Lynne V. Cheney: Saving Our Schools

Lynn V. Cheney (born August 14, 1941) is an American author, scholar, and former talk-show host. She is married to the 46th vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney, and served as the second lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009. As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993, she published American Memory, a report that warned about the failure of schools to transmit knowledge of the past to upcoming generations. A system of education that fails to nurture memory of the past denies its students a great deal, Mrs. Cheney wrote: the satisfactions of mature thought, an attachment to abiding concerns, a perspective on human existence. Currently, as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, she particularly emphasizes the value of knowing our nation\u27s history. One of the important lessons we can learn is that freedom isn\u27t inevitable, she says. This realization should make the liberty we enjoy all the more important to us, all the more worth defending. Cheney is author or co-author of eight books, including Kings of the Hill (second edition, 1996, Simon & Schuster), a book about political figures, among them Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn, who played powerful roles in the House of Representatives. She wrote this book with her husband, who was a Congressman from Wyoming from 1979 to 1989. Mrs. Cheney\u27s 1995 book, Telling the Truth (Simon & Schuster), analyzed the effect of postmodernism on study in the humanities