Bill Clinton: “Let me thank all of you, first of all, for coming. And those of you who participated in this historic agreement, I'm…”

“Let me thank all of you, first of all, for coming. And those of you who participated in this historic agreement, I'm very grateful to you. You have done a good thing for your country today. I do not want to leave us on a down note, but I want to put this in the context of what I think the real stakes are of what we're discussing here. And I leave you with this thought, a challenge to think about another barrier that has nothing to do with the production of the programs or even getting advertising, which is how are you going to get these programs to the kids that need to see them the most, the kids that are most at risk in our society, and how are you going to reach their parents? And I want to just ask you to think about these two facts. One is, while we are, at least inside our administration, we are very happy that the crime rate has gone down for 4 years in a row in America--it's a wonderful thing, 4 years in a row of a dropping crime rate--the rate of random violence among people between the ages of 12 and 17 is going up. Cocaine use has dropped by a third, but the rate of random drug use among people between the ages of 12 and 17 has been going up since 1991. Fact one. Second thing. When school starts this fall, 51.7 million children will enroll in schools. And it's the first time since I, the oldest of the baby boomers--since the baby boomers were fully in school that there has been a class of schoolchildren bigger than the baby boom generation, which means we have a few years to turn these trends around or reap a whirlwind from it. Basically, if you look at all the aggregate statistics in our country, it seems that most things are moving in the right direction after years of being troubled. But there are just so many of these kids out here that are either virtually raising themselves; or their parents--almost all of whom, I believe, would like to do a good job--they want to do a good job, but they're not sure how they should do it. So one huge barrier here that we have not discussed because it's sort of beyond our purview--but that a lot of you who are brilliant at marketing things to people and reaching people--is how do you reach the parents? You know, I had a pretty good education, but I learned a lot because Chelsea was into ``Sesame Street'' and ``Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?'' When I met the co-leaders of San Marino at the Olympics, I knew where it was because Chelsea got me into ``Where in the World Is''--[laughter]--not because I had a degree from the foreign service school at Georgetown. I'm just saying, how do we reach the parents? This is a serious issue. And secondly, if you cannot reach the parents, is there some way to reach the kids anyway? We're trying to give schools more funds, for example, to open early and stay open late. Is there some way to redirect the programs in there so that--and work with the schools so that they will show the programs to the kids in the after-school area. You really need to think about this because the kids that need what you're doing the most may have barriers that we haven't even discussed today. I want to make one last point. I think it would be very good for the adults of this country, including all of us who work in the White House, if Mr. Rogers' poem could be read once a week on primetime television. Thank you, and God bless you all.”