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WASHINGTON (AP) - Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president, disputed educators who want to teach more multiculturalism in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, promoting instead an America-first curriculum.

``If there were one aspect of schooling from kindergarten through college to which I would give added emphasis today it would be American history,'' Mrs. Cheney said Friday in remarks prepared for a speech to the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Cheney, a well-known critic of political correctness and former chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, took issue with published comments by the deputy chancellor for instruction in New York City schools, Judith Rizzo.

In a Sept. 30 article, The Washington Post quoted Rizzo as saying: ``Those people who said we don't need multiculturalism, that it's too touchy-feely, a pox on them. I think they've learned their lesson. We have to do more to teach habits of tolerance, knowledge and awareness of other cultures.''

Cheney agreed that children need to be taught about world cultures. But, she said, ``to say that it is more important now implies that the events of Sept. 11 were our fault, that it was our failure to understand Islam that led to so many deaths and so much destruction.''

The assertion that Americans need to learn more tolerance implies, Cheney said, ``that somehow intolerance on our part was the cause.''

``But on Sept. 11, it was most manifestly not the United States that acted out of religious prejudice.''

A time of national crisis is a time to study national history, ``to know the ideas and ideals on which our nation has been built,'' Cheney said. She cited a recent survey of college seniors at 55 elite American universities that found only a third could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown. Not one of those 55 universities requires a course in American history, Mrs. Cheney said.

``Let me suggest that if there is a failure here, it is lack of commitment to this nation's history.''

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2001