"The general drift of the document," she warned, "becomes apparent when one realizes that not a single one of the 31 national standards mentions the Constitution." True, she reported, theĬonstitution was described as "the culmination of the most creative era of constitutionalism in American history." But this description appeared only in what she alleged was "the dependent clause of a sentence that has as Congress is not." If those comments were not enough to raise readers' Or in which the founding of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the U.S. "Imagine an outline for the teaching of American history," began the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, "in which George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance and is never described as our first In one of the nation's most widely read newspapers, Cheney had delivered a preemptive strike against the new guidelines. Public had not yet read the standards because their release was scheduled for later that month. The banner headline pronounced "The End of History." The Street Journal, were phoning, the three-hour time difference forgotten in their stunned reaction to Lynne Cheney's editorial page article attacking the standards. East Coast friends, having scanned their morning copies of the Wall
Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and other Californians helping to develop the National History Standards were rattled out of their slumber. In the predawn hours of October 20, 1994, Gary B. As such, we will be like water without a source, a tree without roots. But it is true that if younger generations do not understand the hardships and triumphs of their elders, then we will be a people without a past. It is true that history cannot satisfy our appetite when we are hungry, nor keep us warm when the cold wind blows. Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past