(LAUGHTER)

I don't know if any of you all remember Jackie Gleason. Now some of you might be old enough to have remembered that, but I never will forget in one of his conversations with Norton, Art Carney, that he used to talk with. And he was worried about he had a mouse in his attic and he had a mouse trap and he was going to try to catch the mouse and he couldn't find any cheese.

So he put a picture of cheese on the mouse trap. So Norton asked him the next morning, said, well, what did you catch? He said I caught a picture of a mouse.

(LAUGHTER)

I don't know, I guess what you put in is what you get out.

I want to thank Christine Varney for chairing this summit, focus on children is so important. I want to welcome all the teachers, businesses, school administrators, law enforcement officials, students, other advocates for the family and for family involvement in education who are here. Also, I want to extend greetings to the many concerned individuals who are participating in the conference on line across the nation.

I was honored to be present here with the vice president, a leader who I think is clearly in touch with the complexity of our times, a serious and thought-provoking speech which really challenged this summit. As he said, your solution must work.

I think it's clear that this is a historic occasion, the first national summit designed for the sole purpose of examining the promises and the perils that are part of the vast expanse of educational opportunity that we know is the Internet.

As with so many other new frontiers, exploring an uncharted world like this one can be an intimidating task filled not only with opportunities but also pitfalls. I think it's important however, that we don't shrink from the challenge, but forge ahead in order to realize all the possibilities and learning opportunities of this exciting medium.

Working together as caring and concerned citizens, I believe that we can indeed fulfill the promise and avoid the pitfalls, and by making this a shared responsibility between business leaders and employees, between parents and teachers, students, between schools and communities, between governments and the private sector. I think we can, working all together, shape an environment that is rich in quality content.

We can build a stronger future for our children and safely use this new learning source. And that is why I am so pleased that we are here. This summit is positive, it is potentially a productive response to President Clinton's call earlier in the year for industry and advocacy groups to come together and make sure that American communities and families and their children do have safe and beneficial and productive on- line experiences.

Now, I'd like to structure my remarks today around four points that I believe we need to keep in mind when discussing the issue.

To begin with, I think it's important to, again, restate something that's obvious and that is that the information superhighway with all of its difficulties already is becoming an integral part of our national landscape and our educational future.

A recent survey that was referred to discovered that almost 10 million children were on line at home. That's some 14 percent of all children under age 18. As of the middle of this year, 4.1 million children are already on line in school, and that's even before the completion of the national classroom wiring initiatives that are proceeding so well.

But the Internet's omnipresence is evident, not just by the numbers, but by how clearly it has indeed integrated into our daily life. Ten years ago, if you had asked a teacher or a student whether they had a computer in their school or were they connected to the Internet, you probably would've received a no and maybe a mystified look.

Today, however, you cannot do anything without hearing about or potentially interacting with the Internet. From baseball games to business cards, from ticket purchases to on-line teleconferences -- almost everything that we do or we hear seems to come with a www dot something after it. We can't ignore this reality, nor should we try. Rather, we must embrace it and shape it for our benefit, and I think that's what we're here talking about.

Now, that brings me to a second point -- the extraordinary potential of the Internet as an educational tool. Quite simply, in today's fast-paced and information-based world, a quality learning environment must also be a place that teaches, uses and applies the newest technologies for learning. Computers and other telecommunications opportunities like the Internet are a vital part of a sound educational future and offer tremendous potential to help students learn and help teachers teach basic and advanced skills.

A trip on the Internet offers students and teachers an immense assortment of learning resources -- admission to world-class libraries and museums; exposure to new and engaging methods of teaching; and specific information and answers about almost any subject. We saw some good examples of some of those this morning already.

It can be an important way to supplement and build the kind of high standards of learning that we want every community and every school to develop. The Internet can benefit learning in another way. It offers parents a quick and a positive means to stay informed and in touch with their children's schools and teachers. By linking up to individual web sites or communicating with schools and teachers through the use of e-mail, parents can increase their knowledge and their involvement in what their children are learning.

Businesses can certainly assist this kind of communication by allowing their employees to link up with schools and talk with teachers over the Internet during work hours. Highlighting this potential, let me reemphasize briefly that this technology is just one of many tools for building a quality education. Neither the Internet nor any other of the wonderful learning technologies being put in place can substitute for creating basic quality educational opportunities and building strong schools. It takes all of these things working together.

We must continue to focus on the most basics of basics, like reading and math and science.

We should also include the arts and music, second and third languages; and we must continually work to encourage parents and families to get involved in all aspects of their children's education. That leads me to my third point, the subject at the heart of today's summit and of education generally. It is absolutely vital for parents and teachers, librarians, families, businesses, religious institutions, and all caring adults to get involved and stay involved in helping to shape the development of children's education and get our children on the right track.

One of my favorite quotes is that of Ann Landers who says, "it's not what you do for your children that really matters. It's what you teach them to do for themselves." As it relates to the Internet, this means helping to make the resource user friendly and safe for our children. It means helping children and their parents know how to make informed choices of the endless material and resources that are out there. It requires more than just access to the Internet in order to bring students into this new education era. They need to focus and direction must be there. It must be a road map through the vast, unchartered domain of cyberspace.

Most importantly, they need to support in the involvement of parents. Now this poses an unusual problem. As we know, in today's technology-based world where change is so rapid, there often exists a unique gap in learning. Children may be more technologically advanced and literate than their parents. This predicament is one reason I'm delighted that the U.S. Department of Education is releasing the Parents' Guide to the Internet that the vice president referred to. This informative and helpful, I hope, book, will indeed help parents to learn to use and explore the world of on-line resources, even though they may have little or no technological background. It will allow and encourage parents to understand what their children are doing, and when the children are at the computer, and help these parents become more involved with these activities.

Now this guide will inform parents about potential dangers on the Internet, and will provide them with positive alternatives. Addresses for many quality web sites that can be starting points for a journey into unlimited exploration and knowledge. I'm delighted that our national partnership for family involvement in education will be working with a number of businesses to distribute this guide, and it probably is no surprise to find several committee members of the partnership here at this conference.

RILEY: Our family involvement partnership now consists of more than 3000 groups committed to working in a variety of ways to increase parental involvement in all aspects of education, including technology. It's important to make clear that it's not the responsibility or the role of the federal government to dictate how schools or students can or should use the Internet.

Government can work with communities and families and private industries to develop safe and positive and on-line experiences. And each day brings new efforts for private businesses to strengthen the positive aspect of the Internet and to limit its dangers. Certainly one way we can help to promote positive use of the Internet is by being a conduit of resources and of information.

And I'm delighted that the Education Department's web site, www.ed.gov, received more than six million hits just last month. With just a few clicks with a mouse, for instance, a visitor to the web site can receive our new Parents' Guide to the Internet. They can also receive several other helpful publications including Getting Ready for College Early, really a helpful publication for middle school children's parents, what to take in high school and how to plan finances.

Student Guide for Financial Aid is another publication. Funding Your Education is another one. And all of these are user-friendly publications designed to help students and their parents plan for the future and learn how the many financial aid programs that the department has to offer, and how they can be of benefit.

There's also an electronic version of the form that families and students need to apply for financial aid for college. It is a very popular common form, the free application for financial aid, FAFSA that you hear about, many of you know about. Completed applications can even be submitted on the web if desired. Now these publications, which outline some of the educational opportunities available to all Americans, lead me then to the fourth important point that I'd like to make briefly before concluding.

And that is that we need to make sure that every single child, no matter what his or her background, economic well being or geographical location, every child had access to these technological resources. We want to use these learning technologies to expand educational opportunities for all, and not exacerbate the differences that already exist.

And that's why the president and the vice president and I worked hard to develop the special education rate, called the E-RATE (ph) for telecommunications services, which becomes operational at the start of the new year. It offers schools and libraries the opportunity to begin receiving these discounted services. We want everyone to be able to take advantage of these tremendous learning resources.

In my judgment, the E-RATE (ph) is one of the important things to happen to education in recent years. It's a credit to the leadership of President Clinton and Vice President Gore that this nation is moving rapidly in this direction and seizing the technological opportunities created by the Internet.

RILEY: They understand the benefits that await an informed and educated public. And if used wisely and well, the possibilities that the net offers are much, much greater than the dangers. As with any new opportunity comes new challenges and new responsibilities. And you and I know this nation has a long history of overcoming challenges and reaching them and turning them into positive and productive experiences. And I'm sure this will be no different.

We need to work to build strong support systems, strong training systems, those that encourage parents and teachers and other committed adults to involve themselves closely with students so that students can separate the good from the bad. One way to achieve this goal is through our new $30 million grant competition that will support activities that will create new partnerships and resources to help teachers use technology. This $30 million part of our technology fund goes for that purpose. And I think it's going to prove to be very, very important.

To cruise the Internet still requires the ability to read and the ability to think. And it always will. It always will take the input of a human brain and should take the input of human character, that of a teacher, of a parent, of a school administrator, of a student, to make sure -- to make sure -- that these technologies are used responsibly and productively.

I thank you very much.

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