The Rhetoric of Exposé: How Lynne Cheney Thwarted the National History Standards

• In Event: Navigating the Politics of Education in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Abstract

In October of 1994, the National Center for History in the Schools was preparing to publish the National Standards for United States History. According to the project’s directors, the standards were to be “a critical milestone but not the final destination in what must be an ongoing, dynamic process of improvement and revision.” But as fate would have it, they would not. Just a week before the standards were to be announced, Lynne Cheney wrote an editorial denouncing them even though the standards were not public yet. This essay examines Cheney’s rhetoric of exposé using archival material newly uncovered from the NEH papers at the National Archives.

Author

• Mark Hlavacik, University of North Texas