Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Library Sixth Stack [PAGE 8]

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Too many times we assume that that which we received and from which we benefited, is adequate for our children and our grandchildren. And it is not. It is a much changed world now. And it will be an even more greatly changed world in the next several decades. And we must not be guilty of short changing our children and grandchildren when it comes to the most important thing in their lives...their ability to provide for themselves when we're gone and to be, if I can invoke the American dream, better than we are, and better than we can be. Third, strong educational leadership in our schools is critical. Strong leadership is essential to providing direction and support for the teaching staff, and for helping the community to understand the needs of our schools. Without strong leadership from school administrators and boards of education, we cannot hope to establish the coalition of public support which should be the foundation of our schools. And so our leaders in education, at every level, must reach out and forge new alliances of parents, teachers and students with communities, businesses, labor, industry. Fourth, our schools need to improve organizational and administrative efficiency. We have over a thousand separate school districts in Illinois, ranging in size from 17 students to 400,000 students. Illinois clearly has too many school districts. Recently a group came in from one part of central Illinois to see me about perhaps getting some assistance from the State in replacing a school building that had been declared to be dangerous and out of which teachers and students had been forced to move. And I inquired about the support from the local community for a new facility and whether attempts at local referenda had been attempted. And they said yes, but they were defeated. And I said, why is that? And they said, well, a lot of these folks went to that old school, and they just can't help but believe that their kids should go there too. You know, a nostalgia for what was in America and in Illinois has its value. We ought to preserve the best of the past, but we ought not to chain our children to what was appropriate in the past, but is inappropriate for the future. And sometimes in our desire to go back to earlier, happier, simpler times, we do that. And we ought to recognize that as a fault and cure ourselves.

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