Rarely does a newly introduced bill deserve comment before it's even gotten to the stage of hearings, but you should know about this one. Senator Lamar Alexander--former U.S. Secretary of Education, Governor of Tennessee, president of that state's flagship university, and chairman of the National Governors Association--used the occasion of his "debut" speech on the Senate floor to introduce S. 504, The American History and Civics Education Act of 2003. As he put it, this bill joins "two urgent concerns that will determine our country's future&: the education of our children and the principles that unite us as Americans." It authorizes the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a dozen "Presidential Academies for Teachers of American History and Civics" and a like number of "Congressional Academies for Students of American History and Civics." (It also provides for a new "National Alliance of Teachers of American History and Civics.) Authorized at $25 million, the measure is seen by Alexander and his co-sponsors as a pilot to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of residential summer programs for K-12 teachers specializing in history and/or civics, and for high school students who are accomplished and interested in those subjects. About 300 teachers would attend each 2-week program (i.e. about 3600 per annum) as would a similar number of students (their programs would last a month). Universities and education research organizations would run these projects. If enacted, these would be substantial--as well as highly symbolic--sources of encouragement to K-12 and higher education to pay closer heed to what Alexander terms "better teaching and more learning of the key events, persons and ideas that shape the institutions and democratic heritage of the United States."
Senator Alexander's terrific speech can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r108:8:./temp/~r108KXskyZ:e0:. You can read the bill at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:2:./temp/~c108TZ8TL3::.
