[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 25 (Wednesday, February 8, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E301-E302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       HISTORY STANDARDS ARE BUNK

                                 ______


                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, February 8, 1995
  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I respectfully submit an article from the 
February 6, 1995, U.S. News & World Report entitled ``History Standards 
Are Bunk,'' to be included in the Congressional Record.
                       History Standards Are Bunk

       A funny thing happened to the National History Standards on 
     their way to a famous forum: They were denounced by the 
     United States Senate by a vote of 99 to 1.
       This is a major turning point in the debate. The standards 
     are, as Washington Sen. Slade Gorton said, a ``perverse'' 
     document, loaded up with crude anti-Western and anti-
     Americans propaganda, but until now, the authors of this mess 
     have been able to pose as bewildered moderates, set upon by a 
     pack of crazed right-wingers.
       A new spin will be needed now that the pack of irrational 
     right-wingers includes Ted Kennedy, Carol Moseley-Braun and 
     the entire Senate.
       During a debate on other legislation, Gorton introduced an 
     amendment to pull the plug on funds for the history 
     standards. That probably would have passed fairly easily in a 
     closer vote. But several senators were queasy about pre-
     empting other concerned groups, including the nation's 
     governors, who have led the effort to set voluntary 
     standards. So a ``sense of the Senate'' condemnation was 
     voted on instead and passed without dissent. Even the one 
     ``No'' vote, by Louisiana Democrat Bennett Johnston, was a 
     ``Yes'' in disguise. He wanted stronger action than simple 
     condemnation.
       How do you get all 100 senators to repudiate your 
     standards? Easy. Just do it the way the major perpetrators, 
     historians Gary Nash and Charlotte Crabtree, did it at UCLA's 
     National Center for History in the Schools. Start the 
     standards with the ``convergence'' gambit: America is not a 
     Western-based nation but the result of three cultures 
     (Indian, black and European) ``converging.'' This 
     subliminally puts the Founding Fathers, and whites in 
     general, in their place as mere founders of a third of a 
     nation.


                       trashing european culture

       Though two of these three founding cultures were 
     preliterate, depict all three as equal in value and 
     importance, except for the fact that European culture was 
     worse and dedicated largely to oppression, injustice, gender 
     bias and rape of the natural world.
       Carry this theme through, trampling moderate opinion to the 
     point where Albert Shanker of the American Federation of 
     Teachers says: ``No other nation in the world teaches a 
     national history that leaves its children feeling negative 
     about their own country--this would be the first.''
       Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman took up this theme in the 
     Senate debate, calling the standards ``a terrific 
     disappointment.'' We don't need ``sanitized history,'' he 
     said, but we certainly don't need to give our children ``a 
     warped and negative view'' of America and the West, either.
       How did these standards get to be so bad? After all, 
     historians and teachers of all political persuasions (and 
     none) took part in the discussions. But most of the power, 
     and control of the drafting process, stayed in the hands of 
     academics with a heavy ideological agenda.
       Earl Bell, head of the Organization of History Teachers, 
     and one of four K-through-12 teachers on the panel, felt run 
     over by the ideological academics. He hates the view of the 
     cold war in the standards as a clash that wasn't really about 
     anything, just a quarrel between what he called ``equally 
     imperialistic nations.'' The companion World History 
     Standards, he says are even worse, ``unrelentingly anti-
     Western.''
       The fiasco over the American and Western history standards 
     is a reflection of what has happened to the world of academic 
     history. The profession and the American Historical 
     Association are now dominated by younger historians with a 
     familiar agenda: Take the West down a peg, romanticize ``the 
     Other'' (non-whites), treat all cultures as equal, refrain 
     from criticizing non-white cultures.
       The romanticizing of ``the Other'' is most clearly seen in 
     the current attempt to portray American Indian cultures as 
     unremittingly noble, mystical, gender-fair, peace-loving and 
     living in great harmony with nature. All the evidence that 
     doesn't fit is more or less ignored. The premise of the 
     exercise makes it profoundly dishonest and propagandistic.
       In the World History Standards, as Senator Lieberman noted 
     in the Senate, slavery is only mentioned twice, and both 
     times as practices of white cultures: in ancient Greece and 
     in the Atlantic slave trade. The 
     [[Page E302]] long and well-documented worldwide slave trade, 
     including Muslim and black slave traders, is not mentioned. 
     It doesn't fit the agenda.
       History textbooks, curricula and museum displays are 
     becoming the carriers of the broad assault against American 
     and Western culture. The same kind of gratuitous touches that 
     turned up in the Enola Gay exhibit text (e.g., Japanese brave 
     and noble, Americans racist and destructive) show up in many 
     other Smithsonian exhibits now, and, to nobody's surprise, in 
     the proposed history standards, too.
       Don't be fooled by the argument that these standards are 
     voluntary and nonbinding, so not much is at stake. Over 
     10,000 copies have already been distributed, and textbook 
     publishers are poised to make them the basis of new texts. 
     Any approval of these standards by a public body would give 
     them more momentum. They are beyond salvage and need to be 
     junked.
     

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