IDEA: After-school Constitution study classes

ALSO: Constitution Study CDs

Most Americans don't know squat about their own Constitution,
much less the history that led to it.

If the rightwing can publish book after book, produce show after
show explaining their twisted version of the Bible, why can't we
start teaching and selling our side of it.

It is gripping history:
How the founders were all Deists and Freemasons
Washington Innaugurated in Masonic Regalia
Adams treaty "The US is not a Christian Nation"
Habeus Corpus - from the Magna Carta
The Bill of Rights
Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia statute of religious freedom
The Federalist Papers on the separation of powers
the separation of Church and state
no religious test for public office
no establishment of religion
The disastrous consequences of playing word games:
a "person held to servitude" (slave) is 3/5's of a person
a corporation is a person
Conscientious objection (the Jehovah's witnesses in WW2)

All you have to do is teach the history and teach the Constitution
and the fundies will go batshit. Let them try to block the classes -
it would show them for what they are. Don't have to preach.
The history speaks for itself. Of course, you have to point out
the falsehoods spread by the rightwing. But you just have to
cite the truth.

If someone like Thom Hartmann could put together a curriculum,
I would teach it at my local high school.

The CD could also be produced pretty easily, I think.

What do you think?

arendt

Shouldn't this be something that's covered during school?

and welcome to DU!:hi:

I always enjoy a good welcome! :)

the fundamentalist lock on after-school proselytizing.

If they can have classes and use them as recruiting
grounds, we had better be doing the same.

arendt

But after-school would be voluntary. To get the kids interested, we'd have to--dare I say it--sex it up a little.

Or maybe a better phrasing would be that we'd have to get the kids "religious" about the constitution.

Hmmmm. Lemme think on ways to do that....

We spent a week studying it, and then we took a test in which we were given hypothetical situations and had to make a ruling on whether something was constitutional and back it up.

Its a damn hard document to memorize. Unlike a normal chapter in a book where you pick important things to memorize, everything in the Constitution is important.

I have to give credit to lawyers. The legal code is a hell of a lot more complex than the Constitution.

I have to admit, I'm in advanced placement history though. The regular history was able to look at the Constitution while taking the test. On the flipside though, they had to write a full paragraph defending each answer as opposed to our two or three sentances. :evilgrin:

but the abuse it is taking currently must be hard for
the teacher to talk around. (I assume he doesn't want
to get fired for telling the truth about the GOP.)

> I have to give credit to lawyers. The legal code is a
> hell of a lot more complex than the Constitution.

I'm not sure I'd give them "credit" :-).

> Its a damn hard document to memorize.

Wow - tough assignment! But, much more important than
memorizing the Gettysburg Address.

Good luck in school.

arendt

in the Constitution. Your search will come up with "no results" because there is NOT ONE SINGLE MENTION of God, Christianity, Creator, or anything like that in the US Constitution.

The ONLY time religion is mentioned is when it is EXPLICITLY STATED that it is NOT TO BE ESTABLISHED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

When is states that the constitution was done up "in the year of our Lord"

How the fuck do you get "We were founded as a Christian Nation" out of the way they wrote the date?

How about making it "family participation"? As you said, most Americans, adults included, don't know the constitution. I'm pretty sure some parents would love to get involved in the study, and they'd encourage the kids to join up.

but just think about a Bible study full of rabid fundie parents
twisting the undecided kids.

I think the format has to be one teacher and a bunch of kids.
Multiple adults in the room is wide open to disruption.

arendt

at our local library. My 16 year actually started reading it on his own without prodding from mom. :)

He said it was much easier to read than the one we got on "parchment paper" when we were in D.C. last summer that had really, really tiny font.

It was cheap, only a couple of bucks. He has also read 1984, except it has a different impact on him than it did on me 30 years ago. Back then it was a futuristic novel, now it is more like a current events story.

Yes. I have a five-dollar, hard-back Constitution.
It's about the size of a post-card. Very convenient
to carry.

arendt

Which is cool, and it is searchable. It should be more visible in public, particularly in school but in regular print.

kick.

I agree with your point that Arendt's excellent suggestion should be something that is taught, not after school, but in class.

Like many grandparents today, I just keep assuming that the constitution is still being taught as the premier, idealistic guide for establisment and operation of a fair and just political system. There are elements of the constitution, for all its purity, that whince in the light of current reality and even the most hardened of biblical scholars who practice their craft in this free country would have to acknowledge.

What frosts my loquats is that those same scholars will not admit a series of documents, written several thousand years ago, all by different "witnesses" over periods of many years and with no common convention to support all their "supporting" facts, somewhere chapter-slapped together a heavy book. Every new-generation prophet keeps shoving that many-versioned Bible in my face as somehow superior to a document created by (if you believe the Republican dogma) the holiest of educated bible scholars of the late 18th century - a group of men gathered together as much in biblical spirit as commercial interest.

The foibles of those hallowed interpreters of the Word are evidenced in the many amendments to the constituion... and for that matter, the never-ending Papal edicts which shift, somehow, always in line with the latest political wind.

As a good, old-fashioned drunk I once knew (who was a real skeptic about both politics and religion) once said, "Give me liverty, or give me death."

Chalky, didn't attach to your post to demean what you previously said. I agree with you on all points. Your "reply to" was most convenient.

I especially agree with Arendt that we should make a point of insisting, forcing, cajoling, persauding... whatever, the powers that be, in teaching our kids not only the purity of constitutional convention, but also its weaknesses.

Nothing was ever written in stone... and if it really was, there'd have been at least a few dozen characters who would have risen from the dead to inform us all there was a big pow-wow, lots of arm twisting and threats of financial ruin if the tablets were not published with just "THIS, like so" wording.

We actually still have the original Constitution, just
as England still has three copies of the original Magna
Carta.

You can't argue about the truth of the document -
you can only create bogus spin about "original
intent", and you can only do that by ignoring the
Federalist Papers, Jefferson's other writings and
legislation, etc.

But we can't imply any criticism of the authenticity
of the Bible - no matter how true it is. It would
just start a firestorm. The other side feeds on
violent emotions, tries to provoke them. We need
to provoke "calmness" and "sobriety".

I am convinced that "the powers that be" are either
cold-blooded reactionaries who will refuse to be
forced to do this, or cowed, intimidated good teachers
who haven't got the stomach for another round with
the fundamentalist whackos.

No, we are going to have to do this ourselves, outside
of class hours.

Give the teachers a break. Give them some support. They
are already giving so much free overtime, some of them
buy school supplies out of their own pockets. Its time
we helped them.

arendt

Yes!!! One that I had considered a few times. There is funding for it. But I didn't want to compromise the message as much as I would have to in order to sell it to the target audience of such a business. What do we say about the Second Amendement? A curricular outline may be quite easy to produce. But the details will entirely determine commercial viability. At least in terms of after-school. If we open up the venue a bit we might share the fear that new generations of kids aren't learning to respect who has lived and died to further our emergence from barbarism. I have recently worked with kids for some time, and recognized a lack of respect for the functional reality of their future. They were not being given the tools they needed to take hold of their own consciousness and desire to learn for themselves. And in the process, who they were, as emerging citizens, the justice behind their innocent eyes being the essence of what we fight not to lose, is lost. Children so easily appreciate democratic practice, because it breaks down the heirarchies that are set up at home and fostered in the school. This stems from recognizing at an early age that it is preferable to set up heirarchies on the basis of reason in discussion, than by physical or social power over others. Education has got to be more about involving who you are, and less about applying arbitrary order. The Constitution, as a basis for the secular morality underpinning our pursuit of the multi-cultural evolution of humanity, provides a very fine example of why we have rules, how they are participatory, and what principles they represent...Ya got me started. So I can't get in my mind past the initial stage with this one. The media content is flowing past my eyes, but issues of cencorship loom large. If you can think of a vocabulary that somehow doesn't compromise the urgency of this information, figure out who the customer is, and then make a plan, this could be something good. I decided to pursue creative instruction myself. I developed a curriculum for popular music instruction. Taught the class for the last three years after-school in the Bronx. Kids make good music. They have an intuition about sound similar to their intuition about justice. We all recognize discord. Working together to make music I hoped to represent the collective functioning of democracy. The music that resulted represented everyone's input. And some of it was brilliant. - R.C.

got into this mess in the first place. Its not my
intention to make a pile of money on this. Its my
intention to get a network going. Sort of like
"Hooked on Phonix" parents. We need a catchy title
like that. (Marketing/framing is necessary, but
we don't sacrifice content or integrity for market
share.)

Do you think the fundies started out with a business
plan? I don't. I think, when they started, they were
true believers, idealists.

I couldn't agree more that today's kids are gameboy
and junkfood-addled, violence-prone, and cynical from
all the marketing thrown at them.

We need a way to re-awaken their idealism.

> The media content is flowing past my eyes, but issues of cencorship
> loom large. If you can think of a vocabulary that somehow doesn't
> compromise the urgency of this information,

Censorship? How can they censor the documents I have listed?
They are in the public domain. Teach the history of these
documents. Teach logic and critical thinking. That is being
censored right now by all this teach-to-the-test crapola.

arendt

The central theme of my reply was that people are not going to give you their great idea. If you have a great idea, you should flesh it out, and find those interested in participating. Or we can just talk about it. I'm past talking about anything that is not the immediate precursor to action. I'm either starting my own corporation, or doing it with someone else. If I'm putting all my time into something, its gotta be good. First of all, you have barely proposed something. What you offer is a general concept. Second, as I suggested, the idea has several significant impediments that you must address in order to demonstrate that you are prepared to take on the task. The political outlook will entirely determine the customer base, or participants if you prefer. (Ya got to excited about my business speak. I meant to imply profession committment.) Third, you seem to imply that educating children about our founding documents would be apolitical by the virtue of the documents themselves. Unfortunately, the Constitution IS in dispute. These times include a dogmatic assertion of faith before rationality that has no room for lofty philosphical concepts like liberty. I've recently thought of trying to assemble a team around a concept of mine involving music instruction. I have an approach, a curriculum, and I have a lot of results. What do you have? Why should I share my thoughts with you? Why should I assume that you are serious about taking action? The whole point of this is my suggestion that if you really want to do something like what you have suggested, that you should spend some time really thinking about how this could exist on a practical level, and then share your idea with those who could evaluate its viability. Cool ideas that won't go anywhere is very twentysomething and over-represented. And then of course, if you assume all of this, and just thought I was off base, then I'm glad we agree. - R.C.

It's badly needed these days.

:kick::kick::kick:

or the "traditional american values" club