Main Street, Wyoming; 321; Crisis in Education (Interview with Lynn Cheney)

Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry and by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching lives of Wyoming people through their study of Wyoming history values and ideas. This is such an old fashioned notion the idea that there's a truth. This is the notion that is often rejected in order to justify the idea of politics in the classroom politics on campus. The argument goes something like this. There's no such thing as truth. That's an outdated sweetly naive way of looking at things Mrs. Cheney. People will tell me there is no truth there is only political interest. There is only the advancement of your political view the advancement of my political view. So since there is no truth I am absolutely free to use the classrooms to advance my political view. And if in the process of hiring we decide to hire only those people who want to advance the political correct point of view there's absolutely nothing wrong with that because there's no truth out there that we are trying to pursue.

Lynne Cheney recently resigned as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and returned at least part time to Wyoming with her husband former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. As a college teacher as a novelist and as head of an agency that funded such a PBS series as the Civil War and indirectly this series there are many things we might talk about. But this week on Main Street we're going to talk to Lynne Cheney about her views on education in America. Welcome to Main Street. Thank you pleasure to be here.

Lynn the any age serve you is something of a bully pulpit and from there you issued some serious critiques of education in America particularly the humanities. We probably ought to start by defining what we mean by humanities. Well it was pretty easy for me when I was at the endowment You know what they were because the Congress had established a laundry list a history literature the history of art. It was a long list of archaeology and it was a paragraph by the time you included every discipline the congressman the humanities to be when I think about what the humanities are I think of any intellectual pursuit that is undertaken from an historical perspective as long as you're looking at how our thinking has evolved through time I think you're involved in a humanistic enterprise. It's been as much as 20 years since I was in college as an undergraduate. Maybe you can give me an idea of what's been happening on campuses that has you so concerned. Well when you and I were in school I think I was there before you were but it has been 20 years for you there really has been an enormous sea change. It seems to me that the reason that

people of my generation that people indeed throughout the ages have felt that the humanities were important is because when you look at something over time when you look at something in historical perspective it puts you in touch with those enduring questions about issues that really matter questions about the purpose of life. Questions about the reasons for existence it helps you to the humanities help you to see how other people have dealt with the problems the tragedies the. Triumphs that are a part of every life. So that's that's what you and I think we're taught to value the humanities. Or when when you read a Wordsworth poem it was was to understand how he found beauty in the life of the common people or when you read a man if you want a home it might be to understand how and how he thought about the changes His world was going through was in the 19th century went from.

An era when people held fast to religious faith through the challenges that Darwin presented and so on. So that's what we love the humanities for now there is I think that the overwhelming majority of our campuses in the humanities the leading edge see the humanities as a political instrument tries to present all of poetry all of art for what it has to say about power struggles between human beings and the view is often advanced that what the humanities are about representing the power perspectives of different groups. And the reason so we are sometimes told that we have to value Shakespeare over the ages is because Shakespeare advances the interests of White European males. It is time or so those who are on the leading edge of the humanities would have us believe to quit paying so much attention indeed sometimes good paying any attention to those dead white

European males and take up literature take up history take up art that advances the interests of other groups and one of your colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute Dinesh D'Souza goes much further than you do in describing what he feels is going on in the colleges. He calls it Neo Marxist brainwashing. Would you agree with that at some at some colleges and universities that's a fair description. The point is this not only to view the humanities as a political instrument but to use it in the classroom as an instrument for transforming society for changing the way that young people in the classroom think about political and social issues. I think this is not only a misuse of the humanities I think it's a misuse of the teacher's power. Lynn in looking over some of the writings that you and others have done attacking what you see as the problems in the academic world today I see a number of themes the failure to teach the classics pandering to race and gender. The rejection of universal ideals

of art and morality. I'm getting close to the problems that you see. You are but you know what sad that many of these problems that you talk about. What's sad about the fact that they exist. Is that in some ways this could be the most wonderful time to study the humanities because one of the things that scholars have done since you were in college and since I was in college is understand better the contributions that different minority groups and women have made to the history of our country. They have helped us to understand better that their works of literature out there that we didn't pay sufficient attention to before because we simply weren't aware of them they weren't on our horizon so to speak. And you can do that without condemning European civilization and the rest of American culture and that's what we should be doing we should be approaching literature and history from a more generous and open perspective than we ever have before. But what's happened unfortunately is the kind of warfare has been set up and those

who believe that we should be studying the works of women in Asian-Americans and African-Americans and Latino people all too often in my opinion say all right and by the way we're going to do in the process of doing that is trash. The culture of it is derived by calling it the culture of dead white European males. When you've been fighting political influences in academia in the sense you've made it a very political issue. Is there any role for government in correcting what you see as some of these wrongs in the academic world. Well I think the government is playing a role does insofar as the National Endowment for the Humanities exists. That government is funding many many projects in the humanities and some of them are quite wonderful. I'm really very proud of many of the projects that were undertaken while I was chairman back the last series of projects that I funded had to do with sending scholars to the Soviet Union to go into the archives. Now. So that that

important historical information is locked up in there can be made widely available quickly. Who knows what will happen in the next five years thanks to years maybe those archives will be opened so that the really wonderful thing for government to be able to do. It does seem to me though that once government gets involved in funding intellectual enterprise of any kind that it is very important that an even handed approach be taken. And that government shouldn't fund indentures projects of any kind. Not of the right not of the left and some of the more. Noteworthy controversies I was involved in were argued out on exactly that ground. Should the government one controversy I was involved in put millions of dollars into creating a television series which advances the idea that Columbus was a genocidal murderer while it also advances the idea that the Aztecs were gentle peace loving people. My answer is no this is not historically even handed. If you wanted to talk

about the treachery of cultures and violence and cultures then let's talk about. Yes the terrible impact that the Colombian expedition had on the Native American peoples. But let us also talk about the fact that the Aztecs used to be able to do away with tens of thousands of people in a good weekend. There needs to be an even handed approach and it seems to me that government has to be very careful to encourage that and not to encourage projects that are too dangerous. I'm not sure the people outside the academic world understand why this debate is over the surface. What is at stake here for the rest of the world. Well I live for the narrower question of education I think we have to understand that this represents a cataclysmic change in the way the purpose of education is viewed for time untold. The purpose of education in this country well time and told for several centuries the purpose of education has been thought to be the

pursuit of truth. And you see that if you look at University mottos across the country look at that very cost. Not my Latin is rusty but light in truth that at Yale for example a car at a college where I went to school the great big sign above the main classroom built a building Palmer Hall. It's as you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. I was startled to get Milo make a scene from Karr at a college not long ago and there was an editorial in the front that really pointed out what a naive notion this whole concept of truth was. So it really is. As I say a cataclysmic change in terms of viewing the purpose of education to move from the idea that the pursuit of education is about the pursuit of truth to move to the idea that it is about politics. This has implications for the school as well as colleges and universities because curricula for the schools are run or influenced by the thinking on their

campuses. And so all too often you'll see the same attitudes that. Prevail in many humanities departments in schools. The idea for example that Western civilization and the American evolution of that are the most races sexes cultures that have ever existed. I come across that time and again and I come across the idea not only in colleges and universities but in our schools that if there is any hope for women and minorities the first thing we have to do is get rid of capitalism. Well these ideas are one. It's untrue. If you look at the American experience and you contrast it to the experience of other cultures and other times there has never been a culture in which women in which vast vastly disparate population in which women and in that disparate population minorities have advanced so far and we are certainly far from perfect. We have a long way to go before it lived up to our own ideals but

to teach our children that we are the most racist sexist country that has ever existed is one untrue and secondly damaging you shouldn't teach people untruths for political reasons. Still I think what many of the people who bring these different viewpoints forth in the university are trying to do is shake people up. Make them think twice about the perspective they bring to what they're studying at the university. Isn't that what education is all about. Questioning is terrific teaching things that aren't true is to my way of thinking an educational thing. It seemed to me that in the last 10 years maybe longer what kids have been studying at the universities of tended to be science and engineering in the go to business school. So maybe this really hasn't affected them that you know if you look across the campus for example you will not find this thought prevailing in the sciences. It's not in the business schools more than in the sciences scientists still have this old fashioned belief in truth. There was a young man at the University of Michigan not long ago they gave him tips

he gave 10 tips to his fellow students about how to avoid the politically correct classroom. And as one of his tips was take lots of courses in the sciences. Avoid the English departments avoid the art history departments have courses make me very sad because I know I know how much there is to be gained from the study of art the study of literature through the ages. I dropped an idea a minute ago that I wanted to finish pursuing this notion somehow. Capitalism has oppressed women and I find it again and again that women are somehow held down by the capitalistic system. I came across a figure not long ago I think it's 70 percent of our small businesses now are started by women. You know women are terrific at capitalism so to be teaching that somehow this is an oppressive system for them is this is so ridiculous but let's. Take your point farther. How does this play out outside of the colleges and universities now side of the school. I pointed out one example in popular

culture in my last report which is Oliver Stone's film JFK. If you want to talk about an example an exemplification par excellence of the idea that there is no truth this is film. The mixture of a documentary footage with reconstructed scenes the supplying characters to help him convey an idea of it. Kennedy's assassination was really an attempted coup d'etat and winced when Stone was challenged about his film because it was. It flew in the face of historical evidence and of the idea of seeking objective truth when he was questioned about it he responded in much the same way that people on our campuses in the humanities often do when challenged on this point he said. It's just my interpretation of history just as valid as your interpretation of history. As though the historical enterprise is about something else. The side trying to get as close as we can and understanding what actually happened

that makes it more of a rhetorical game than a search for truth. Can we convince these people of our viewpoint. Exactly. You know go back a long way this is not a new idea it goes back to the time of this office. Who competed with. The Platonic idea that there was a truth this office argued that no the real point was to teach people to make are so that the sentence went to make the worst the better cause to put a spin on it. You know it's the same idea but in our time what has happened is that this idea has become dominant in many parts of the humanities so that instead of being one one historical argument about truth it's now become a kind of orthodoxy that people subscribe to in a 1990 NDH report you talk about two radical machines quoting the philosopher William James when one approved ways of doing things become institutionalized and widely applied that become counterproductive.

Is that what you mean by this. That's very interesting is I when I wrote tyrannical machines I hadn't really thought of the way in which it applies to what we're talking about I was really talking about education. Reforms about educational practices that have just gone mad. You know you find a way of doing things and then we Americans tend to get so enthusiastic about this way of doing things that we institute it widely and pretty soon there's no other way possible we don't allow people to do things any other way. It is interesting I guess that figure of speech of James's does play out in this intellectual arena that we're talking about as well. But there's another NEA pamphlet called 50 hours in which you lay out a national core curriculum for college students. It's quite specific about the kinds of things that they ought to be studying and covers quite a bit of the curricula Isn't this a kind of tyrannical machine. Well in fact that what the what the. Pamphlet did very clearly and I wrote it I remember this is an offer of the 50 hour core curriculum as a kind of model

to be challenged to be adopted if anyone wanted to. But the last thing that someone of my political persuasion would believe is that somebody in Washington should be able to sit down in a stablished of what college students across the nation should learn. I think the more interesting thing about that report was the emphasis on emphasis on multicultural education. I think that with multicultural education is something we are all to be giving serious thought to but we need to do it right. And all too often the reason people get very irate over the subject of multiculturalism is that it does participate in that phenomenon I was talking about a while ago in order to bring in the new fifth trash the old. And you don't have to do that. There's a way to approach both the cultures we have studied and the cultures we're now beginning to understand how rich and full they are in a generous way in an even handed way. And that's what that curriculum tried to

do. In the critics that I've read of education today it seems like a lot of different complaints are brought together under this roof. We've got the failure to teach the so called great books. We've got the repression of free speech among students. We've got the favoring of minorities in admissions standards. Can you tell me what brings all these things together. How much of it I mean is that this is such a complicated questions that you can't get an answer I'm not sure you really really want to do I'm going to admit it that way. I think it's all connected to the idea that in order to do the new we have to trash the old in order to participate in the late 20th century in the 21st century in this country which is changing that somehow we have to turn our back on the traditions that have indeed made us the people we are a people very accepting of the idea of change people that thrives on on change. So that takes care of the curricular matter in some ways. It seems to me that we ought to approach history

and people in the same way. We shouldn't categorize history according to whether it appears to advance the interests of this group or that group we should approach history from the idea of what it reveals to us about what's true. We shouldn't approach people according to their gender according to their race or their ethnicity. We're out of approach them for who they are inside. It's the idea that Martin Luther King. Junior spoke of so eloquently it should not be the color of your skin that matters. And he was speaking of children a future generation should be the content of your character. And so there are principles that I hold very firmly to that I feel are trampled on by all of these things you mention and I think that there are many people who feel this way. One bias that we've already talked about is is that of the white dead European males. And I noticed in the 50 hours pamphlet that the Western civilization course is in fact dominated by precisely that. Sophocles Homer Plato Augustine Shakespeare Luther

Milton what does that say to you. Well when you read European history which is essentially what is what is Western civilization Well it it it. It begins with the Greeks it has a strong component of the Judeo-Christian tradition involved in it. It comes through Europe. So it happens that the people who lived in Europe were of the right pigmentation and these were ages in which women were not given opportunities for education that might have allowed them to be creators in law givers. And so if they are people who are white and they're male when the Western tradition though comes to the United States and this was also recommended in 50 hours the. Strong emphasis on. How in American civilization this tradition has evolved. That is a tradition that people of both genders and diverse backgrounds have contributed to and in the 50 hours curriculum. People like

Frederick Douglass were room very important people like Martin Luther King Jr. women who have contributed to to our history. So. It's a historical fact that Western Civilization and its European manifestation involves a lot of white males. We should hold that against European history or against the white males either is it. Seems to me so damaging to you to judge. Intellectual contribution on the basis of race and gender. If Plato had something to say. They can enrich my life and it can. Enrich intellectual thought. But how silly not to read him because he's a white male. Conversely if Martin Luther King Jr. had things to say that can enrich my life and enrich human thought how. Impoverishing it would be for my daughters were they not to learn what he was about.

When you talk about the search for truth I'd like to hear your response to the post modernist view of truth the idea that everything we know as truth is seen from a particular perspective with biased biases that they undercut its truthfulness. I think that all of civilization has been built on the idea that there is something called a truth out there that we should try to pursue. And. It has proved itself a very useful way for human beings to organize themselves. I will be the last one to suggest that I have arrived at that was a point where I know the truth. I don't think many people in their lifetimes do. But it does seem to me that as an organizing principle for societies and civilizations it is very valuable and that we ought not to throw it away lightly. One of the weaknesses of course of the postmodern position the idea that there is no truth is as soon as you have said that you have

undercut your ability to see anything including the truth. Exactly. Let's let's bring this back again to the impact it has on the lives of people who are outside the academic world. You know I was thinking today about you know what virtual reality is virtual reality is almost the same tendency carried to its logical combination where people quit interacting with one another and go off into a little Sol up six assaults is that totally subjective world as opposed to working on social problems trying to advance the cause of of the community. I suppose in a way that your viewers might encounter this more often a way to talk about the evolution or rather the example of a cation of this idea off campus. It has to do with race relations with relations between men and women. The ideas developing in this country that you know there are black things there are white things and in Washington D.C. is a very popular T-shirt. It says that it's a

black thing you wouldn't understand that somehow there is no common ground on which people of different races can meet to discuss their problems that there is no common ground on which men and women can can meet to talk about the larger problems of the society I find is in this way of thinking. One that has the great potential for a social damage. I think that we have to emphasize the common ground in which we can all stand to to adjudicate the things that we disagree about. Lynn I want to bring up the question of politics partly because your resignation from the NIH seem to be a very political act. You said basically that you couldn't work with this new administration. Well I was not. That's not what I said what I said specifically was I thought that my time of maximum influence and impact at the endowment was over. It's hard enough to carry out these. To be a participant in.

Some of these intellectual battles when you have an administration that's supportive of you I think would be impossible when you have an illustration that would tend to be less that way. It was a matter of saying I don't want to work with the Clinton people but a matter of saying the time in which I can be effective has really ended. When you've been fighting political influence as well but you know I have been fighting that but it's more what I have been fighting for is freedom of expression. Intellectual Freedom. The idea that there ought to be ideas to compete. If people want to argue that all of human history is a matter of the political interests of one group or another being advantage fine but let's have 10 people arguing that human history is about the truth. Let's have people arguing different points of view let's open up the humanities so that there is more than one view that. Is given notice

why a research assistant just got back from the college art Associations annual meeting. She said that at least 80 percent of that meeting was taken up by politics. At the back. The back. At the back. Of.

Main Street Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy. Proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching the lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas.