Women’s Voices Illinois Blog

American Children & The Constitution

September 17th, 2008

With the election less than 60 days away, there is a tremendous hype surrounding all things political. The media is providing non-stop coverage of the candidates, the candidates are making continuous appeals via TV, telephone and internet ads, and even businesses are capitalizing on the craze by targeting consumers with everything from “Yes We Can” Cola to Sarah Palin wigs. In short, the focus of the media, the candidates, and the retailers is on likely American voters.

In honor of Constitution Day (that’s today), I wanted to take moment to direct the focus to a different demographic: American children. Today’s American child is tomorrow’s American voter so we should be instilling in our children now what it means to be an American citizen.

Lynn Cheney, America’s Second Lady and author of five best-selling children’s books, has just published her sixth book called, We the People: The Story of Our Constitution. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Cheney explains that she wrote this book after the National Endowment for the Humanities found that most 17-year olds don’t know what’s in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, when given a passage written by Karl Marx, over half of the students thought it was taken from the Constitution.

My Constitution Day question to all of you is: Do you think your children are learning everything they need to know about the U.S. Constitution and our American government? Do they understand what it means to be an American citizen? If not, how can we do a better job of educating them?

Entry Filed under: Education