreement removes import duties and every other barrier to the international movement of educational materials of the type called "audio-visual," classroom motion pictures, slides, video tapes, recordings, and the like. Our exports of these educational materials is growing at the present annual level of $3,500,000. I feel confident that our acceptance of this Beirut Agreement will soon bring a doubling in the number of nations there are now 18-which are full partners to the Agreement. I believe it will increase many times the volume of American educational tools flowing abroad. I also signed today a bill to implement the agreement on the importation of educational, scientific, and cultural materials commonly known as the Florence Agreement. Through this legislation, the United States now joins with 51 other countries in dropping tariff barriers that have limited the free access of nations to all the tools of learning, including books and scientific instruments, which other nations create. The United States helped negotiate this Agreement in 1950. I believe Ambassador Allen negotiated this Agreement almost 18 years ago. The Senate ratification followed in 1960. We have been successful, finally, in obtaining action by the 89th Congress which will permit full U.S. participation in this multinational effort. I have also signed an Executive order facilitating art exchanges with foreign countries. This is under authority given me by the 89th Congress. I am designating the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Smithsonian Institution, as the responsible person to allow art works to come into this country for exhibition. Because of the limitations of time, I am asking Mr. Cater to give those of you who are interested in the arts a background briefing following this signing, if you care to have one. We will not detain the people here. I am particularly pleased that we take these steps in the year of UNESCO's 20th anniversary. The ideals for which that organization stands are being given fresh vitality and renewed purposes. I hope they will command the support of all forward-looking, enlightened citizens without regard to partisanship. We know that knowledge has no national boundaries; that the instruments of learning should be fully and freely accessible to all. We know that ideas, not armaments, will shape our lasting prospects for peace. * PAGO PAGO, AMERICAN SAMOA Advance Text of the President's Remarks. October 18, 1966 And, you have recognized that education is the vital force of our century, driving all else ahead of it. I am told that the pilot program of education which you have started may point the way to learning breakthroughs throughout the Pacific Islands and southeast Asia. Samoan children are learning twice as fast as they once did, and retaining what they learn. Surely from among them one day will come scientists and writers to give their talents to Samoa, to America, and to the world. One requirement for a good and universal education is an inexpensive and readily available means of teaching children. Unhappily, the world has only a fraction of the teachers it needs. Samoa has met this problem through educational television-which was pioneered here by your outstanding Governor, Rex Lee, and the very able Director of the United States Information Agency, Leonard Marks. Everyone wants to study the job you have done-UNESCO, the World Bank, New Guinea, New Zealand, India, and other countries around the world. This technique which you are helping to improve has the power to spread the light of knowledge like wildfire across wide areas of the earth. AMERICAN EDUCATION WEEK, 1966 Proclamation 3753. October 26, 1966 By the President of the United States of America a proclamation America's laws, her institutions, her wealth-all the treasures of our civilization-have been shaped not only by American will and ambition, but by American intellect. Without the creative spark of human imagination; without trained minds and finely-trained men, none of our proudest accomplishments would have been possible. And what is true of our past is even more true for our future: better education must be the base on which we build all our other goals. Because we treasure trained intelligence as a precious national resource, we have begun a major effort to expand and improve our schools, colleges and universities. A greatly-strengthened Federal, State and local partnership is at work to serve our 56 million students-the three of every ten Americans who are enrolled in school. For their sake and for the nation's sake, -We are making improved education available to thousands of poor children, so that they need not be poor adults; -We are increasing opportunities for vocational training to meet changing job needs in a technical age; -We are helping physically and socially handicapped young people prepare for productive lives; -We are cooperating with the States and with private institutions to improve higher education, and to make it more widely available to deserving young citizens. But even these massive efforts are not enough. No programs of government, on any level, hold more promise for the future of our nation than those which advance the cause of education. The foremost goal of this Administration has been to create a legacy of educational excellence. We shall continue to pursue that goal until our schools and universities are as great as human wisdom can make them, and the doors to our classrooms are open to every American boy and girl. American Education Week, 1966, should be a time for every American to commit himself anew to completing the unfinished business of American Education-and to developing new and more helpful ways to enrich the minds of our citizens in years to come. NOW, THEREFORE, I, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate the period of November 6, through November 12, 1966, as American Education Week. I call upon all the people of the United States to take an active part in the progress and improvement of American education. I ask the citizens of every community to seek every means of advancing the excellence of their schools and fulfilling the educational needs of their school children. I urge educators and laymen to join in common diligence to strengthen our educational system at every level. Above all, I propose that we establish, as our great and immediate goal, the translation into complete reality of our long-cherished hope for full and equal educational opportunity for all Americans. |