Abstract

Educational Pie in the Sky

Educate America Act, approved by the U.S. Congress and signed in late March by U.S. President Bill Clinton, is the centerpiece of the nation's efforts to transform education. The Senate's report on this act calls it "a blueprint for revitalizing education." According to Goals 2000, the U.S. students will be first in the world in mathematics and science achievement. According to another goal, by the year 2000 "every school in the U.S. will be free of drugs and violence." With violence among teenagers almost normative in the society, as one researcher put it, with boys and girls coming to school armed with guns and knives and with drug use on the rise again after a downward trend in the 1980s, the fatuousness of this promise is self-evident.