Wouldn’t it be great if the schools had all the money they needed and the military had to get your vote on Facebook to buy cluster bombs?

Ely’s latest vote-online project is the Kohl’s promotion, whereby voting at facebook.com/kohl’scares one can hope to help win up to $500,000 for the Ely schools. Given the success of recent such online efforts, it’s just possible that Facebook friends could make it happen. Voting ends Sept. 3, by the way, and you can vote five times, according to the rules.

Yay to Kohl’s for pledging a total of $10 million to the project. Boo to the government—and by the way, that’s you and me—for putting the schools so low on our national priority list that we have come to rely on today’s electronic version of the bake sale to adequately fund our children’s educations.

Newsweek magazine recently ranked “The best countries in the world,” based on five categories of national wellbeing: education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness and political environment in 100 countries. While America landed toward the top in many categories, it ranked eleventh overall and it failed to even show up in the top 10 under education.

Finland took the top rank in that category, not surprisingly, since it makes basic education a top priority, and one-on-one help from teachers and tutors is given to every struggling student. I was particularly struck by one district official there who knew by name every student who did not complete school in her city.

Second in the education rankings was South Korea, where parents put premium value on their children’s schooling, and students not only graduate from high school, but go on in internationally record numbers to complete college. Newsweek says, “It’s hard to imagine now, but back in the 1960s South Korea’s national wealth was on a par with Afghanistan’s. Today, it’s one of the world’s richest nations, in large part thanks to its focus on education.”

The report said that high-quality preschool provides the very best start for kids, and studies found that those with disadvantaged beginnings who attended were most likely to earn more, have better jobs and avoid prison or divorce. Newsweek gave kudos to the 99 KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter schools in the U.S. where kids from low-income families not only make it through high school, but 80 percent go on to college.

Meanwhile, Ely’s school board struggles to decide on the size of the levy to ask voters to approve for basic infrastructure improvements like roofing, heating and water and electrical services. Across the country, teachers’ jobs are being cut and per-student budgets are flagging.

While America’s rating as an educator isn’t so hot, the U.S. has a current defense budget of $700 billion, about six times that of any other country—greater that of the next 18 nations combined. So when Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this month announced the need to cut defense spending by $100 billion over the next five years, one might think the savings would go to other spending priorities. But no—the funds, he said would be used to repair the military forces decimated by years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and prepare for the next fight. The next fight? Please!

One would think we might have learned from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s advice as he was leaving office in 1961. Ike, a five-star general, warned against the “unwarranted influence” of “the military-industrial complex” in its unremitting desire to spend, spend, spend taxpayers’ dollars on more defense than was needed. Lobbyists pump more than $130 million a year into efforts to keep the bloated defense budget from being trimmed, and legislators are lining up to protect the defense jobs in their districts.

Under President Obama, the last combat troops are leaving Iraq and the drawdown in Afghanistan is scheduled to begin in July 2011. Rebuilding those devastated countries will take decades and the insurgencies will continue to bomb their countrymen. One wonders how much better off Iraq and Afghanistan are for our military involvement.

Rather than spending millions to prepare for the “next fight,” America should be spending at home to improve preschool opportunities, fund school infrastructure, train, hire, retain and sufficiently pay the best teachers and provide individualized attention to kids who start to struggle.

How much better off will America be if we put $100 billion into education, for example, than into feeding the military-industrial complex? We can surely afford to step down to spending, say, only five times more than any other nation on military efforts. And wouldn’t it be grand to step up to being one of the top ten nations in the world in the category of education? It’s not too late to begin learning the lesson Ike tried to teach the country 49 years ago.