Izrada nacionalnih standarda i debate o nastavi povijesti u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama tijekom 1990-ih

Kaucki, Josipa. (2013). Izrada nacionalnih standarda i debate o nastavi povijesti u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama tijekom 1990-ih. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of History. [mentor Agičić, Damir and Koren, Snježana].

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Abstract

National Standards for United States History and National Standards for World History were published on October, 1994. They were developed under the supervision of the National Center for History in the Schools that was run by Gary B. Nash and Charlotte Crabtree, codirectors of the standards project. This project received funding from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the United States Department of Education. The national standards for history have been developed over the course of two years, during which time only minor criticisms of the standards arose. However, upon their publication, an earlier supporter of the standards became their biggest critic. Namely, Lynne V. Cheney, former president of the National Endowment for the Humanities, published an article in the Wall Street Journal dramatically named “The End of History”. In this article she publically criticized the National Standards for United States Historyfor being politically correct, for giving too much emphasis to multiculturalism and for neglecting to mention some of the biggest names and events of American history. She was a supporter of the traditional view of history, according to which history in American classrooms should have a formative role and produce patriotic citizens. Even though L. Cheney was not the only critic of the Standards, she was the loudest and the most influential. However, when taking into account the political context surrounding the controversy about the Standards, Cheney’s arguments become rather thin. Lynne Cheney was the wife of Dick Cheney, a prominent politician and member of the Republican Party. The Standards were published in 1994 when American President was Bill Clinton, a Democrat. It is possible that L. Cheney was trying to undermine Bill Clinton’s administration in the wake of the upcoming presidential elections. Another Republican, Senator Slade Gorton, also contributed to the negative reception of the Standards. He proposed a non-binding resolution to the Senate that would condemn the Standards. The Senate passed the resolution with a nearly unanimous vote in January, 1995. However, the project was not dropped and in April 1996, after some changes of the content, a revised edition of the Standards was published. The most important change was deleting the examples of student achievement. Most of the criticism was focused on these examples, while ignoring the fact that they were completely voluntary and designed as guidelines for history 64 teachers. The omitting of the examples of student achievement significantly reduced the number of pages and the National Standards for United States History and the National Standards for World Historywere now published as one book, combined with the National Standards for History for Grades K-4. With the publication of the revised edition of national standards for history, Basic Edition of the National Standards for History, the controversy over the National History Standards came to an end.

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