Oh, the Humanities!
DICARLO, RACHEL
Oh, the Humanities! NEH chairman Bruce Cole's cure for national amnesia. BY RACHEL DICARLO BRUCE COLE, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, wants to put the "H" back in...
...The terrorist attacks were an assault on our principles, our heritage of freedom, our history, and our culture," he said...
...A love of democratic principles must be taught...
...BY RACHEL DICARLO BRUCE COLE, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, wants to put the "H" back in NEH...
...Cole is making it his mission to tackle what he calls Americans' "collective amnesia" about their history...
...Cole says his agency's "We the People" initiative will help remedy this...
...percent of Americans attributed the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" to the U.S...
...The inaugural lecture was delivered by Robert V. Remini, biographer of Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago...
...And evidence abounds that the necessary process of renewal has somehow stalled...
...According to a 2000 survey by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, 99 percent of seniors at America's top 55 colleges recognized Beavis and Butthead, but only 23 percent could identify James Madison as the Father of the Constitution...
...It especially needs to be taught to the MTV generation, at a time when not a single Ivy League college requires a course in American history for graduation...
...The first winner, Morghan Transue of Kendall Park, New Jersey, was awarded the prize of $5,000 on May 1, on the occasion of the annual "Heroes of History" lecture that is the program's third component...
...Peanut...
...To defend our country we must first understand it...
...Nearly a third of Americans thought the Constitution guaranteed every American a job, 42 percent thought it guaranteed health care, and 75 percent thought it guaranteed a high school education...
...This is the rich vein that Tonight Show host Jay Leno taps with his candid-camera man-on-the-street interview routine, "Jay-walking...
...Yet there is a popular appetite for history—witness the success of the History Channel and the recent best-selling biographies of John Adams and Theodore Roosevelt...
...He spoke about the Founding Fathers...
...The second component is an annual history essay contest for high school juniors on the "Idea of Ameri-ca"—not the student's private idea of America, or his feelings about America, but the idea itself as it has been expressed in American institutions and experience...
...Himself a historian of art specializing in the Renaissance, Cole emphasizes the urgency of addressing Americans' ignorance of their country's past...
...Recognizing this, Bruce Cole insists his agency can help provide the young more nourishing fare than reality TV...
...Cole is at one with the White House in underscoring this need...
...Grants can go to both public and private institutions, as well as to individuals...
...one component consists of grants to curators, librarians, and scholars whose projects examine "significant events and themes in our nation's history and culture...
...Constitution rather than to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto...
...And in What Americans Know About Politics, published in 1996, political scientists Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter cite some similarly dreary findings: Forty-five Rachel DiCarlo is an editorial assistant at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...The 2001 National Assessment for Education Progress survey found that a majority of high school seniors thought Germany, Japan, or Italy was an ally of the United States in World War II...
...Leno has discovered that, while most people are hard-pressed to identify a picture of George Washington, FDR, or Ronald Reagan, almost everyone knows Joe Camel and Mr...
...As President Bush said at the ceremony unveiling the history initiative last year, "American children are not born knowing what they should cherish—are not born knowing why they should cherish American values...
...unlike a monarchy, a democracy is not automatically self-perpetuating," he says...
...Describing the initiative to Congress in March, Cole stressed that it has acquired a new urgency since September 11...
...His two Clinton-administration predecessors had other priorities for the agency—a "national conversation" on diversity, and greater attention to regional and popular culture...
...History and values have to be renewed from generation to generation...
Vol. 8 • May 2003 • No. 35
