Uniforms
...violence in our schools and what we can do to create an atmosphere in our schools that promotes discipline and order and learning.
Today I'm visiting Long Beach, California, a community that has helped to restore order to its schools by requiring elementary and middle school students to wear uniforms. I believe that if parents and school officials decide to take this step, the rest of us should support them.
Let me tell you why. As I said in my State of the Union Address, our Nation is in a moment of great possibility, a time when more of our people will be able to live out their dreams than ever before, a time of fabulous opportunity. But we all know it's also a time of uncertainty, a time when we face economic challenges, educational challenges, challenges to our family, to our environment, to the safety of our streets.
We will master this moment only if we meet those challenges together. When we are divided we defeat ourselves, but when Americans are together we are never defeated. That's how we have to meet all the major challenges facing our Nation: strengthening our families; building economic security for every working family; fighting crime and drugs and gangs; protecting our environment; maintaining our leadership for peace and freedom in the world; continuing to reform and reinvent our Government so that it is smaller and less bureaucratic, but still strong enough to serve the American people better.
And none of these goals can be achieved unless we meet our seventh challenge: to give our children—all our children—a good, world-class education. And we know that our children cannot learn in schools where weapons, gang violence, and drugs threaten their safety or where plain unruliness and disorder and lack of discipline make learning impossible. Most of our schools are safe, but no parent who walks a child to the bus stop and waves goodbye in...
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