I cannot emphasize how important this is at a time when we want people to stay in school and get as much education as they possibly can. Technology enriches education, it teaches our children to learn better, as the Vice President and I saw with the young people who walked in with us in their three different exhibitions of learning, and we thank them for that today. We must make technological literacy a standard. Preparing our children for a lifetime of computer use is now just as essential as teaching them to read and write and do math. With this effort, we are also reinforcing the core convictions that have stood us so well for so long.
Computers offer a world that lives up to our highest hopes of equal opportunity for all.
And look what we need equal opportunity for all for. Computers give us a world where people are judged not by the color of their skin or their gender or their family's income, but by their minds, how well they can express themselves on those screens. If we can teach our children these values, if they can learn to respect themselves and each other, then we can be certain we'll have stronger families, stronger communities, and a stronger America in the 21st century. Until now, this leadership too often has stopped at the schoolroom door, for California ranks 45th in the nation in the ratio of students to computers. While suburban children often have access to computers in their homes, other children in rural areas and inner cities pass their school years without coming close to the Information Superhighway.