This little pamphlet shouldn't be lost to educational historians interested in arguments over curriculum content carried on the 1980s.

American Memory: A Report on the Humanities in the Nations Public Schools was written by Lynne V. Cheney during the time she was Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1985 Congress had requested a report on the state of humanities education in America and two years later this thirty-page booklet was the result. Because her predecessor in the office, William Bennett, had issued a report on higher education Cheney decided to focus on elementary and secondary schools. The topics covered in the paper, the humanities and foreign language education, teacher training, and textbooks are dealt with summarily but it is only a thirty-page document. 1996’s National Standards for History Basic Education began with this document. Whatever your opinion of Lynne Cheney and her husband’s politics you should read this if you are at all interested in education.

Cheney makes many reasonable arguments, for instance when talking about textbooks she starts by saying, “Publishers are frequently blamed for textbooks” and goes on the place the blame with the many state and local curriculum guides that issue requirements publishers have to meet. Unless purchasing committees can check off these requirements the textbook publisher will not make any sales. (pg.17) She suggests that the power to adopt textbooks be given to local teachers and school boards. (pg. 19)

There are, however, some troublesome positions she takes. She stresses reading the “Classics”. Yes, everyone from the Caesars to Ulysses S. Grant read the Greeks but the speed at which new works and new ideas are being added makes it impossible to cover everything that was read in Grant’s time and still educate our citizens for the twenty-first century. Although Cheney wrote “dates and names are not all that students should know” (pg. 6) she keeps coming back to the point that some students do not know what she considers basic facts and she seems to see little value in the students learning skills that will allow them to find whatever facts they might need.

The booklet give a quick look at some of the problems America’s education system is dealing with and a hint at why it is not getting better. ( )