Four-Year Plan

“ Equally vital to a sound employment situation is the development of our human resources through education and manpower training. This social pro­gram represents today one of the heaviest commitments of government, and it will continue to be a high priority in the new Five-Year Plan. I commend this priority program to this assembly. ”

“ In our graduate faculties we credit men for work they do, and this principle is also adopted in the secondary schools that have broken the 'lock step.' Just now we hear much about the need of shortening the four year college course. Men can not do the work of four years in three by attending more courses each year, but some men accomplish as much in three years as others do in four, and many men, if they had an adequate motive, would do as much in three years as they now do in four. ”

“ Each agency shall, in collaboration with tribal colleges, develop and document a Five-Year Plan of the agency's efforts to fulfill the purpose of this order. These Five-Year Plans shall include annual performance indicators and appropriate measurable objectives for the agency. ”

“ Your workshops were filled with children and old men, but we hold the period of youth sacred to education, and the period of maturity, when the physical forces begin to flag, equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation. The period of industrial service is twenty-four years, beginning at the close of the course of education at twenty-one and terminating at forty-five. ”

“ The plan I'm sending to Congress will expand their ability to reach more families. My balanced budget also increases Head Start funding to reach one million 3- and 4-year-olds, and expands title I to aid teaching and learning in classrooms and the Even Start Family Literacy Program. ”

“ No reader of these words, so vibrant with promises that not even the triumphant consummation of the Seven Year Plan can fulfill, can expect a community that has been raised so high, and endowed so richly, to remain content with any laurels it may win in the immediate future. ”

“ To the incentives we use in dealing with them, they respond; the motives we supply urge them on; the standards of value we erect for them, they use; and the ideals we place before them, they try to reach. All this places large responsibilities upon us. Are we wise in telling from fifteen to twenty per cent of these young people that three years is all the time that it is wise for them to spend in college work? They will all remain the full four years unless we plan differently for them. ”

“ Last summer's balanced budget agreement, with the largest new investment in education since 1965, will take us a long way toward our sweeping but straightforward agenda. By the year 2000, we want to ensure that every 8-year-old can read, every 12-year-old can log on to the Internet, every 18-year-old can go on to college, and every adult can keep on learning. ”

“ They want a son to complete his schooling as early as possible, and to go to earning money. But what is the gain if the young life, after a few years, ends its earthly career? Better, therefore, that a year or two should pass without remunerative employment, while in the mean time care is taken of the bodily health and strength, the affected lungs are invigorated, and the spirits are renewed. ”

“ The matter is urgent and I also very much welcome the agreement reached in the Council on the Youth Guarantee that will ensure all young people under the age of 25 receive a good quality offer of employment, education, apprenticeship or training within four months of being unemployed. ”

“ Prompt and effective measures must, no matter how great the sacrifice involved, be taken to ensure that, ere the termination of the first two years of the Plan, these two paramount objectives, which constitute the opening phase of the Plan, will have been fully attained. The entire community must arise, as it has never risen before, to meet the challenge of the present hour. The time fixed for the achievement of the initial victories of the Plan is admittedly brief. ”

“ The new four-year course makes it possible for her, as for independent students, to train in the year subsequent to taking a degree—an essential reform if the old over-strain and rush are to be avoided. ”

“ Those who are below 21 years of age will be educated at the expense of the State, whilst those who are above 65 will be maintained in a similar manner. All private enterprise and productivity have, of course, ceased. ”

“ Since this generation is in the meantime not in existence, but must first be raised up by education, and since, even if everything else should go on excellently and beyond our expectation, we shall nevertheless require a considerable interval before we pass over to that new age, the more urgent question arises: How are we to manage to get through this interval? Since we can do nothing better, how are we to maintain ourselves at any rate as the soil on which the improvement may take place, and as the point of departure at which this improvement may begin its work? ”

“ But I may perhaps point out here how integral to a sane man-making scheme is the raising of the minimum age at which children may work. A day will come, I hope, when even the partial employment of children under fifteen will be prohibited, and when, as Mr. Sidney Webb suggested some time ago, employment up to the age of twenty-one will be limited to so few hours a week—his suggestion was thirty—as to leave a broad margin for the more or less compulsory college work and physical training that are becoming essential to the modern citizen. ”

“ Education, too, when attempted, should be gradually introduced as a means of personal advancement, the requirements of the public service being raised year by year, as the younger generation has had opportunities of better qualifying themselves. ”

“ But I firmly believe that the initiation of a Plan to remedy the very deficiencies from which the infant Administrative Order is now suffering, and a firm resolve to carry out its provisions, as well as a sustained effort to make the necessary sacrifices for its consummation, will set in motion forces of such magnitude, and draw upon both communities blessings of such potency, as shall excite the wonder of the believers themselves, and cause their Faith to enter an era of unprecedented expansion and marvellous and fruitful development. ”

“ Meanwhile, we've worked hard to give more of our children a better education, more of our workers a chance to meet the changing demands of the job market. This week we offered a plan to end welfare as we know it, a plan that will encourage personal responsibility and help strengthen our families through tougher child support, more education and training, and an absolute requirement to go to work after a period of time. ”

“ A scheme of this character, if once put into active and thorough operation, would naturally work itself out, for year by year the number of young fellows to whom it would apply would grow less and less; but while working itself out, it would also work out the salvation of many young men, and bring lasting benefits upon our country. ”

“ Under this plan the children in our public schools could study with understanding, not only the form of our government, but also the machinery for making it work successfully, because the plan is not only clear, concise, comprehensive and constructive, but it is so simple that any one can understand it and our youth could be fully equipped for the duties of citizenship when they become of age. ”

“ Every one of these changes, every step we take, has to be measured in a job that a mother or father finds or an opportunity a child gains or in better prospects for a business owner or in safer streets and a more secure future. Every step forward, if it helps to invigorate our economy, our community, our families, is a step worth taking. ”

“ Check Extreme Requirements for Youth in Labor.—There are many requirements for youth in offered opportunities of training and of work which are distinctly detrimental to respect for, and possibility of continued service of, the old. Take, for example, the age limit in many departments of business and manual labor. During the war we had in the countries most denuded of young men a new sort of trial of the middle-aged in positions where it had been thought youth was required. ”

“ I am one of those people who believe that the minimum age at which whole-time general education should cease is sixteen, and that for at least two years more education in some form, a technical or industrial training at least, associated perhaps with productive employment, and a continuation of the general intellectual work should be given. ”

“ In addition to this, we propose—at least as a provisional measure, and until such time as a satisfactory balance shall have been restored—to extend the obligation to work to all persons between the ages of fourteen and seventy-five, instead of, as hitherto, to those between the ages of twenty-one and sixty-five. ”

“ This administration can offer hope and start to remedy our
fiscal prognosis, brightening the horizon for our children
and their children. It is critical that they have all the
opportunities the Greatest Generation made possible for you
and me. Our grandchildren should set ambitious goals, and
believe that hard work will be met by opportunity. ”

“ Your family may increase, and your wants will increase in proportion; out of what fund can you satisfy their demands? Some provision must be made for the future, and made quickly, while youth and health enable you to combat successfully with the ills of life. ”

“ It is a time for action-strong, forward-looking action on the pending education bills to help bring the light of learning to every home and hamlet in America-strong, forward-looking action on youth employment opportunities ”

“ On the contrary, if children are allowed to attend an indifferent school three months during the year, to work three months, to play three months, and are permitted to spend the remaining three months in idleness, the influence of this course will be felt, and it will be likely to give character to their future lives. ”

“ The fourteen-year limit has been recognized and accepted by the state legislatures, and everywhere laws exist which on the one hand prohibit the child under fourteen from working, and, on the other hand, require attendance at school up to the age of fourteen. By common consent, expressed through widely adopted legislation, fourteen has been made the open sesame to the industrial world. ”

“ As the social life of nations has become broader and more complex, a longer period of guidance has become necessary to prepare the future citizens of the State for intelligent participation in it. As a result, child life everywhere has and is still experiencing a new lengthening of the period of dependence and training, and all national interests now indicate that the period devoted to preparing for life's work will need to be further lengthened. ”

“ Prepare Vocationally for Old-age Needs.—The third demand, that every man and woman in early youth or in later youth shall be trained in some light and agreeable occupation that can be pursued, perhaps to economic return, in the days when strenuous labor can no longer be carried on, is one that has as yet received little attention but which should be a matter of deep concern. ”

“ The Commission estimated that a million new young people were required annually by our industries, and that it would need three years of vocational education, beyond the elementary-school age, to prepare them for efficient service. ”

“ This keeps young men from entering, and finally results in failure or in some form of "reorganization" that drives out the older members. The assessment plan carries with it the seeds of its own decay. ”

“ There can be little doubt that within the next few years we shall be forced, if not by practical wisdom, at least by economic necessity, into creating a universal scheme which shall relieve the employers of the need for haphazard advertisement in recruiting their junior staffs, and which shall ensure that everything possible is done to facilitate the entry of a youth into that particular job in which he can do work of most value to himself and to the community. ”

“ The plan makes possible a calm and deliberate discussion of issues pertaining to the four types of government. It would also tend toward the development of more competent men to serve in both elective and appointive positions, and furthermore it would aid in developing specialists. ”

“ The first change would be in the matter of organization: instead of having the elementary school, as now, covering eight years and closing with the child at the age of 14, it should cover but six years, sending the child to the high school at about the age of 12, at which time, approximately, begin those physical and psychological changes earlier spoken of, as belonging to adolescence. And that thought has taken root, as we all know, in the junior high school movement. Six years is long enough to do well all that the elementary school should be expected to do. ”

“ Because of its impossibility, as far as the rural districts are concerned, it might be well to divide the years from twelve to eighteen into three standards—twelve to fourteen, fourteen to sixteen, and sixteen to eighteen. The age grouping, however, will never be reliable in achieving results, as the individual physical development varies so much. ”

“ A comprehensive development plan is therefore badly needed. The objec­tives of education, in the context of planning requirements, need to be translated in more operational terms. At present the objectives define a scope of responsibility that is not feasible for the educational system alone to achieve. ”