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"Simply spectacular. Linda Symcox's careful and exhaustive research and compelling storytelling provide a credible and important new lens for viewing the contemporary school curriculum and the standards movement.
–Jeannie Oakes, Presidential Professor in Education, UCLA."A compelling read for anyone interested in the politics of school reform and, more specifically, in the political intrigue involved in making decisions about what history children should learn."
–Bruce VanSledright, College of Education, University of Maryland at College Park
In the 1990s the debate over what history–and more importantly whose history–should be taught in American schools resonated through the halls of Congress, the national press, and the nation’s schools. Politicians such as Lynne Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and Senator Slade Gorton, and pundits such as Rush Limbaugh, John Leo, and Charles Krauthammer fiercely denounced the findings of the National Standards for History which, subsequently, became a major battleground in the nation’s ongoing struggle to define its historical identity.
To help us understand what happened, Linda Symcox traces the genealogy of the National History Standards Project from its origins as a neo-conservative reform movement to the drafting of the Standards, through the 18 months of controversy and the debate that ensued, and the aftermath. Broad in scope, this case study includes debates on social history, world history, multiculturalism, established canons, national identity, cultural history, and "liberal education." Symcox brilliantly illuminates the larger issue of how educational policy is made and contested in the United States, revealing how a debate about our children’s education actually became a struggle between competing political forces.
