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Cheney Calls for More History Instruction in Schools
CNSNews.com ^ | 2/04/02 | Jason Pierce

Posted on 02/04/2002 2:02:51 AM PST by kattracks

Arlington, Va. (CNSNews.com) - Lynne Cheney, addressing a conference of conservatives over the weekend, said Americans should seize the momentum from the war on terrorism to once again focus on teaching about America's past.

"We haven't done a very good job in teaching our history," Lynne Cheney told attendees at the Conservative Political Conference in suburban Washington. "We haven't [given our students] the knowledge they need to appreciate how greatly fortunate we are for our freedom."

Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, has spent much of her professional life writing and speaking about the importance of teaching history to younger generations that are not absorbing vital lessons about freedom.

Cheney reminded her audience that the Founding Fathers had the odds very much stacked against them, as they threw off a colonial power and established a representative government across a vast and expansive land.

"Freedom, as a study of our history shows, is not our inevitable heritage," she said.
"This realization can make our freedom all the more precious. Were we to lose it, liberty might not come our way again."

In her speech on Saturday, Cheney pointed to recent studies that asked students basic questions about American history. Even students at the nation's top institutions-such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale - know very little about America's founding, its founders, and key events in America's history.

She blamed this lack of knowledge on the shortcomings of American universities and a lack of incentive for teaching American history. As a result, Cheney said, the top 55 universities in the country do not have an American history requirement.

"One cannot attribute this lack of knowledge solely to the failure of our colleges and universities," Cheney said. "Not a single one of the 55 most elite college in the U.S. required a course in American history.

"People in academia are doing what other people in other professions do, avoiding activity for which there is little professional incentive," she said.

Cheney added that there is need for immediate action in the classroom to ensure that future Americans have a well-rounded knowledge about the land in which they live.

"We do need to recognize that until long-term efforts are made, American history will remain largely mysterious to any graduate of our finest institutions," Cheney said. "They will continue to place Ulysses S. Grant at Yorktown, unless we come up with extracurricular ways to encourage them to know the men, women, and the advancement of ideas that shaped this county."

"Now we are involved in a war in which we have no choice whether or not to fight," Cheney said. "Thousands of Americans were killed on the very first day of this conflict, right here at home. We don't have the luxury of not getting involved.

"So it's time we remind ourselves exactly what it is that we are defending...and what exactly it is that we have at stake," she said.

Cheney served as chair of the National Endowment for Humanities from 1986 to 1993, and during that time, she published a report, American Memory, warning about the failure of schools to teach history adequately. Cheney currently serves as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
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1 posted on 02/04/2002 2:02:52 AM PST by kattracks
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To: kattracks
MORE revisionism isn't likely to help.
2 posted on 02/04/2002 2:32:30 AM PST by Maelstrom
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To: kattracks
Cheney should have called for UNDISTORTED history instruction. What these kids are getting now you and I would not recognize as history, but biased media reports.
3 posted on 02/04/2002 2:37:31 AM PST by chainsaw
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To: kattracks
Will they be taught our TRUE history? The history of our Founding Fathers, who said "embarassing things" like "When People fear the Goverment, it's tyranny; when Government fears the People, it's Liberty" (Ben Franklin) or "Those who exchange a measure of freedom for temporal safety deserve neither" (Again, BF)...etc etc etc?

Magic Eightball says: Signs point to no.
4 posted on 02/04/2002 2:37:31 AM PST by WyldKard
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To: WyldKard
While studying for a BA in History, I was required to have two US history classes. . .and two African history classes and two Asian or two South American history classes! I am glad to see that the history of Nigeria is as important as the history of my own country!

NOT.

5 posted on 02/04/2002 3:13:12 AM PST by Rutabega
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To: WyldKard
I suspect that the more "History" they are taught the less of the truth they will know. Better to leave them ignorant than have them taught more politically correct garbage. I vaguely remember a quote from, I think, either Will Rogers or Mark Twain to the effect that, "it ain't all the things a man don't know that makes him stupid, it's all the things he knows damn well that ain't so."
6 posted on 02/04/2002 3:30:37 AM PST by cpressroll
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To: kattracks
Why do parents of college kids pay for this crap? We need more parents forcing their way onto these university boards specificaaly to bring back an accurate curriculum to create competent citizens. If nothing else, we need to be more selective about which colleges get applications, depending on their curriculum.
7 posted on 02/04/2002 3:48:06 AM PST by keats5
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Comment #8 Removed by Moderator

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