"A Nation at Risk" Abstract/Reflection

Nation at Risk expresses concern with America's position in the world of education. Too many schools are far below testing standards, according to nation-wide surveys. The general attitude of the teaching community is one of frustration, paired with a crippling "dimming of personal expectations." The address provides examples for success such as "commitment" "dedication" and "public awareness." The idea that education is the path to greatness for a nation is prevalent throughout the address. The document serves to raise awareness of the issue of America's mediocrity, and it calls the educators, community, and students to make a change in the direction public education is heading. The response article from 25 years later, while criticizing the Nation at Risk address for being too harsh in their condemnation and lenient in their statistical presentation, mostly agrees that the nation is still falling behind, and that, were it not for this address, we might be much farther behind in educational reform than we are now.

Nation at Risk seems to be at once a noble call to arms for America's education system, as well as a gross generalization of and focus on every American school's shortcomings. The address is dripping with that nauseous brand of patriotism, that proverbial stick-in-the-mud national attitude that won't have America being anything other than a perpetual forerunner in every aspect of civilization. While the country has made leaps and bounds in education reform, it seems as though at some point it dropped the ball, and other countries mastered many of our methods and began testing higher. Nation at Risk deserves much more criticism, but it is a close call whether or not its benefits outweigh its frustrating origins. The country would not have been aware that it had fallen by the wayside had it not been for the research that was conducted for the article, and even if its numbers were skewed, the point is moot. The 25 years later article picked up on this issue, and quickly realized that more good than harm was done in this case. America got a wake up call, and the programs and institutions that were founded in order to answer to this address were well worth whatever sort of blind supersession brought it forth.