{"id":258,"date":"2005-11-15T18:49:11","date_gmt":"2005-11-15T23:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/?p=258"},"modified":"2005-11-15T18:49:42","modified_gmt":"2005-11-15T23:49:42","slug":"share-the-bill-of-rights-over-your-thanksgiving-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/11\/15\/share-the-bill-of-rights-over-your-thanksgiving-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Share the Bill of Rights over your Thanksgiving dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"We<\/a>
\nThis is old news, but it’s new to me (which just shows how out of it I am!). Back in January the Knight Foundation published a study<\/a> of over 100,000 US high school students which found that these kids (who will be in my classes over the next several years) didn’t understand the basic U.S. constitutional guarantees of freedom and (perhaps worse) really didn’t care a whole lot. Over 1 in 3 felt “the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees”, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of us. As Knight Foundation President and CEO Hodding Carter III said<\/p>\n

\nThese results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous. Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation\u2019s future.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Subsequent analysis of the data<\/a> also suggests that comfortable suburban kids were “less appreciative of the First Amendment” than their rural and urban counterparts. While depressing, this isn’t totally surprising. Sadly, it’s not obvious that Our Fearless Leader would find any of this to be cause for concern.<\/p>\n

Today we (largely) enjoy the freedom of the Internet and I can ramble on about things that strike my fancy without, for example, worrying (overly) about the implications of criticizing the government. We’d best hope, though, that these kids come to better appreciate some of these freedoms before they run the show. This Knight Foundation is obviously thinking along similar lines, as they’ve set up FirstAmendmentFuture.org<\/a> specifically to address these kinds of concerns.<\/p>\n

As a simple step, I might suggest an idea my wonderful mother brought up last year (when we were still reeling from the disappointment of the ’04 election): Read the Bill of Rights<\/a> out loud as part of your Thanksgiving celebration. It’s a fine and wonderful thing to celebrate and give thanks for (a whole lot better than a striped piece of cloth), and reminding ourselves what those amendments actually say<\/em> and mean<\/em> in our lives can’t be a Bad Thing. Conveniently, they’re mostly quite short, so getting through them no problem. If memory serves, we got so into it last year that we went through the entire set of Constitutional amendments, not just the first 10. And this with WeatherGirl<\/a> not even being a U.S. citizen or growing up with Thanksgiving as a holiday! :-)<\/p>\n

(This all assumes you’re in the U.S. and do this whole Thanksgiving thing, of course. If you’re not or don’t, then I still recommend reading the Bill of Rights<\/a>, though, as it’s a fine little document. I’m all for exporting [and importing!] ideas, I just prefer not to do it at gunpoint.)<\/p>\nNo tag for this post.\n\t

Related posts<\/h4>\n\t