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Should colleges be forced to teach the Constitution?
NO
Tiffany K. Wayne
It violates the Constitution
As a U.S. history instructor, I regularly teach the Constitution. One of the main questions I teach my students to ask about any event, past or present, is not “Why?” but “Why now?” We already have a Constitution Day and it has its own history.
Begun in 1940, “I Am an American Day” was changed a few years later, to “Citizenship Day,” and the date set as Sept. 17. In 2001, President Bush reminded Americans that “Today, in the face of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we must call upon, more than ever, the constitutional principles that make our country great.” Bush used an already designated day to rally morale at a particularly somber moment in our history.
Now, in 2005, the name has been changed again, to “Constitution Day,” but instead of just suggesting that we consider our guiding principles on that day, Congress has passed a bill mandating that those principles be taught. This opens the door for requirements about how such material should be taught, as well as for federal control over other educational content.
I agree that Americans don’t know enough about the Constitution. I am saddened when my students have no knowledge of the context and origin of the rights they take for granted. As the Constitution is already taught at the secondary and college levels, however, it is obvious that formal education is not enough. People must be inspired to understand the Constitution’s relevance in their own lives and to raise their voices when it seems the federal government ignores precedent or stretches the limits of its powers.
In the 2001 Citizenship Day address, Bush emphasized that the Bill of Rights protects individuals from “the threat of tyranny” and the “loss of local control.” He was referring to terrorism, but, of course, the Bill of Rights refers to the “tyranny” of the federal government. This may not be the discussion Congress has in mind for Constitution Day, nor is it a realistic agenda for one day.
The Tenth Amendment is understood as the basis for “local control” over the creation and designation of educational content: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. The whole idea of requiring public educators to implement federal curriculum is not only a risk to academic freedom but is, well, unconstitutional.
Tiffany K. Wayne, an adjunct instructor at Cabrillo College (Calif. ), is a member of the Cabrillo College Federation of Teachers.
YES
Mona FieldThink of it as a teach-in
It’s hard for me to find a good reason not to teach about the Constitution. I don’t like anyone telling me what to teach, especially anyone in national government, but I find this directive easy to live with. In fact, I think we should all make a virtue out of this “necessity” and really use it to focus our students on the major constitutional issues of the day.
What about the so-called Patriot Act? How does that reconcile with the privacy and free speech provisions of the Bill of Rights? And while we’re at it, let’s discuss the separation of powers, intended to prevent unilateral action by any branch of government, but especially the executive, given that its king-like powers might incline its occupants to king-like desires for control. That’s not supposed to happen, according to the Constitution, but it has and it is. Why? And what can we do about it?
Once we’ve worked all that out, we might discuss the First Amendment, the one that allows all of us to speak and write and express ourselves freely, even if our ideas run against the current grain. This is a great idea, but how is it really working in the day of Fox Fantasy News and Bill O’Reilly, and blogs and all that?
Then we could segue into a discussion of this “Constitution Day” mandate itself. How does the federal government, through the legislative process, get to dictate what state and district school boards do? How does it get the right to determine the content of a teacher’s class? If it insists that we teach about the Constitution, can’t it insist we teach the Bible or Creationism? Or Intelligent Design?
Well, I don’t think so, but it’s certainly worthy of discussion, isn’t it? The Constitution forms, after all, our basic rules, the rules we live by, or at least the rules we’re supposed to live by. If those rules are being broken, then something must be done about it—and teaching about the Constitution is a great place to begin.
In sum, if I “have to” teach about the Constitution, and if many of my colleagues are doing the same, I suspect we can all make it into a useful, interdepartmental, even campuswide teachable moment. The process of exploring those rules cannot help but be beneficial, and may even lead to a greater participation in the political process on the part of some of our students—or ourselves.
Mona Field is a political science professor at Glendale Community College (Calif.), where she also served as president of the local AFT union. She is an elected trustee of the Los Angeles Community College District board.
