Opinion by John Williamson:

How many can recall the slogan “Every Litter bit Hurts”, a part of Lady Bird Johnson’s effort to beautify America in conjunction with the “Keep America Beautiful” organization in the 1960’s? There were national public service advertising campaigns creating peer pressure to cease littering. As I remember, school children were conditioned to shout this slogan when their parents or others tossed trash on the highways. We had mostly clean highway shoulders for a couple of generations. Peer group pressure works. Let’s do it again.

A similar program to elevate the critical importance of education on a successful future, including classroom and parental respect for teachers, would go a long ways to solving our “education problems”. Let’s give it a try. Recall that another peer group program targeting cigarette smoking was reasonably successful.