The Region - News from Nov. 25, 1986

Schools must be places of education--not laboratories for solving broad societal problems--University of California President David P. Gardner told a convention of school principals in Anaheim. Updating his landmark 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” Gardner said schools “exist primarily to foster intellectual competence and informed citizenship in our free society.” They do not, he added, “exist to respond to every social, political or individual demand made of them by the plethora of single-issue interests that abound in this country.” In 1983, Gardner, as chairman of the National Commission on Educational Excellence, charged that the nation’s future was threatened by “a rising tide of mediocrity” in education. The report generated national controversy and is credited with triggering widespread reform movements.