Standards For History May Be Revised

National history standards, challenged by conservatives as too gloomy and politically correct, should be rewritten to emphasize the founding fathers, the Constitution and America’s opportunities, a group of historians and teachers said Wednesday.

“They contained a lot in them that deserved criticism,” said Albert H. Quie, a former Minnesota governor and Republican congressman who led the panel organized by the private Council for Basic Education.

The voluntary standards also should focus more on American scientific and technological break-throughs, the panel said.

And they should drop biased language and lesson-plan examples that critics said came too close to pushing a national curriculum.

The Bush administration and the nation’s governors - alarmed by declining test scores - in 1989 first proposed encouraging states to have all students meet national academic standards.

Since then, math standards have been adopted by many states and schools.

But the history standards, developed by a University of California, Los Angeles, panel under a Bush administration contract, were roundly denounced when they came out last fall.

Conservatives said they overstated negative parts of American history, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the 1950s rise of McCarthyism, while neglecting Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

President Clinton’s education secretary, Richard Riley, agreed.

In one section, the independent panel found, the standards call for students to study the religious beliefs of American Indians and blacks in early America, but fail to mention the beliefs of European settlers.

The group recommends adding that.

The Council for Basic Education is a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates a rigorous liberal arts curriculum for all public school students. It was asked by the Ford Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to examine the standards after they stirred controversy and make recommendations.