I found Rod Paige! Sort of...

No wonder US Education Secretary, Rod Paige, dispatched his deputy secretary to deal with the October (Surprise!) Potemkin School Terror Threat...

Rod was busy dealing with a much more serious threat to America's school children last summer:

Booklet That Upset Mrs. Cheney Is History

The Department of Education destroys 300,000 parent guides to remove references to national standards.

Mrs. Dick, self-appointed
US History Czar

By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Jean Merl, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The Education Department this summer destroyed more than 300,000 copies of a booklet designed for parents to help their children learn history after the office of Vice President Dick Cheney's wife complained that it mentioned the National Standards for History, which she has long opposed.

In June, during a routine update, the Education Department began distributing a new edition of a 10-year-old how-to guide called "Helping Your Child Learn History." Aimed at parents of children from preschool through fifth grade, the 73-page booklet presented an assortment of advice, including taking children to museums and visiting historical sites.

The booklet included several brief references to the National Standards for History, which were developed at UCLA in the mid-1990s with federal support. Created by scholars and educators to help school officials design better history courses, they are voluntary benchmarks, not mandatory requirements.

At the time, Lynne Cheney, the wife of now-Vice President Cheney, led a vociferous campaign complaining that the standards were not positive enough about America's achievements and paid too little attention to figures such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere and Thomas Edison.

At one point in the initial controversy, Cheney denounced the standards as "politicized history." LINK

In addition lamenting the scant attention paid to dead white men, Mrs. Dick also had serious problems with the attention paid to other historical figures:

"Cheney led the charge on the original UCLA draft. In a widely read opinion piece published in 1994, she complained that 'We are a better people than the National Standards indicate, and our children deserve to know it.'

The standards contained repeated references to the Ku Klux Klan and to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the anti-Communist demagogue of the 1950s, she said. And she noted that Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who helped run the Underground Railroad, was mentioned six times.

Mrs. Dick has, of course, written her own version of American History:

Department of the Interior
Office of the Secretary
Contact: Joan Moody
For Immediate Release: June 11, 2002
202-208-6416


Media Advisory

Photo Opportunity June 17, DOI University:

LYNNE V. CHENEY TO SHOWCASE AMERICA: A PATRIOTIC PRIMER

Author Lynne Cheney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and wife of the Vice President, will present ideas from her new book America: A Patriotic Primer, on June 17 to U.S. federal employees, their families and children hosted by the Department of the Interior. Mrs. Cheney will be the latest guest in the DOI University's series of author events.

Mrs. Cheney will discuss American history, patriotism and her book with the children and their families. America: A Patriotic Primer, published by Simon & Schuster, is an alphabet book in which each letter stands for one of the founding principles, historical events or noted figures in American history.

"A is for America, of course," says Mrs. Cheney, who has long been an advocate for improving history education in America. "America's story is a compelling one," she says, "and it helps us understand how fortunate we are to live in freedom."

Additional guests include more than 200 children from Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts in the Metro area and four Washington, D.C. schools - Stevens Elementary School, Ross Elementary School, C. Melvin Sharpe Health School, Bunker Hill Elementary School, and Minor Elementary School.

Mrs. Cheney has long stressed the importance of knowing American history, noting that history should not be a mystery for the nation's youth. Before her tenure at AEI, Mrs. Cheney served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993. America: A Patriotic Primer celebrates the ideas and ideals that are the foundations of our country. Mrs. Cheney's net proceeds from the book will go to the American Red Cross and to projects that foster the study and appreciation of American history.

Open to press. Press credentials required for entry. Photo opportunity only. LINK

Standards?

We don't need no stinkin' standards!

Danger, Will Robinson!