Senator Lamar Alexander's excellent bill to create national academies to strengthen education in civics and history for both teachers and high school students has sailed through the Senate. [For Gadfly's earlier treatment of this bill, go to http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=15#258] The summer academies, to be run by the National Endowment for the Humanities, would help rebuild the depleted stock of civic and historical knowledge among U.S. students. This $100 million program would be on top of the $100 million already set aside by the Bush administration for its "We the People" initiative, which has similar goals. If all this comes to pass, the challenge for the Endowment will be to find enough worthy grantees and to keep these praiseworthy initiatives from falling into the clutches of the usual social-studies suspects.
"Senate votes to establish national academies to teach history, civics," by Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2003