Higher educational achievement is crucial to our future

Last Monday we celebrated Veterans Day. This Monday we launch American Education Week. There is an interesting convergence between these events.

Given concern that 25 percent of the country's World War I draftees were illiterate, the American Legion met with educators in 1919 to seek ways to generate support for education. In 1921, the conventions of the American Legion and the National Education Association adopted resolutions for a national effort to raise public awareness, calling for "an educational week ... observed in all communities annually for the purpose of informing the public of the accomplishments and needs of the public schools and to secure the cooperation and support of the public in meeting those needs."

Read the full piece from the Spartanburg Herald Journal.