Cord Byrd: “my amendment to the budget resolution would add $100 million in Fiscal Year 2002 to Function 500 (Education). This…”

“my amendment to the budget resolution would add $100 million in Fiscal Year 2002 to Function 500 (Education). This increased funding will allow for the continuation of an American history grant program that I initiated last year. This program is designed to promote the teaching of history as a separate subject in our nation's schools. An unfortunate trend of blending history with a variety of other subjects to form a hybrid called social studies has taken hold in our schools. Further, the history books provided to our young people, all too frequently, gloss over the finer points of America's past. My amendment provides incentives to help spur a return to the teaching of traditional American history. Every February our nation celebrates the birth of two of our most revered presidents--George Washington, the father of our nation, who victoriously led his ill-fitted assembly of militiamen against the armies of King George, and Abraham Lincoln, the eternal martyr of freedom, whose powerful voice and iron will shepherded a divided nation toward a more perfect Union. Sadly, I fear that many of our nation's school children may never fully appreciate the lives and accomplishments of these two American giants of history. They have been robbed of that appreciation--robbed by schools that no longer stress a knowledge of American history.”