Ninth, in the 21st century we must expand the frontiers of learning across a lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, must have the chance to learn new skills.
Most Americans live near a community college. The roads that take them there can be paths to a better future. My GI bill for America’s workers will transform the confusing tangle of federal training programs into a simple skill grant to go directly into eligible workers’ hands.
For too long this bill has been sitting on that desk there, without action. I ask you to pass it now. Let’s give more of our workers the ability to learn and to earn for a lifetime.
Tenth, we must bring the power of the Information Age into all our schools.
Last year I challenged America to connect every classroom and library to the Internet by the year 2000, so that for the first time in our history, children in the most isolated rural town, the most comfortable suburbs, the poorest inner-city schools will have the same access to the same universe of knowledge.
That is my plan--a call to action for American education. Some may say that it is unusual for a president to pay this kind of attention to education. Some may say it is simply because the president and his wonderful wife have been obsessed with this subject for more years than they can recall. That is not what is driving these proposals. We must understand the significance of this endeavor.
One of the greatest sources of our strength throughout the Cold War was a bipartisan foreign policy. Because our future was at stake, politics stopped at the water’s edge. Now I ask you, and I ask all our nation’s governors, I ask parents, teachers and citizens all across America, for a new nonpartisan commitment to education, because education is a critical national security issue for our future and politics must stop at the schoolhouse door.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness the powerful forces of science and technology to benefit all Americans. This is the first State of the Union carried live in video over the Internet, but we’ve only begun to spread the benefits of a technology revolution that should become the modern birthright of every citizen.
Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. Now we should connect every hospital to the Internet so that doctors can instantly share data about their patients with the best specialists in the field.
And I challenge the private sector tonight to start by connecting every children’s hospital as soon as possible so that a child in bed can stay in touch with school, family and friends. A sick child need no longer be a child alone.