Good evening. Buenas noches. Thank you, Congressman Becerra, for your kind introduction. I am pleased and honored to celebrate the 13th edition of the Anuario Hispano-Hispanic Yearbook. I am delighted to be here at the Library of Congress to touch briefly on "Excellence in Education" and to celebrate the work that the Anuario does for the Hispanic community and for America. Let me elaborate.
When Angela Zavala asked me to speak tonight I started to reflect on what the Library of Congress means to Americans, to Hispanics and to me on a personal level. This library is the people's library and I understand it has one of the finest collections of libros en espanol in the world. I was reminded of my first visits to this library when I actually did research in the Hispanic collections. At the time, I was a college student writing a thesis on the position of women in Las Siete Partidas of Alfonso x El Sabio (the wise). The Partidas were a comprehensive law code adapted from the Roman law and which also discussed the manners and morals of 13th entury Spain.
Alfonso the Wise ruled Castilla and Leon in the middle of the 13th century, and is best remembered as a patron of the arts and for encouraging and fomenting learning. He gathered scholars in his court to translate Arabic and Greek texts helping to preserve and transmit much wisdom. And he had texts translated for the most part, not into Latin but into Castellano, giving birth to Spanish as a modern and literary language.
So I was thinking back many, many years ago at my days researching a medieval law code and the position of women in 13th century Spain.
I considered myself fortunate then and consider myself fortunate now. I had easy and ample access to books and ample access to education and excellence. Back then, I was studying at a great college in New York with access to great libararies, and when I would visit my grandmother in Washington, DC., I could come to the Library of Congress to continue my research, if I so desired. And I consider myself extremely fortunate because it was these educational opportunities and getting an excellent education that paved the way for my success as a woman and Hispana in the political and governmental world. I could not be where I am today without an excellent education.
But not everyone was so fortunate then or is now. Not everyone, as we know much too well, has access to libraries or to excellent schools. Not everyone has opportunities or the ability to benefit from opportunities. And our Hispanic community and our Hispanic children, despite notable progress, still lag too far behind in enjoying opportunities to excellence in education. Hispanics are still too far behind in access to this fundamental civil right. The notion that education is a fundamental right is at least as old as our country. Adam Smith described education in 1776 as a basic civil right, suggesting in The Wealth of Nations that a person "without the proper use of the intellectual faculties" was stunted in their human development.
Today, our Hispanic youth is lagging behind in having access to the new and modern world of information provided through the internet. Hispanic families at most income levels are behind in ownership of computers and internet access as compared to non-Hispanic white families. According to NTIA figures, the percentage of Hispanic households with computers is 19.4%, as compared to 40.8% for white non-Hispanic households. The percentage of Hispanic households on-line is 8.7%, compared to 21.2% for white non-Hispanic households.
That is why I am so proud of the work we have done at the Federal Communications Commission to close the gap for Hispanics by connecting our schools and libraries, but particularly our neediest schools, to the information superhighway. The FCC's schools and libraries program, better known as the e-rate, was designed to get all classrooms in America hooked up to the internet. In an ideal world, we would have funded all schools, but for political reasons we had to scale back the size of our program. We then decided we had to fund the neediest schools first. Because most of our Hispanic youth are enrolled in the neediest schools, our Hispanic youth will soon reap the benefits of the schools and libraries program. I am happy to report that schools in states with significant numbers of Hispanic youth – such as Arizona, California, Illinois, Florida, New Mexico, New York, Texas, and Puerto Rico – will be getting a total of nearly $729 million dollars in e-rate funding.
But why is access to the internet so important? I am not an educator, but I can tell you that I see the internet as many things. It is the modern town plaza -- a place to do business; a place to communicate with family and friends. It is this ever vast and limitless library. It is the modern tool for knowledge and communications. All of our children, including our Hispanic children, must have equal access to this new world of information technology and information services so that they can succeed and be productive in the 21st century. They cannot be denied this fundamental right.
Which, in closing, brings me back to the reason we are here tonight – which is to celebrate the good work of the Anuario Hispano-Hispanic Yearbook in providing much needed information and resources to our Hispanic community. Angela Zavala deserves our wholehearted thanks and our praise. Angela, mil gracias por tus contribuciones en mejorar nuestra comunidad hispana en los Estados Unidos.