Educational 'crises' and the rhetoric of reform: The Arnold/Huxley debate reconsidered

In 1982 we sat over lunch with a prominent American educator and researcher a leading exponent of progressive reform over the last three decades. We bemoaned the advent of the New Right, the resurgence of the basics movement and the disarray of liberal and left learning political parties in the United States and Canada. But, he noted optimistically, a series of major reports were due to be released. He believed that these reports - in the American tradition of the “School Survey” - would change the nature of American and, by extension, Canadian education.