Word: documention
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This crucial document facilitated both the astonishing development of the West and the problems that followed as a result. Originally the compact looked like simplicity itself. The Upper and Lower Basins would each receive 7.5 million acre-feet annually. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land to a depth of 12 in., approximately 325,000 gal. That is enough to fulfill the needs of a family of four or five people for one year.) A 1944 treaty guaranteed an additional 1.5 million acre-feet to Mexico. All fine and dandy, except...
...would be taken voluntarily by students across the country in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades, yielding uniform yardsticks of performance. What the exams would look like is unclear, although Education Department officials vow they would not resemble the multiple-choice exercises of the past. The achievement tests would document the knowledge of children in five core subjects: mathematics, science, English, history and geography. The White House has asked Congress for $12.4 million -- a pittance -- to start work on developing both the exams and the standards that would go with them...
...contrast, there is no inflammatory rhetoric in the new report. In fact the document is filled with soporific educationese ("Foundational to this end is the commitment to the development of intellectual competence in our students"). Perhaps to assuage those potential critics not put to sleep by the prose, the report throws in periodic tributes to the concept of national . unity: "With efforts to respect and honor the diverse and pluralistic elements in our nation, special attention will need to be given to those values, characteristics, and traditions which we share in common...
...document is curiously silent on what those shared values are. It even seems hesitant to acknowledge the fact of U.S. citizenship; wherever possible, it advocates an awareness of global "interdependence" as a fundamental educational concern. In its constant elevation of group and ethnic interests, it represents a radical departure from the way Americans have traditionally viewed the passing on of knowledge in the common school as a means of creating citizens out of a polyglot and diverse pool of young citizens...
...Jefferson's Declaration of Independence defines patriotism in an implicitly rebellious fashion. According to that precious document, we do not owe our allegiance to a government or its leaders -- and certainly not to its army or its flag -- but to each other and to our common right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends," the Declaration states, "it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it . . ." Thus for Jefferson, dissent was not only a right but also a necessity: "I hold that a little rebellion...