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Presented by the Zinn Education Project
A Collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change
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It's Constitution Day! Time to Teach Obedience
or History?
Pearson-Prentice Hall's high school textbook, United States History, opens its chapter on the Constitution with this Daniel Webster quote: "We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land-not, perhaps, the sun and stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution." United States History tells students approvingly that Ronald Reagan and others have recited this Webster quote at celebrations of the Constitution.
This is the kind of on-bended-knee Constitution worship that has long been a staple of our country's social studies curricula.
Students deserve a more critical and nuanced exploration of the Constitution----one that is alert to the race and class issues at the heart of our governing document.
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Related resources at the Zinn Education Project website
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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. A role play on the issues involved with the framing of the Constitution.
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Teaching Activity. By Bob Peterson. A role play on the Constitutional Convention which brings to life the social forces active during and immediately following the American Revolution with focus on two key topics: suffrage and slavery. An elementary school adaptation of the Constitution Role Play by Bill Bigelow.
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 Detectives Needed to Look for Coal in TextbooksThe Zinn Education Project has teamed up with Eric Grunebaum, one of the producers of the excellent film on the fight against mountaintop removal coal mining, The Last Mountain, to research and expose the treatment of coal in textbooks. Read more. |
