ABSTRACT
The bitter controversy was set off in November 1994 by the announcement that National History Standards (NHS) had been adopted. The NHS were produced by the National Center for History at the University of California at Los Angeles. The Center was founded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1992 after reports of low test scores revealed students' woefully inadequate knowledge of American history. The NHS declares that we can obtain a "deeper awareness" about everything we need to know in the present by "studying the choices and decisions of the past." The multicultural emphasis of the NHS made the new casting of American history serve the perceived present needs of a multiethnic society. Throughout the NHS, students are continually asked to examine the "role" women played in a given episode in the past.
