ABSTRACT
The report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk, has become so familiar that it is hard to remember how surprised we were when it appeared. Most of us interested in education were entirely unprepared for its tone and emphasis. It had been assumed we would get a characteristic product of the committee process—a report temperate and evenhanded, which might well mean, in practice, an exercise in the vacuous, the sententious, and the banal.
