Education for Freedom

In 1983, the Reagan administration commissioned a group of experts to produce a report on the state of education in the United States. The result was A Nation at Risk, which marked a turning point in educational policy, aiming to restore excellence. The report was far from complacent. The experts barely made it through the third paragraph before delivering their verdict: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” Kindness and moderation are virtues neither for the surgeon nor the sociologist. Most, if not all, of the report’s signatories have passed away, but I would bet that if they were to evaluate today’s educational standards, they would be even more severe.