“If there was ever a time when college students and young people need to be dared and challenged, now is that time.…I’m excited that young Linton [Mann, the UGA student who had introduced him] wants to go to law school, but I hope that after he goes to law school . . . he will give some thought to using his law degree to maybe go and teach.

“For not only do we face a threat overseas but, I think, the greatest internal threat we face as a nation is . . . to actually have more people in our classrooms inspiring young people to be all they can be in K through 12. Because if we allow a generation of young people to find their way through elementary, middle and high school . . . and they’re not reading at the level they should be reading at…and they’re not willing to think outside the box--if we think al-Qaida is a problem, we haven’t seen a problem--if we don’t prepare this next generation to think, read and be willing to consider perspectives, persuasions and people from different backgrounds and different walks of life.

“The challenge the nation ought to put forward to everybody…is that we want to pay teachers what we pay lawyers and doctors. My grandmother told me she wanted me to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer. …I hope that we can convince a generation of grandmoms, grandfathers, moms and dads to urge their kids to be teachers, because if we don’t, I promise you it will be far worse than it is today.”