WASHINGTON WATCH: PAUL REVERE: WASN'T HE A ROCK SINGER?

WASHINGTON -- With the excesses of government the target of most Republican and many Democratic candidates this campaign season, Washington has been a basket case the past few months. It isn't hard to understand why. The excesses of government employ and give prestige to thousands of people here, including many senators, congressmen and their staffs, who have little idea of what life would be like without the largesse of being able to spend billions of other people's dollars. Not surprisingly, those within the beltway have devised a self-serving explanation for why government is under attack: "The American people just don't appreciate the important things we do."This blame-the-citizens mentality became the beltway delusion-of-the-day when both the New York Times and Washington Post headlined it in their respective Sunday analysis sections two weeks ago. "Washington Really Is in Touch. We're the Problem," noted the Times' headline. While the Post opined, "You Think Congress Is Out of Touch? Look in the Mirror, Voters; the Trouble Starts With You."Gee, don't you feel like a dunce? I sure do. I actually thought simple things like making promises you never planned to keep were wrong. I also used to think that obeying the laws of the land were important, too. Or that people should be responsible for their own actions. And that government should serve the people, not the other way around. To me, these seemed like basic American values. But according to the Post, Times and all the politicians and bureaucrats quoted in their stories, we the voters are the ones who just don't get it. My apologies, therefore, to people like Ira Magaziner, Dan Rostenkowski, Roger Altman, Joycelyn Elders and Bob Packwood. You, I never should have doubted.

My apologies, too, to the National Endowment for the Humanities. When it released its new standards for the teaching of American history last week -- standards that have been embraced by the Education Department as part of President Clinton's Goals 2000 -- I initially questioned why $2.2 million was spent on such a wacky plan. I mean, wouldn't you, too, think it common sense to make discussion of our country's first president an American history requirement for students somewhere in grades five through 12? Not so, says UCLA history professor Gary Nash, who was hired by NEH bureaucrats to oversee the project: "Our goal was to bring about nothing short of a new American revolution in history education."Well, this they did, while also setting a new high for political correctness. Consider: in the NEH's new standards, the foundings of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are considered noteworthy events, but the first gathering of the U.S. Congress is not. - Negative periods in American history like McCarthy and McCarthyism are mentioned 19 times and the Ku Klux Klan 17 times. - Harriet Tubman, an African-American who helped rescue slaves by way of the underground railroad (and a hero of mine), is mentioned six times. - But Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, two white, male contemporaries of Tubman (and one a president), are mentioned once and not at all, respectively. - Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk and the Wright brothers make zero appearances. - Paul Revere also does not appear.- Even more astounding, not one of the 31 standards mentions the Constitution, the foundation of law and government in our country (although it is included in the supplemental material).- Meanwhile, while students are encouraged to understand West Africa by analyzing "the achievements and grandeur of Mansa Musa's court and the social customs and wealth of the kingdom of Mali," they are instructed to better understand American capitalism by conducting a trial of John D. Rockefeller, in which he is accused of "knowingly and willfully participating in unethical and amoral business practices designed to undermine traditions of fair open competition for personal and private aggrandizement in direct violation of the common welfare." What becomes apparent when reading through these new standards is that the United States is a nation with a dark past, full of conflict, unfulfilled promises and deception, where an oppressive majority has forever subjugated powerless minority groups. But is this true.

Chester E. Finn Jr, former assistant secretary of education, says no, calling the standards "anti-Western" and "hostile to the main threads of American history. ... They unbalance reality in the interest of group comity."Lynne Cheney, NEH chairman under President Bush, also takes exception with the standards, pointing out: "There's a pattern. If there's some good news in the story, you have to draw your own conclusions. If there's bad news, you put it right where the students can't miss it."Even Diane Ravitch, who originally pushed for the standards as assistant secretary of education in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, is less than certain about the final result: "There were things that leaned toward political correctness, and probably an excess of victim psychology, but it struck me that there was an awful lot of good stuff in the standards, too."What does Prof. Nash, in a Washington Post interview, say in response? "We aren't bean counters. There are an infinite number of beans. We would rather be idea-driven and issue-driven."I think we want to bury rote learning and the emphasis on dates, facts, places, events and one damn thing after another," Nash continued. "In its place we want classrooms that are jumping with mock trials and staged debates." And, as his standards so clearly put it: "analyses of situations in which what is morally 'right' and 'wrong' may not be self-evident ... for example, the Emancipation Proclamation..."As I said earlier, I guess I just don't get it. This is what government (beginning in the Bush administration) spent over two years developing -- at a cost of $2.2 million. No wonder those spending our tax dollars don't feel appreciated. They're doing a lousy job.

Jon K. Rust is a Washington-based writer for the Southeast Missourian.