Frank S. Holleman III
Deputy Secretary of Education, U.S. Department of Education
Washington, D.C. 20202–0500

The Scottish Rite's outreach to America's children fulfills the great commandment to love.

There is something about the human spirit that causes us to want to come together at times significant to us—at funerals, births, weddings, family reunions, and the like. In this spirit, today we have come together to dedicate the John I. Smith Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders.* But more importantly, we are gathered to celebrate and give thanks for a gift that you are giving, a gift that God has led you to give to our community.

First, this Center is a gift to the education of the community's children. Numerous studies have shown us that children do well in their educational careers if they get off to a strong start in their early, preschool years. Recently, the National Center for Educational Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education released a study of kindergarten children across America. This is the first nationwide, longitudinal study of a statistical sample of some 200,000 of America's kindergarten children. The National Center surveyed these children in the fall of 1998 when they entered kindergarten and again in the spring of 1999 after they finished. This study will follow these children and their education through the 5th grade so that, for the first time, we will have a national sample to help us learn what helps our children to learn in their early years.

Importantly, this survey has shown us that all children benefit greatly from kindergarten as in South Carolina, which now has full-day kindergarten for all the state's children. Significantly, children with risk factors, such as children who come from poor families, advance in kindergarten as fast as children who come to kindergarten with all the advantages.

However, there is also a disturbing fact. While children with risk factors advance in kindergarten, they start out behind when they arrive so that, by the end of kindergarten, they are still behind other children who come to kindergarten fully ready to succeed. For example, children with risk factors all but catch up with all children in the basics of kindergarten, such as recognizing letters. But on the more advanced literacy skills—recognizing words, putting sounds together to assemble words, or beginning reading—they remain behind. In other words, all children run the race well, but some start a distance behind the starting line.

This is particularly disturbing because children at a young age are, in effect, in a race to read. If children do not master reading by the end of the third grade, they fall behind in their studies from then on because from the fourth grade on, children are reading to learn, rather than learning to read.

What does this study mean for the opening of this Center? Children with disabilities, particularly in speech and language, start with a disadvantage when they enter kindergarten and the first grade. If we do not identify their disabilities early and deal with them effectively, they risk falling behind their fellow students, and, in some cases, they risk never catching up. In other words, we cannot wait until children show up for school to ensure that they succeed in their educational careers. And we cannot wait until the first grade to discover and address their disabilities.

The beauty of this Center is not just that it is a wonderful building, but that it is a working facility which will help all children, regardless of their family's ability to pay, by identifying and addressing their needs in the early years. As a result, the education of these children and the educational progress of our entire community will be better because you [Scottish Rite Masons] had the vision and the faith to undertake this mission. For this, we should be thankful, and this we should celebrate.

The new Scottish Rite Center for Childhood Language Disorders adjacent to the Greenville, South Carolina, Scottish Rite Center.

Second, today we give thanks and celebrate an outstanding example of our community's commitment to its young children. It has always been said that our children are our future, but we have not always lived up to that saying. As we look around America's communities, more and more we see that we are taking the needs of our young children seriously. The First Steps initiative has brought over $2 million to Greenville County to provide preschool for four-year-olds and to work with their parents to improve the education of their children. Churches and communities of faith are including our young children in their mission work. Hospitals are working to serve the health needs of young kids, and individuals are committing their time to tutor young children in reading.

Here, you are dedicating an institution to serve the needs of young children whose needs are compelling and often the most difficult to address. You have gone beyond this often-expressed sentiment—that our children are our future—and taken concrete action to improve the lives of young children. This, too, we should celebrate and for this, too, we should give thanks.

Perhaps more important, though, this Center is a statement of love. When you reflect on what is happening here today, there is no logical reason why there had to be a speech and language therapy center attached to this Temple. There was no business or financial reason. It doesn't serve the needs of the members of the organization. We justifiably respect logic and reason, but logic and reason alone do not explain what you have done and often cannot fully explain the most important things we do in our lives.

This Center is an expression of love for the youngest of our fellow human beings. Most often we think of love as an emotional or spiritual connection to the people who are close to us. Most strikingly, this Center is an expression of love for small children you most likely will never see and most likely will never know. For this expression of love in one of its purest forms, we should also give thanks.

Finally, this Center is a physical manifestation of the fundamental injunction that lays behind our great religious holidays—love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, the dedication of this Center articulates that commandment in a more compelling way: you are loving your neighbor's children as though they were your own.

In our world, there are often reasons to be discouraged, to lose hope for the condition of men and women and the future that lies before us. But today we have reason to hope and to rejoice. Today, we dedicate, celebrate, and give thanks for our commitment to education and our young children, for love and for community, for our common humanity, and for the gifts of God.