Bennett Urges Schools to Teach Democratic Values

Education Secretary William J. Bennett, questioning whether the schools teach values that “make the case for our political system,” today said children must know more about history to recognize the Communist threat in Central America.

“Our students will not recognize the urgency in Nicaragua if they cannot recognize the history that is threatening to repeat itself,” Bennett said in a speech to the Conference on Civic Virtue and Educational Excellence.

“If they have never heard of the Cuban missile crisis, they cannot comprehend the Sandinista head of secret police when he states that ‘Cuba’s friends are Nicaragua’s friends, and Cuba’s enemies are Nicaragua’s enemies,’ ” Bennett said.

He said that too many students cannot explain “the essentials of American democracy,” citing surveys that show many teen-agers do not know how a bill becomes law or understand that a President cannot declare a law unconstitutional.

He placed part of the blame on “cultural relativists” for teaching history without transmitting the social and political values of democracy and for failing to draw distinctions between opposing traditions.

They teach, he said, “as if it would be a shame to dirty the slate with any affection or respect for our own tradition.”

In too many schools, history has been incorporated into the broader category of social studies, Bennett said, adding that history lessons often are diluted with offerings of consumer affairs, ecology and multicultural studies.

He called for schools to teach history as an “autonomous discipline, related to but distinct from social studies,” and urged that they set minimum standards of historical knowledge for their graduates and require history teachers to have adequate backgrounds in the subject.