[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1025-S1028]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      UNFUNDED MANDATE REFORM ACT


                            Amendment No. 31

     (Purpose: To prevent the adoption of certain national history 
                               standards)

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk and I ask 
that it be read.
   [[Page S1026]] The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the 
amendment.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Washington [Mr. Gorton] proposes an 
     amendment numbered 31.

       At the end of the language proposed to be stricken by the 
     amendment, add the following:

     SEC.   . NATIONAL HISTORY STANDARDS.

       (a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of 
     law, the National Education Goals Panel shall disapprove, and 
     the National Education Standards and Improvement Council 
     shall not certify, any voluntary national content standards, 
     voluntary national student performance standards, or criteria 
     for the certification of such content and student performance 
     standards, on the subject of world and United States history, 
     developed prior to the date of enactment of this Act.
       (b) Prohibition.--No Federal funds shall be awarded to, or 
     expended by, the National Center for History in the Schools, 
     after the date of enactment of this Act, for the development 
     of voluntary national content standards, voluntary national 
     student performance standards, or criteria for the 
     certification of such content and student performance 
     standards, on the subject of such history.
       (c) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate 
     that--
       (1) voluntary national content standards, voluntary 
     national student performance standards, and criteria for the 
     certification of such content and student performance 
     standards, on the subject of world and United States history, 
     established under title II of the Goals 2000: Educate America 
     Act should not be based on standards developed by the 
     National Center for History in the Schools; and
       (2) if the Department of Education, the National Endowment 
     for the Humanities, or any other Federal agency provides 
     funds for the development of the standards and criteria 
     described in paragraph (1), the recipient of such funds 
     should have a decent respect for the contributions of western 
     civilization, and United States history, ideas, and 
     institutions, to the increase of freedom and prosperity 
     around the world.

  Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, what is a more important part of our 
Nation's history for our children to study--George Washington or Bart 
Simpson? Is it more important that they learn about Roseanne Arnold, or 
how America defeated communism as the leader of the free world?
  According to this document--the recently published ``National 
Standards for United States History''--the answers are not what 
Americans would expect. With this set of standards, our students will 
not be expected to know George Washington from the man in the Moon. 
According to this set of standards, America's democracy rests on the 
same moral footing as the Soviet Union's totalitarian dictatorship.
  Mr. President, this set of standards must be stopped, abolished, 
repudiated, repealed. It must be recalled like a shipload of badly 
contaminated food. Today, before our children are asked to spend their 
evenings studying Bart Simpson instead of Benjamin Franklin's discovery 
of electricity, these standards must be abolished.
  My amendment will stop this set of standards from becoming a guide 
for teaching history in America's classrooms. In order to stop this 
perverted idea in its tracks, and to ensure that it does not become, de 
facto, a guide for our Nation's classrooms, it must be publicly and 
officially repudiated by this Congress.
  That is precisely what this amendment seeks to do.
  These standards are ideology masquerading as history. These standards 
would have us reinvent America's history. They are terribly damaging, 
and they constitute a gross distortion of the American story from its 
conceptual foundations to the present.
  America's story is both triumph and tragedy, but mostly triumph, of 
flawed yet unprecedented accomplishment. But in this teachers' and 
textbook manual it becomes a sordid tale ``drenched in dark 
skepticism,'' as a Wall Street Journal editorial put it, emphasizing 
what is negative in America's past, while celebrating only politically 
correct culture and causes.


               (I) The Standard Project's Initial Charter

  The history standards project began as a response to the alarming 
illiteracy of our Nation's children about their own, national history. 
Citizens of a pluralistic, democratic society must have
 a deep, historically based understanding of our liberties' origins and 
institutions, and appreciate the corresponding responsibilities 
essential for our survival as a nation, as a people.

  Such an appreciation is dependent on a mastery of basic American 
history. The founding truths of this country may have been self-evident 
to the Founders, but as studies have demonstrated again and again, they 
are not genetically transmitted.
  William Bennett in his book, ``The De-Valuing of America,'' 
underscores the urgency of our problem in his call for ``true reliable 
national standards.'' He cites the Finn/Ravitch study ``What Do Our 
Children Know?'' that revealed 43 percent of our high school seniors 
could not place World War I between 1900 and 1950. More than two-thirds 
of them did not know even the half-century in which the Civil War took 
place. And more than 75 percent were unable to place within 20 years 
when Abraham Lincoln was President.
  One-third of all high school students tested in 1986 did not know 
that the Declaration of Independence marked the American colonists' 
break from England. Sixty percent did not know that the Federalist 
Papers was written to urge ratification of the Constitution, and 40 
percent could not say even approximately when the Constitution was 
written and ratified. Only three students in five were able to 
recognize a definition of the system of checks and balances that 
divides power among the three branches of our Federal Government.
  If, as Lincoln believed, the liberty and prosperity of a nation such 
as ours is dependent on the ``mystic chords of memory,'' then we are 
indeed, as William Bennett's 1981 national literacy report evidenced, 
``A Nation at Risk.''


                  (ii) we didn't get what we paid for

  In 1992, when UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools won 
the bid to produce national guidelines for American and World history 
curricula, they were given three basic tasks:
  First, to develop guidelines by which to determine the most important 
historical material for students to learn;
  Second, to develop a balanced and objective document; and
  Third, to develop a consensus process that would consider many 
perspectives from many different sources.
  After 2 years and more than $2 million of the American taxpayers' 
money, the history project has failed to reach any of these goals.
  Let members examine a sample of some of the outrageous examples found 
on almost every page of these documents. As we look at this
 material, we should keep in mind that President Bush and all the 
Nation's Governors, at the national educational summit in 
Charlottesville, VA, in 1989, recommended the development of national 
standards based upon what was most worth knowing.


(iii) these proposed standards do not concentrate on what is most worth 
                                knowing

  Examples:
  First, George Washington makes only a fleeting appearance in the 
standards. He is never described as our first President.
  Second, the Constitution: The Constitution is not mentioned in the 31 
core standards, although the standards mention the Depression three 
times.
  Third, central figures and events in American political, cultural, 
and scientific life are either barely noted--in a 300 page book--or 
they simply disappear from the story of America's past. Important 
historical issues, such as the development of the role of Congress in 
our Federal Government are not discussed. Under these standards, Paul 
Revere and his midnight ride will never capture the imagination of our 
children. Ben Franklin's discovery of electricity will not encourage 
young scientists to seek out their own discoveries that can change the 
world.
  Fourth, significant historical figures pivotal to America's past, 
such as Daniel Webster and Robert E. Lee, vanish. Titans who exemplify 
scientific progress in American history are also omitted from the 
standards. With these standards in place, our children will not learn 
of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers, or Albert 
Einstein. Americans who changed the entire world for the better will 
cease to exist.
  As Robert Park of the American Physical Society has noted, the only 
reference to science in the standards is as an activity from which 
women have been excluded. Nothing else about the 
[[Page S1027]] history of science is apparently worth mentioning.
  While the standards ignore people such as Webster, deemphasize George 
Washington and the founding of America, ignore our political heritage, 
and abandon our accomplishments in technology--there is no shortage of 
celebratory information of the politically correct inclusive variety.
  Thus, American students in the standards are asked to ``assess the 
survival strategies and construct historical assessments of people such 
as Prudence Crandall, Prince Hall, and Speckled Snake.'' They are asked 
to ``analyze the reflection of values in popular TV shows'' such as 
Roseanne and the Simpsons.
  Where are the priorities in the standards?
  Given the limited amount of time our kids have to master the basics 
of their Nation's history, are these information fragments more 
important than George Washington and the Constitutional Convention?


              (IV) preemptive strike at critics back home

  Do not misunderstand me. I certainly believe it is important to tell 
the whole story of America. Our history should be inclusive. It should 
study previously neglected groups and individuals who made real 
contributions to our common heritage. It should examine our Nation's 
tragedies--the sub-human treatment of Native Americans, the crime 
against humanity over which we fought our bloodiest war to abolish, the 
battle for women's rights, Jim Crow and the great sacrifices made by so 
many during the civil rights movement of the 1960's, the ongoing battle 
for the complete realization of our Nation's founding first principle, 
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain unalienable rights--all these are parts of our history 
about which our children should learn.
  But let us disabuse ourselves of the modern conceit that this great 
first principle was a 1960's innovation. I think of George Washington's 
letter to a Hebrew congregation in which he compares America's right to 
religious freedom with the, at best, begrudging religious ``tolerance'' 
of other nations.

       It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it 
     were the indulgence of one class of people that another 
     enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural right, for, 
     happily, the government of the United States, which gives to 
     bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires 
     only that they who live under its protection should demean 
     themselves as good citizens. * * * May the children of the 
     Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit 
     and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every 
     one shall sit safely under his own vine and fig tree, and 
     there shall be none to make him afraid.

  Proponents of this manual will tell you that the proposed American 
history standards devote more than 40 pages to colonial and early 
national periods. What is emphasized in those 40 pages, however, is the 
separate histories of different groups based on race, ethnicity, 
gender, and class, at the expense of what is most important for 
students to know--the building of a nation, of ``a people'', and the 
constitutional development of the American Republic, still the envy and 
the prototype for emerging democracies around the world.


                     (V) politically correct drivel

  The standards suggest that students ``analyze Pontiac's speech to the 
French on the reasons for making war in 1763, and compare his reasons 
with those of Opechancanough in 1622 and Metacomet (King Philip) in 
1676. No doubt an interesting question for a graduate
 seminar, but is that something every child in America should learn?

  Mr. President, Americans not yet familiar with this monument to 
political correctness will be astonished to learn that at the same time 
that the standard focus on such arcane issues, they fail to discuss 
what are perhaps the most important documents in American 
constitutional history.
  America's constitutional achievement: The Federalist papers, Nos. 10 
and 51, which explain why checks and balances are crucial to our 
liberties, are omitted altogether. Madison, Hamilton, Jay are never 
identified as the Federalist papers' authors. In fact, the only 
reference to the Federalist papers is a brief mention of No. 84. This 
is appalling. Today the Federalist papers are among the most important 
teaching documents used by civic educators in the new democracies of 
Central and Eastern Europe. It is ridiculous that the authors of these 
national standards in American history, in 300 pages, could not find 
room for the most eloquent articulation of our entire constitutional 
system ever written.


  (VI) the proposed national standards are not balanced and objective

  The few belief examples will have to suffice but I invite you to 
pursue all 300 pages at your leisure.
  The cold war; Both the American history standards and the world 
history standards present this historical battle for the hearts and 
minds of the human race as just another conflict between two 
superpowers. Never mind that the Soviet Union murdered 65 million of 
its own people, its rulers forever justifying any and all ``means,'' at 
the same time that Americans were debating constitutional rights of due 
process for every citizen, while at the same time providing a shield 
for the independence of free nations around the world. Americans and 
free people around the world believed these differences were worthy of 
the lives of their sons and daughters, sacrificed in the hills of Korea 
and jungles of Vietnam for the cause of freedom. But this great contest 
for minds and lives is ignored in their standards. There is no mention 
of the contending ideologies. The enormous sacrifice of American 
taxpayers, particularly during the Reagan administration to bring the 
Soviet monster to its knees is a matter of indifference to these 
standard netters.
  And yet there are 19 references to McCarthyism, is though this 
regrettable but relatively short episode in our story is the central 
reality of the cold war. This is outrageous ideological distortion, 
rendering the victory of the free world under U.S. leadership 
essentially irrelevant.
  The standards describe the nature of this sacrifice in the way:

       The swordplay of the Soviet Union and the United States 
     rightfully claims attention because it led to the Korean and 
     Vietnam wars as well as the Berlin Airlift, Cuban Missile 
     Crisis, American interventions in many parts of the world (no 
     mention of Soviet staged revolutions and mass murders in its 
     client states, or of any ``intervention'' at all).

  What would all those desperate prisoners still locked within Castro's 
police state say about this equating of American and Soviet ends in the 
great battle of our century?
  The standards actually refer to ``the U.S.S.R.'s desire for security 
in Eastern Europe'' as something normal and of understandable national 
interest. Tell that to the Balts, Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians, 
Rumanians, and others.
  American immigrants: The world standards refer to the immigrants who 
came to the United States during the 19th century as ``intrusive 
European Migrants''--page 234. This might be the first effort by 
historians to put the millions of Scandinavians, Jews, Italians, 
Greeks, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians who went through Ellis Island, and 
the earlier arrivals, the Irish, Germans, and other pioneer immigrants, 
together and in a negative light. The American standards emphasize the 
discrimination many immigrants faced in the United States, but nowhere 
in the document is there any discussion of the great success story of 
the descendants of European, Asian, African, and Hispanic immigrants in 
their new country.
  Poverty in America: The section on the history of debate over the 
extent of poverty in the United States asks students to read Michael 
Harrington, an advocate of the Great Society Federal antipoverty 
programs, but never suggest that students read critics of the program's 
big Government approach, such as Thomas Sowell, George Gilder, and 
Milton Friedman. Those scholars simply do not exist.
  The world history guidelines whitewash the less attractive historical 
backgrounds of many non-Western civilizations. In fact, Western 
civilization is buried as a relatively minor element of the world we 
live in today. For example, Aztec achievements are lauded, but human 
sacrifices are ignored. It may as well have never happened. By 
contrast, extensive examinations of Western imperialism are both legion 
and repetitive.
  The world history standards warn against ethnocentricm and bias, but 
the only examples given are of Western 
[[Page S1028]] ethnocentricity and Western bias. Thus Greek images of 
the Persians are described as ``ethnocentric'' and students are asked
 to read John of Plano, a 13th century papal emissary, on the Mongal 
threat and analyze his social and cultural biases about the Mongols.

  The world history standards fail to note that although slavery ended 
in the West during the 19th century, at the cost of the blood of 
hundreds of thousands of sons of the intrusive European immigrants, 
slavery continues to exist today as it has for millenia in the non-
West, according to official United Nations reports.
  These world history standards do not compare and contrast political 
systems in the West and the non-West during the 19th and 20th 
centuries.
  Thus, teachers are not encouraged to compare Western democracies with 
Asian and African despotism. Nor are post-1989 students encouraged to 
consider the Communist ideal versus the historical reality. Why not 
compare the Soviet Socialist experiment with the American story in the 
20th century, or contrast Lenin's reign of terror with Washington's 
leadership? Too unimportant to consider seems to be the view of these 
standard makers.
  Our students need to know the theoretical foundations of our 
liberties. They need to learn why the dictatorship of the proletariat 
failed in its promised bliss.
  The world history standards assert that students should be able to 
assess the accomplishments and costs of Communist rule in China during 
Mao's Great Leap Forward of 1958. Current estimates of the costs are 30 
million murders of Mao's own fellow citizens. Why not ask students to 
analyze the Great Leap Forward itself, rather than to suggest that its 
accomplishments may have been worth its costs? A truly suitable 
activity? Read Jung Chaing's ``Life and Death in Shanghai,'' a record 
of the arrests, mock trials, endless imprisonment, the beatings, the 
innocent children murdered--all in the name of social progress during 
Mao's Cultural Revolution.
  As recently reported in the Nation's newspapers, apologists for this 
project will tell you this is ``work in progress.'' Nothing to be 
alarmed about. Changes can be made.
  Mr. President, this does not look like work in progress. Nothing in 
its content, nothing in its introductory chapters indicates that it is 
to be modified. It is a finished project.
  At the present time, there are 10,000 copies of the United States, 
world, and K-4 history standards in circulation. These copies are in 
use throughout the educational world. In some cases they are already 
being used as curriculum guidelines. They are in the hands of textbook 
publishers, curriculum writers, and other education experts. Funded by 
taxpayers money, UCLA has been selling the standards books--$18 for 
individuals and $24 for groups--and they are making money.
  Last Saturday, an apologist for the project was quoted in the
   Washington Post saying, ``We shouldn't try to throw out the entire 
barrel just because there are a few bad apples in it.''

  Do not believe it. It is the opinion of Lynn Cheney, who herself 
authorized this project as Chairman of the National Endowment of the 
Humanities; Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, a professor of history and 
women's studies at Emory who was on the project's National Council, 
Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, also on the 
project's advisory board; and many others directly involved from its 
conception that these standards are beyond any hope of salvaging--much 
to their own great disappointment as much of their personal time and 
efforts were offered to the cause.
  I agree. These standards must be junked in total.
  The problem is not one of mere detail. The problem is in its 
philosophical foundations. Those foundations are fundamentally anti-
Western, and anti-American in their conceptual framework. The 
correction of a few of the worst excesses will not remove that anti-
American, anti-Western formulation at its base. And it is a most 
serious problem. Whether or not the standards are certified by the 
still to be created Goals 2000 NESIC Board, according to Gilbert Sewall 
and many others, the way in which the textbook establishment works, 
this manual, having the extraordinary prestige of being the first 
national curriculum guide, will become, de facto, official if not 
strongly repudiated. As Dr. Sewall has stated, ``It will be the first 
draft of the next generation of textbooks.''
  Right now, there are 10,000 copies of these standards being 
circulated among leading American educators. Like the infamous 
exploding Pinto, these manuals pose a horrendous threat to the vitality 
and accuracy of American history education, and they must be recalled.
  Mr. President, I have been in favor of national standards. Although I 
had serious reservations, I added my vote to Goals 2000. The 
development of this ideologically driven, anti-Western monument to 
politically correct caricature is not what the Congress envisioned, nor 
is it what the American people paid for. The purpose of this amendment 
is therefore publicly to repudiate its continued use and stop its 
further influence. Should such a project ever be taken up again, and I 
am not at all sure it should be, in light of this experience, it must 
be undertaken by scholars with at least a passable understanding of and 
decent respect for this country and for its roots in Western 
civilization.
  On the eve of the Civil War in March 1861, in his first inaugural 
address, Abraham Lincoln reminded the troubled country of the 
importance of our shared and common past:

       Though passion may have strained, it must not break our 
     bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching 
     from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living 
     heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet 
     swell the chorus of the union, when again touched, as surely 
     they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

  The proposed national standards in American history are designed to 
and will destroy our Nation's mystic chords of memory, so eloquently 
invoked by Lincoln 130 years ago.
  Those mystic chords of memory are already perilously frayed. Study 
after study demonstrates the wounding absence of a shared knowledge of 
our Nation's history. These standards would only serve to deepen that 
wound, and so they must be rejected.
  Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  At the moment there is not a sufficient second.
  Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. DOLE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________