New York is revising its state history curriculum for high school students, and the first draft is beyond parody. The last major rewrite, in 1987, contained partisan howlers like a "Dismantling the Great Society" section for the Nixon years and multicultural excesses like tracing the intellectual sources of the U.S. Constitution to the Iroquois Confederacy. Having been held up to ridicule, these parts have been removed in the new draft, according to Thomas W. Carroll, president of the Empire Foundation for Policy Research, a New York think tank that is bird-dogging the rewrite. But sections have been added that are just as egregiously politicized.
The Clinton presidency, for instance, is allotted five times as much space as the Civil War -- an unusual decision, to say the least, for a history curriculum. According to Carroll, "The Clinton section highlights the 'social concerns' of health care, education, welfare and Social Security -- sounding remarkably like a Dick Morris political ad. In stark contrast, a parallel section under the Bush years is titled 'social problems' and includes drug abuse, homelessness, and gang violence -- issues that the authors presumably thought disappeared the minute Bill Clinton was elected."
And for those who have been wondering how the Clinton years will go down in the history books? Well, none of the myriad scandals makes it into the draft at all, except for a passing reference to the Senate Whitewater Committee.
The curriculum is now going into a second draft, the writing of which is reportedly being much more carefully supervised by New York State Education Commissioner Richard Mills.