 We'll talk for a minute or two. I got to bring it again. I got to see people in the driver's seat. I'm good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Mr. President, would it be okay to steal your misperfect resign? Now you know, I don't take any questions. answer that one, I will only say that sometime you might ask me a question about several dozen other people, not on my staff. You mean the people who are not on your, the people who are talking about this, is that what you're referring to? Could be. What do they say? Do you want to? No question. Like what? Tell us something, Mr. President. Oh, good. You mean you let the fire in someone not on your staff? No, we're here to talk about the enterprise zone and that's good, I just signed the legislation to set it up for the Hill. Thank you, Mr. President. And hopefully we'll get a quick answer. Oh, yes, so that I can sign it for real. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sorry to be late, anytime I have a meeting with members of the Congress, don't schedule anything for a half an hour afterward. It always seems to run over, but now, good afternoon and welcome to all of you. Glad to have you here. I feel as if I'm looking into the future of America and the future looks very good where I stand. I'm very pleased to be able to congratulate you on your outstanding achievements. And I think that one of the special, that we owe a special thanks to the people of the Science Service for their commitment to the high standards of this award program. Also a thanks to Westinghouse for its many years of financial support which makes this possible. And there are a few people in the room who may know that after eight years on the General Electric Theater, it sounded strange to me to be praising Westinghouse. We are grateful. People like you and the 13,000 other students who entered this competition will shape our destiny as a nation. Science and technology are the keys to prosperity, to learning, to higher quality of life. And I think that technology and opportunities go hand in hand. Just the other day in California, I made mention of a firm in Silicon Valley. One man started just a few years ago. And in just a few years, they had set a million dollars in sales. And now they have 25 million dollars in sales. In 1986, they were estimated to have 300 million dollars in sales. So technology and opportunity do go hand in hand. You know, there is an international satellite that is under construction here in, and we hope to launch it by 1986. And that baffled completely. It's beyond my imagination. I'm told that it will be able to transmit the equivalent of the encyclopedia Britannica every three seconds. That's kind of a crowded call. We've opened the door, but we've only taken our first small steps into this technological age. And that's why strong emphasis on support for research and development, and especially basic research in our universities. In fact, your entry into college that fall will coincide with the beginning of a significant expansion of academic research opportunities. And today is the day for you students, but let's remember too how important your teachers were and are in regard to your success. We want America to be the best. And our teachers are invaluable. They're a national resource for all of us. There is no career more honorable or important than teaching. And we've begun several new programs this year to give teachers a kind of assistance and recognition that they deserve. I'm looking forward to making the first round presidential awards for teaching excellence in science and math. But each of us here has a responsibility. You and your families and your own communities must work to demand higher standards in education. Science education is so vital to this future that we've been talking about. You have to make sure that it gets the resources that are needed to continue producing outstanding students. And I thank you now again for coming to see us. And I thank you for your personal initiative and achievement, because that's what will make America great again. It's great now. It's going to be great. It hasn't been a secret for America from the very beginning. So now they tell me that they didn't finish saying that. I'm supposed to go back and stand in the aisle back there so that these photographers up here can get pictures of all of us. And that does improve. I can remember when my high school class picture was taken, and they actually had a still frame of the pan, but the only way they could get a group this wide was to pan across. And then you look in the yearbook and there was that picture, that photograph. And if you look closely and variably, you saw the same person on each end of the pan. Someone would always duck down, run along behind the head of that camera. I don't know that very well. I know I'm late for another one. I have to get going for that. But I just can't resist. There must be someone among you. Sometimes I have a chance to ask him. I'd ask, and if somebody feels that way, why don't you? Don't ask too scientific a question. I might not be able to handle it. What I'd like to know is, were you just speaking about the importance of science, technology, and education? How do you feel also about humanities and education? About what? Humanities. Humanities. Oh, well, no question of that. Having been a graduate of a liberal arts college myself, I do believe in that. But I think what made me emphasize the other is that in recent years, there has been a steady decline. Now, I don't know about your schools, but in too many schools, differing from an earlier day, things like mathematics and science became optional. And in an earlier day, there was a cross-section of courses ranging from the humanities to all of which has certain minimum requirements that you had to take them on the basis that at this particular stage of your life, you needed to be exposed to all of these various things in order to help you make up your mind which course you wanted to follow. And it's my understanding that lately, there has been more and more a tendency to have them all free choice and no required courses of that kind. If you have not had mathematics, by the time you're 16, there's no way that you can ever become an engineer. But let me just give you an answer as to why we're emphasizing this now. If you take a Sunday paper in a metropolitan area, whether it's Washington or Chicago or Los Angeles or wherever, the Sunday paper specifically, because that's the paper that they always put most of the Help Wanted ads in, count the pages of Help Wanted ads in this time when 11 million people are out of work in our country. These are ads of employers begging someone to come and apply for a job, but then look at the qualifications required in most of those ads and you'll find that in our country today there is a shortage in these fields and it has begun when I was in high school all the way through. You had to, in order to get a diploma. Now, I was interested in the humanities and was interested in English and writing and so forth. That was what appealed to me. But I had to take mathematics all the way through geometry in high school. And when you got to college, you had to take, there were required courses. They gradually dwindled out as you picked by that time the major that you wanted to follow. But there were required courses to begin with still, mathematics, languages, and some science. So it has become a shortage right now and we need, if we're going to have it, have the technicians that we need, we're going to have to follow or emphasize this right now and have some more requirement. Right today, I think the Japanese and the West Germans are graduating several times as many as a percentage of students in math and science as we are here in this land that is so based on technology. Was there one other who did and then I know I'm going to have to run. It seems that every time you appear in public, someone will ask you, are you going to run for president? That's not what I'm going to ask you. No one will ever ask you, when are you going to decide whether you're going to run for president? Seeing as how the Democrats, Democrat candidates, seem to be getting all oppressed until you decide the Republican campaign road can't start. Well, I can tell you, I didn't realize that there was a time coming in this coming year when I'm going to have to make an announcement. Now, you know, your chance of guessing right is 50-50. I am, and not or I am, but I feel two things. First of all, we have more and more, and this is true of our opposing party with what they're doing. We have more and more lengthened the campaigning with the place that I believe it is directly proportionate to the reduction in the percentage of people who bother to vote. We've been going downhill, year after year, and the number of people who voted part of it, I think, is because it used to be that an election year was kind of a big event. Well, now it seems as if campaigning goes on forever. First of all, in every two years the Congress has been running, but in the olden years you've got state elections in many of our states, you've got local elections, and this thing of just think, these people have declared already, they'll be campaigning for two years. But for me, to answer your question directly, if I say I won't too early, I'm a lame duck and can't get anything done, and if I will too early, then everything I suggest is going to be viewed as political and part of an election campaign, and thus discredited. And the third thing is, I think that the people themselves kind of let you know whether you should run for re-election. So, I'm listening. I'm listening to you. And I must say, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I've been out in the mashed potato circuit for a lot of years talking about the things that I think ought to be done, and to have a chance to actually deal with them and try to get them done is very fulfilling. I can tell you that public service is fulfilling. If you have some things you believe in and that you want to make those things happen, I wouldn't select politics as a career because it looks like a good job. We don't need that. Well, again, thank you all, and congratulations to you all on what you achieved. I think your country is grateful to you. So now, I'll do as the little girl told me in a letter very early when I was governor. She told me all the things that I had to deal with. And she was pretty informed for about a 10-year-old that inflation and all these things would need to be solved. And then she wound up with P.S. and I'll get to the Oval Office and get to work. I'll be back.