The following was sent to me by Myron Tribus. He requested that I
post it here.]

The enclosed was sent to me from the Edina School District in
Edina, MN. It was put together by the students and staff over a
long time. I have permission from the superintendent, Dr.
Dragseth, to distribute it widely.

           IF EDUCATION WAS TRULY A PRIORITY...

1. ...we would restrict classroom size to three time the number
of children a parent could sanely supervise at home, or nineteen,
whichever was less.
2. ...there would be no gap--as there is at present--between what
we accomplish and what we would like to.
3. ...the only "sterile" curriculum would be in outer space.
4. ...we would not do a little tinkering here and a quick-fix
there, and then stand back a ways and call it reform.
5. ...competition for A B C D F would give way to cooperation for
S U C C E S S.
6. ...would schools, at present eroded by a "rising tide of
mediocrity" (in fact, a rising tide of societal indifference!)
once revolutionized become "superiority complexes?"
7. ...parents, educators, and lawmakers would be far less
concerned with what is and much more excited about what can be.
8. ...parents would spend as much time shopping for their
children's school as they spend on drapes, their home, or a new
automobile.
9. ...the passive learner would be a socially permissible
endangered species.
10. ...the U.S. and Soviet Union would agree to cut by one-half
the $1.5 billion a day they now spend on military defense and
take on the world larger challenges of eliminating hunger,
ignorance, and oppression. As Sey Chassler has said, "We must
stop thinking about life as some contest to be won but as
important work to be done together with our fellow human beings."
11. ...our society would make its most serious commitment ever to
preparing citizens for the uncertain future.
12. ...progress in education over the last four decades would be
just as apparent as accelerative thrusts in transportation,
telecommunications, computerization, and medicine.
13. ...we would all develop a much higher view of human
potential.
14. ...rather than focus so much on what students are getting out
of their education, greater attention would be placed on what
they are putting in .
15. ...all the world would engage in multilateral educational
pro-armament.
16. ...many parents would discontinue the practice of viewing
their child's education from the position of bystander.
17. ...the world would learn that peace is spelled e d u c a t I
o n. 
18. ...right alongside lawyers, businessmen, actors, and
ministers, an educator would run for President.
19. ...as much money would be spent on private tutoring as is
spent on record albums.
20. ...graduating high school seniors making application to Ivy
League schools would have a tough choice--business, law,
medicine, or teaching.
21. ...rather than blame teachers we'd follow the Pentagon's
lead. Instead of criticizing their best pilots if an outmoded
plane doesn't fly fast enough or high enough, they make sure, no
matter the expense, that a new plane that does what they want it
to do is designed from the ground up. In similar fashion, no
matter the expense, we would engage in total revision of
education, from the ground up.
22. ...people would know at least as much about those who govern
them as they know about those who entertain them.
23. ...parent-teacher meetings would take on the character of
rock concerts; it would be reported periodically that individuals
were trampled squeezing into a packed school auditorium.
24. ....a slick looking magazine highlighting outstanding
community education programming, ED Guide--would be available at
your local grocers.
25. ...illiteracy and ignorance would go the way of the do-do and
the brontosaurus.
26. ...national laboratories of education would be created in the
United States-similar to the scientific laboratories of Los
Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in
California-and equivalent material, financial, and human effort
would be dedicated to the pursuit of educational excellence.
27. ...Education Tonight, a nationally syndicated prime time
extravaganza featuring top students and teachers, would be shown
nightly, right after the evening news.
28. ...schooling would take place in numerous community settings,
not just within the confines of a school building.
29. ...you could stop people on the street and ask, "What are our
country's top five priorities?" and "education" and "preparing
our children for the future" would consistently make this
listing.
30. ...compulsory parenting laws would be as prevalent as
compulsory education legislation, compelling parents to assume an
active, cooperative role in the overall development of their
children.
31. ...we would hear as much on the nightly news about
educational proliferation as we now hear about nuclear.
32. ...we'd spend at least as much per pupil per day as we do on
convicts. 
33. ...instead of marching alone, one against the other, school
administrators, parents, school boards, teachers, and union
locals would together march on Washington and respective state
capitols.
34. ...to the Summer and Winter Olympics would be added the
Spring and Fall Olympics--spirit and academic.
35. ...instead of being ignored and even banished, differences
among students in color, culture, language, and religion would be
valued, nurtured, and transformed into profitable learning
experiences for all our children.
3 6. ...textbooks would be as popular as designer jeans.
3 7. ...yearly, a televised education academy awards, the
"Eddies" (the Emmys and the Oscars of students and learning
facilitators), would focus world attention on educational
excellence.
38. ...public criticism is the only thing that would be blunted
on the classroom door.
39. ...instead of burgers and beer, every third billboard and one
out of five advertisements would highlight the importance of
education.
40. ...never, under any circumstances, would teaching be a
lifetime position, a refuge, from which one could not be
dislodged, even for glaring incompetence.
41. ...recognizing there is much to be learned there, as student
and as a teacher, the President would spend at least one day a
month in school.
42. ...parents would recommend a career in teaching just as
readily as a career in medicine.
43. ...because every student would graduate when she/he elected,
the drop-out would be a phenomenon of the past; an upwardly
alterable, content-specific lifelong certificate would pinpoint
levels of social and academic attainment.
44. ...you would hear teachers say that, if they had their lives
to live over, they would willingly choose teaching as a career.
45. ...recognizing that great things happen when the U.S. commits
itself to the ambitious pursuit of a goal-witness our dream of
reaching the moon-national leaders would dedicate the last decade
of the twentieth and the entire twenty-first century to
revitalizing education and related services for children and
youth.
46. ...the general public would know as much about schooling as
they do the intricacies of their state's lottery.
47. ...the future of our nation--indeed the world--would be far
less at risk.

...IT WOULD GET US TO THINKING.