America has come a long way, but progress has slowed considerably in recent years, Elizabeth Dole said Friday.

The former president of the American Red Cross and possible presidential candidate said the way to turn this country around is to inspire children through quality education and by providing good examples.

Dole spoke to a crowd of about 2,400 at Stephens Auditorium on how America has changed and how it must change in the future.

“The hope of our nation is the conscience and the character of our children,” she said.

Dole has experienced the revolution of women’s roles in society as she pursued careers in law and government during the last four decades.

Times have changed dramatically since her first day of law school at Harvard University, she said. Dole said she can still hear a male classmate ask, “Don’t you realize there are men who would lose their right arm to be at this law school?”

She also recalled a time in the early ’70s when, as deputy special assistant for consumer affairs to President Nixon, she was not permitted to enter a men’s social club to meet with some associates.

“Those events occurred in the past,” Dole said. “While women most certainly have not reached the millennium … there are other signs that women are playing key roles in the revolutionary change of the American work force.”

She said women are entering the workforce in record numbers and bringing unique skills with them.

Dole said it was her early experiences as a lawyer that made her realize she wanted to devote her life to public service.

At that time, Dole had “stars in her eyes” when she said she wanted to work in government. Today, people do not think government work is so noble, she said.

“Over the years, Americans have grown increasingly disenchanted with our government,” she said. “I believe the federal government has become too big, too bloated, too bureaucratic, too complex.”

A few decades ago there were amazing advances, Dole said, and Americans must never go back —”not an inch.”

“Who among us would turn back the clock?” she said. “Yet this country, which has come so far, has lost so much.”

Dole said our greatest efforts should be put into transforming America into a place where people are proud to raise their children.

“The deep and unsettling fear is that the nation given to us by our founders … was a much better place than the America we’re going to turn over to our children,” she said.

Dole attributed the decline of America to the decreasing quality of the school systems.

“When [I was] growing up, our education system was the envy of the world,” she said. “In seeking to make America better, we have neglected what made her good.”

America has lost its values, she said.

Dole said that should change, and Americans should be “working not only for our own gratitude, but for the joy of knowing our children will benefit.”

“Are we content with what’s happening on our watch? Will we be proud of the choices we made? Are things beginning to change?” she asked.

“I believe the answer is yes,” Dole said.

She said fixing education is the first step in repairing the country.

“We’ve got to restore our public schools to greatness,” she said, adding that Iowa has a head start on the rest of the nation.

“Iowans take responsibility for their children’s education seriously,” she said. “Iowa State is one of the very best land-grant universities in the entire United States of America.”

Drugs are another problem society must overcome for the sake of the nation’s future, Dole said.

“We must choose to return safety to our streets and moral seriousness to the war on drugs,” she said.

As far as drug use goes, Dole recognized Iowa’s problem with methamphetamines.

“Here in Iowa, methamphetamine use has penetrated nooks and crannies all over the state,” she said. “This is a major problem we’re going to get control of with the help of everyone here.”

Dole said Americans have the power to turn their communities around.

“We’ve got to trust ourselves and our values, not solely the government and its intentions,” she said.

However, Dole said nothing is beyond repair.

“From time to time we all fail our own standards, but our standards will never fail us,” she said. “We can never return to an age of innocence, but we can move on to an age of rediscovery.”

Dole’s speech was sponsored by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the ISU Foundation, the Political Science Colloquium Committee and the Committee on Lectures.

Dole was brought to ISU as the Mary Louise Smith Chair for Women in Politics, an honor she accepted in October.