Humanities Overseer Honors Vista School : Education: Lynne V. Cheney, wife of secretary of defense, praises Rancho Buena Vista High’s history program and discusses education in Vista visit.

Lynne V. Cheney, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, came to Vista Thursday to tell the social studies teachers of Rancho Buena Vista High School that they can rest assured:

They’re doing it right.

Cheney held a round-table discussion at the school that will be recognized at the White House on Oct. 25 for excellence in history.

Much of Thursday’s discussion focused on the new California State History Framework, which calls for teachers to include so-called “forgotten” histories of America and the world--the nonwhite, non-male, non-European contributions omitted from or minimized in standard U.S. texts for years.

Cheney also talked about a variety of other issues that have surfaced since she assumed her post in 1986, including the need for national achievement tests, major educational reforms and strengthening college course requirements.

Cheney said she sometimes has to look no farther than her own bedroom to discover that educational reform may have finally become a priority.

“My husband (U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney) points out to me every night that my budget is on the incline, while his is clearly on the decline,” she said with a laugh.

Cheney said the reason that Rancho Buena Vista, a school of 2,400 students, is more successful than others around the country was evident in the people around the table.

“The answer is personnel, personnel, personnel,” she said. “If you have good teachers, you will get the good curriculum in place, even if the California Framework didn’t exist. I think a group of teachers like this would insist on having a curriculum in place that was coherent, rigorous, demanding . . . .

“If you have good teachers in place, even if the state hasn’t bought good textbooks, they’ll figure out a way to get good material. You saw the answer to this school’s success sitting around the table.”

Judy Cates, chairwoman of the social studies department at Rancho Buena Vista and a delegate on the upcoming trip to Washington, said the school had made the effort to draw current events into the students’ experience, with obvious success.

She said that, rather than relying on older, more traditional methods, teachers and students now discuss the Middle East, changes in the Soviet Union and China and immigration issues.

History teacher Jesse Valenzuela said current events seemed to excite the students as much as older methods tended to put them to sleep.

“They want to know why we have so many homeless people, when we’re giving $94 million (in foreign aid) to Peru,” Valenzuela said. “They get into very lively discussions.”

History teacher Erica Glennon said the multiethnic approach is vitally important, as much for her as it is for students. She said many of her students are Korean, some are Filipino and a few are Indonesian. Some speak English only as a second language.

“The way to make history exciting to students is to show them that it’s relevant to them, and that they’re important in it,” said Cates.

Valenzuela said he had seen tangible results in students feeling far more involved and less apathetic with the advent of a new curriculum.

“They want to know why only 30% of the people vote,” he said, “and it makes them angry that more don’t go to the polls. ‘Why don’t they vote?,’ they ask me. I tell them that maybe they can set the example in the future.”

Cheney said she was appalled to learn recently that 75% of the nation’s history teachers did not major in history in college. She said she applauded efforts in California to make courses more relevant and more in tune with the diversity of the student population.

But Cheney said other changes are in the offing as well and conceded that, to some extent, California is a leader in those areas.

“We’re now beginning to talk about alternative certification,” she said. “We’re beginning to talk about in-service training for teachers that is subject-based and not pedagogically oriented.

“We’re beginning to talk about a nationwide achievement test, and people are supporting us. When I see political leaders beginning to talk about these things, then I feel progress has been made. You couldn’t have gotten the public as a whole interested in the idea of national testing five or six years ago.”