Do 'sputnik moments' spur educational reform? A rhetoric scholar weighs in

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From the publication of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on education in 1983 to the polarizing election of Donald Trump, one moment after another has been compared to the sputnik episode.

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The Conversation

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https://theconversation.com/do-sputnik-moments-spur-educational-reform-a-rhetoric-scholar-weighs-in-214207

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

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CHINA, UNITED STATES, RUSSIA, CALIFORNIA

Summary

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From the publication of the landmark A Nation at Risk report on education in 1983 to the polarizing election of Donald Trump, one moment after another has been compared to the sputnik episode.
As a professor who studies the rhetoric of education reform, I know that what politicians and others call sputnik moments do not always live up to that name.
Some sputnik moments spark enduring public debates, while others are easily forgotten.

American education called into question

In the spring of 1958, Life magazine ran a series of articles entitled: “Crisis in Education.” One Life article compared the rigor of U.S. education unfavorably with that of the Soviets.
Another Life article referred to American education as a “carnival.” President Dwight Eisenhower read the Life articles and began advocating for what would become the National Defense Education Act of 1958.
It was a first-of-its-kind intervention in education policy and funding.
Ever since, pivotal events for education in the U.S. have been called sputnik moments.

Reagan and a flailing education system

In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education published A Nation at Risk.
We responded by making math, science, and engineering education a priority.” Reagan cited NASA’s space shuttle program as evidence that the nation had succeeded.
But like sputnik, it spurred decades of discussion about the rigor of public education in the U.S.

Obama on competition with China

Obama needed to sell his proposal to the nation and to the House of Representatives, which the Republicans had taken control of in the 2010 midterm elections.
It also did not result in the creation of an Advanced Research Projects Agency for education.

Donald Trump’s election

Sure enough, Trump’s election did revitalize the national discussion of civic education.
There was also the Civic Learning for a Democracy in Crisis by the Hastings Center.
Even the Trump administration joined in the conversation with its 1776 report, which called for a patriotic form of civic education.

Why do we have sputnik moments?

Sputnik moments can be spontaneous or constructed through rhetoric after the fact, or they can fall somewhere in between.
In the late 1950s, critics of American education made the most of their moment by demanding a greater emphasis on math, science and language.
Because they capitalized on their moment, policymakers and education reformers have continued to be vigilant for more moments like sputnik ever since.